Of Land and Water: Inside Sharjah Art Foundation's monumental exhibition at the Kalba Ice Factory

Running until May 31, the show presents large-scale works by nine artists and collectives from around the world

Of Land and Water is the first presentation in Kalba of works from Sharjah Art Foundation's collection, including Jompet Kuswidananto’s Keroncong Concordia. Antonie Robertson/The National

Sharjah Art Foundation’s first formal exhibition at the Kalba Ice Factory crescendoes to a hypnotic ruin in its penultimate installation, the devastation epitomising the show’s overarching themes and title.

Dozens of chandeliers, fastened together in the shape of a bird, crash to the floor of the dimly-lit gallery, detonating in spangled incandescence. The scene is suspended mid-destruction.

One half of the bird is in the smithereens of shattered crystals and bulbs, debris compounded with broken radios, cellos and guitars. The other, larger portion is still in mid-air. The teardrop-shaped decorations of the chandeliers are intact, the filaments of its pointed light bulbs still glowing a warm orange.

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This wreckage is only one part of Jompet Kuswidananto’s installation. Titled Keroncong Concordia, it also comprises three screens positioned around the chandeliers.

One plays samples of traditional keroncong music, a genre known for its Portuguese influences originally brought to the Malay world by freed slaves, or Mardijkers.

“The origins come from Portuguese fado,” says Jiwon Lee, head of curatorial at Sharjah Art Foundation and one of the curators of the exhibition. “It reached all the way to Indonesia because of African soldiers from the Portuguese colonies that were recruited by the Dutch colony. After several generations, it spread in the area, and it was mixed with Indonesian traditional music.”

Keroncong later became associated with patriotic anthems that helped spread the idea of tanah air, or homeland – a concept central in Indonesia’s anti-colonial narrative.

Jompet Kuswidananto’s Keroncong Concordia. Razmig Bedirian / The National

According to the exhibition, tanah air took on a new tone in the mid-20th century as it became part of the rhetoric used to form a unified nation after nearly 150 years of Dutch rule. That change coincided with a turbulent period in which communities that did not fit definitions of the nation-state faced discrimination, violence or forced repatriation.

Among those affected were the Tugu, descendants of the Mardijkers, whose position in their own homeland became increasingly precarious. A genre once reflective of Indonesia’s cultural diversity was chipped into a narrowing vision of national identity.

“There was a lot of chaos that followed the liberation and the state-building process,” Lee says. “Some of them led to racist and violent acts. People were massacred. A lot of people were repatriated forcefully.”

This latter point is underscored with accounts of how those with African ancestry were forced to leave. One video, for instance, features an interview with an Indonesian-born man of African descent who had to move away because of the state-building process. As he expresses his feelings of not being able to return home, the song from the adjacent screen, with obvious keroncong influences, sonically reflects upon his heritage. Its lyrics, however, are potent with nationalist themes. The irony is grave.

That’s not to say that the colonial period of Indonesia was any more accepting or inclusive of mixed communities – the installation gestures to the fact. The whole scene, with its chandeliers and decor, alludes to Societeit Concordia, an elite, 19-century social club in Bandung that segregated its patrons by racial and ethnic terms.

Kuswidananto’s work touches upon the darker aspects of nation-building. In a way, most of the works in the exhibition touch upon rarely-explored facets of how communities and nations are formed – both positive and otherwise.

The artworks show the mercurial nature of borders, the customs and traditions that emerge from transitional zones, or, like Keroncong Concordia, show how national terms and even a genre of music can be disfigured and used against the very population it once represented.

The concept of tanah air that the installation unpacks also lends the exhibition its title, Of Land and Water. The Malay term for homeland was coined by combining the words for land (tanah) and water (air).

“We thought it was a beautiful way to phrase belonging,” Lee says. “It’s not only on static ground. It’s actually about the waters that connect different grounds and hence it contains a certain fluidity. You may belong to one space but because you are connected by waters you also belong to another space.”

Plate it with Silver is another expression of this idea. The single-channel video work by Babak Afrassiabi and Nasrin Tabatabai is part of a two-decade collaborative practice that explores the marginal archives and geographies of Iran. Plate it with Silver presents footage from the coasts overlooking the Strait of Hormuz as well as accounts by those who live and work along the shores. The artwork examines the movements of runners and fishermen, as well as the beliefs that have emerged along these coasts and the maritime routes that connect them. These include considerations of the “winds”, or spirits that are believed to haunt coastal settlements.

“These are spirits that are believed to possess people since the pearl-diving era, and they inflict bodily ailments, like fevers,” curator Abdulla Aljanahi says. “They then inflicted their communities. Because of this, possession healers came about. They are believed to be able to meditate with these different spirits and communicate what their demands could be, whether sweets or rings encrusted with turquoise, rubies, or rattan sticks plated in silver.”

Beroana IV by Taloi Havini. Antonie Robertson/The National

These notions straddled both sides of the Gulf, and Plate it with Silver shows how traditions and beliefs move between across waters, forming communities irrespective of national borders. Its adjacent work Beroana IV (shell money) echoes this concept. The installation by Taloi Havini features earthenware pieces that have been beaded in a spiral that is suspended from the ceiling. The beads are replicas of beroana, the sea shell currency still used in Bougainville, as well as other parts of Papua New Guinea.

“Taloi created these shell currencies out of earth and stone to reference the recent mining history in Papua New Guinea,” curator Amal Al Ali says. “This form of currency existed [in] pre-colonial times and still survives today. It’s unlike traditional western currency, it also holds ceremonial value and can be worn on the body and kept in special vases. It retains cultural value and a connection to the local people.”

While several works reference organic ways communities have been formed, the exhibition does not aim to present a utopian perspective of belonging, Lee says. Instead, it is about uncovering small proofs that trace broader connections, which may be disregarded sometimes “due to ideological issues that we are separated or segregated by”.

False Flags and Phantom Land by Walid Siti. Antonie Robertson/The National

A pair of works by Walid Siti embodies this idea. In False Flags, the artist presents a series of fishing nets hanging like a row of flags. Yet, their porous and colourless nature upends the visual rhetoric we expect from flags, at once disrupting and alluding to their role as ideological embodiments of nation-states. Similarly, Phantom Land presents a vast colourless landscape devoid of cartographic divisions, symbolism of how the idea of a homeland is malleable and continuously revised.

Another aspect that ties together the works in Of Land and Water is scale. The artworks in the exhibition are monumental in size, and this is what makes the Kalba Ice Factory distinct from Sharjah Art Foundation’s other venues.

The 20,000-square-metre building was once a fish feed mill and ice storage facility. It was acquired by the foundation in 2015 and, after a redesign by Peru studio 51-1 Arquitectos that retains the building’s signature saw-tooth-shaped roof, has been turned into an art space. It was previously used as a venue for the Sharjah Biennial but now, the foundation is aiming to use the site for more tailor-made exhibitions, displaying some of the larger works from its own collection. Of Land and Water is the first statement of that mission.

“A lot of the pieces are very large in scale. We wanted to bring out these pieces that we have difficulty showing in other spaces,” Lee says. “Our longer goal is to really activate this venue as part of the whole SAF activities. We really want to be more present across the entire emirate, not only Sharjah city.”