Aligning the debate

Feature As the 60th anniversary of the Karachi Agreement approaches, art galleries in England, Pakistan and the UAE explore divisions between India and Pakistan.

Rashid Rana's 'All Eyes Skyward During the Annual Parade', 2004

This July will mark the 60th anniversary of the Karachi agreement signed between India and Pakistan. A ceasefire deal, it eventually gave rise to the Line of Control, or line drawn to denote the border between the parts of Kashmir which India and Pakistan would separately administer. It is an anniversary of which the London-based arts organisation Green Cardamom is keenly aware, for it has been preparing for a new exhibition on the theme of division for "several years", says the curator Hammad Nasar.

The idea for an exhibition on the subject sprouted in 2005. It is a body of work from 18 artists centred on divisions between India and Pakistan, but which throws up several other themes, such as identity, heritage and the effects of living with the constant threat of violence. An ambitious project, the exhibition spreads itself out across three cities simultaneously, in London, Karachi and Dubai. Last week marked the Dubai opening at the Third Line Gallery, where work from eight artists is on display until Feb 8.

One of the artists, Bengali Naeem Mohaiemen, was at the opening overseeing his work. He has two pieces in the exhibition, both based on the Bengali Muslim poet Kazi Nazrul Islam. A controversial figure, Nazrul joined the Indian army in 1917 when he was 18, only to leave three years later and start work for a literary society in Calcutta, where he mixed with writers and embarked on a career as a poet, with nationalism often a theme. He was against the idea of partition, vocalising his unhappiness about it through poetry and songs, until he was struck down with Pick's Disease in 1941. This incurable disease caused loss of memory and rendered him mute, the state in which he lived until he died in 1976.

Nazrul's influence was co-opted by India because he was a prominent example of Hindu-Muslim syncretism, by Pakistan because he was their Tagore equivalent, and then by Bangladesh when it seceded from Pakistan in 1971. He lived in Dhaka at the invitation of the government for the last four years of his life, an icon on which to concentrate new nationalism. Though both of Mohaiemen's pieces are called Kazi in Nomansland, one is a set of five thin, framed prints. Each is a different vibrant colour only showing Nazrul's eyes, which are aligned on top of each other in chronological order. They all tell of a different stage of his life, beginning with memory loss, with accompanying text explaining that specific moment. The point, Mohaiemen tells me, is to show the many faces that were projected on to the poet and the controversial legacy that he left.

The second work is a piece made of three stacks of stamps all glued together, so chosen because Nazrul is still the only person to have graced the stamps of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. "It's a good metaphor for the manner in which countries and politics try to appropriate and fit him to their own agendas," says Mohaiemen. In total, there are 1,000 stamps, a mission which he laughs about and says "seriously confused" the post offices he visited.

So why this interest in Nazrul? "Past partitions are continuing to haunt present politics. I explore history to understand the present moment," he explains. But his work could, in fact, serve as a metaphor for the entire exhibition, encapsulating the many opposing views that are held on the subject. Mohaiemen, as with all but one of the artists featured in this exhibition, was born after the 1947 partition, but his father and grandfather's generation lived through it, and he says that he has always been politically aware. It is a subject which he feels very strongly about, as do the other artists here. "They all have a personal story about partition," says Nasar. "They are thinkers in the field rather than just illustrators. It's not just about entertaining the eyes but engaging the mind, too."

Of all the pieces in the exhibition, this is perhaps most applicable to the 41-year-old Pakistani artist Rashid Rana's impressive, large installation All Eyes Skywards at the Annual Parade. Mounted in the corner of the gallery, from a distance the piece looks like an unfocused photograph of a Pakistani crowd peering skywards at the fly-past of fighter jets, many of them gripping the Pakistani flag. But move closer to the image and you see that it's a mosaic, made up of thousands of miniature images from Bollywood films which are theoretically illegal in Pakistan.

"The Bollywood films I picked were not random, but big blockbusters that are loved on both sides of the border," Rana says. "I wanted to show how intertwined our two cultures are." It's clever, ironic and a reminder of the ongoing tension between the two countries, which is another common thread to the show. Roohi Ahmed, 41, is also Pakistani and has a similarly themed piece on display called Between the Lines. It is a series made of eight white, wooden panels on which are mounted large metal needles, the kind that are used to sew sacks of jute. It was an idea born after September 11. "All that talk about non-existent WMDs and the build up of distrust and fear of the ordinary," Ahmed says. "Needles, which are generally associated with a very domestic activity, when seen in a larger size appear menacing and have the potential to hurt or even kill." So here his ordinary needles are all lined up in different geometric patterns, some facing each other like little missiles, some facing away from each other with their sharp points radiating outward. They represent two sides, he adds, "although it doesn't matter who they might be. In today's world, power is the core element which everyone seems to struggle for in one way or the other".

This fight for power and control is ably demonstrated in the New Delhi-based 44-year-old Amar Kanwar's video work, A Season Outside. A 30-minute piece, it in part examines the rituals performed at the Indo-Pakistani border in the Punjab. Filmed mostly between 1996 and 1997 as a two-year project, the video also shows several minutes of black and white archive footage of Gandhi, scenes from Tibet and monks being beaten in the streets. Kanwar talks throughout, exploring the general psychological effects of territorial conflict such as this and the possibilities of non-violent resolution. "One flash of violence," he says as soldiers march along the streets of the Punjab, "and thousands of identities were tossed into the wind."

This subject of heritage links all the exhibition's work. Of the remaining three pieces in the Third Line Gallery, it is a piece by Iftikhar Dadi, 48, and Nalini Malani, 62 (the only artist involved who was born pre-partition), that implies most forcefully how damaging and confused the legacy has been for many of those who live in the region still. "It continues to haunt South Asia," Dadi argues, "And through continued tension, violence and militarism, deprives the region from developing its human potential." The work itself is made up of two large rectangular cloth panels, with sequins sewn on as a replica of the Line of Control itself. So it appears as a map. The line between the two countries is constructed of bright, scarlet sequins on a gold sequin backdrop.

Raising the imperial ghost is the work of the 33-year-old Pakistan-born artist Seher Shah. Monumental Fantasies: Impermanence I, is a combination of white drawings and digital print on a black background. It looks like an intensely detailed collage. Dotted about the image are Moghul miniatures, grand buildings, burning flags and geometric Islamic patterns. "I frequently travel between Lahore and Delhi, so I personally wanted to study images of colonial monuments and symbols as it's an area of interest to me," Shah says.

But it is the one remaining piece of the exhibition, by the Indian artist Anita Dube, 50, that feels the most poignant. Using hundreds of ceramic eyeballs, she has arranged them in the shape of the five rivers running through Punjab, between India and Pakistan. Staring out from the canvas, the wide eyes suggest fear and madness. Without words, it gives one a sense of the panic that was created by division, of the havoc it wreaked.

And that, really, is the point of this impressive, deeply moving exhibition. "Art is a space in which things can be thought of in a different way. It gets us into a space where words fail us," Nasar says. Though a similar exhibition was held in New Delhi's Eicher Gallery in 1997, Nasar plans Green Cardamom's work to be an ongoing project, constantly building upon itself. He talks of a similar exhibition being planned for next year with the Middle East as the central theme. It will be a "further exploration into partitions" and the way in which countries are created. "These are real, current problems which you ignore at your peril," he says gesturing around the gallery. Given present international events, it seems his timing couldn't be better.

Lines of Control is at The Third Line, Dubai, until Feb 8. (www.thethirdline.com)