Pritika Chowdhry returns from Pakistan

​Does art really matter? In the face of war, violence, repression, and imperialism, what can artists do to speak the truth and be influential? 

That's a question that has haunted Indian-born sculptor and installation artist Pritika Chowdhry, whose work tackles issues of international scope and history. She recently returned to the Twin Cities from Lahore, Pakistan, where she showed her work about partitions in countries such as India and Pakistan in "Remembering the Crooked Line," a gallery show that was at Rohtas Gallery this past  January.

"There was a time when I felt like what I was doing was completely useless," she says. "I completed three installations in 2009. I showed them a lot. But I ended up feeling -- what did I do? I made it and I showed it. What did it accomplish?" 

Then Chowdhry found inspiration from one of her favorite artists, Doris Salcedo, a Columbian sculptor, who, like Chowdhry, deals with memory of traumatic events. Salcedo has said that as an individual facing abuse of power, she must speak about it.

"Does it make a difference to the survivors of violence?" Chowdhry asks. "No. But it is still meaningful to make that work, for the memory of what people have gone through." 

In "Remembering the Crooked Line," Chowdhry extracted real and fictional maps of border lines in partitioned countries, transforming them into articles of clothing, board games, and kites made of such material as raw silk, tea-dyed Khadi cotton, wire, wax, digital prints on Indian dupioni silk, marker, pens, wood, and so forth. In a review of the show, art critic Quddus Mirza described how "lines that supposedly mark the division of maps appear like stitches on bodies, barbed wires, and streaks of hair." The exhibit also used a soundscape of a mother and her two daughters alternately singing "Ring-a-ring-a-roses," with historic independence speeches from the first heads of the states of India, Pakistan, Israel, and the Irish Republic.

Chowdhry says the project has been two years in the making. She contacted five Pakistani galleries in the summer of 2010, and with Rohtas 2 Gallery, she says the "click was immediate" and she was scheduled to have a show in January of 2011. Chowdhry was going to Delhi, India for a residency anyway, and thought she could just get a visa from India and go over. She shipped all of her work in four big boxes, which consequently got stuck in customs. 

Refusing to bribe anyone, Chowdhry tried to get her work released through legitimate channels, to no avail. The gallery director, who is well connected, tried to pull some strings, but that didn't work either. Finally, it wasn't until August of 2011 that she had to pay $800 (in addition to the packing and shipping costs) to get her work released.

Chowdhry chose to show her work in Pakistan because so much of it is about partitions. She started the project looking at partitions in India from the colonial era, and the concept grew from there. "As I researched it more, I realized so many other partitions have happened. Partitions are a political motif of conflict resolution," she says. 

Like India, Pakistan has been partitioned, as well as Ireland, in 1919. Cypress was partitioned in the 1960s. According to Chowdry, there are two types of partitions: Divide and rule, and divide and leave. The latter is a way of splitting a people and weakening them before the imperialist country left. 

Chowdhry wanted to show her work in countries that have experienced partitions, which is why she felt it was important to show the work in Pakistan. She also had a personal connection to the country, as her mother and grandmother were both born there before moving to India. 

Of course, as an Indian national it is very difficult to go to Pakistan, but Chowdhry became an American citizen in 2010, which made it a little bit easier. 

Chowdhry was surprised when she arrived in Lahore. "Everybody was telling me how terrible it was going to be. How dangerous. My family was not in favor of me going. My friends said, "Don't get bombed." But when she reached the city, "it was very normal," she says. The people there were very hospitable. "I was expecting some animosity, being an American and an Indian." 

But that didn't happen. "They were fascinated by the fact that I had an Indian background," she says. "They don't hate Indians. They don't hate Americans either." 

Of course, there were huge infrastructure difficulties. The electricity would go out for 12 hours. There were water shortages and gas shortages. There are elections coming up, and many people she met said they were unhappy with the current president. 

Chowdhry says she thinks of her work as "mobile memorials." Not monuments, they are intended to acknowledge violence in some way, and then are gone. 

Having done a show in Pakistan, Chowdhry plans to also go to Ireland and Palestine. 

In March, Chowdhry will have a solo show in a pop-up space at the Traffic Zone Gallery in St. Paul.