Huang Yong Ping in Paris

Gallerie Kamel Mennour: Huang Yong Ping, Caverne 2009

23 October to 19 December 2009

Paris, France

On entering the Kamel Mennour gallery, one is stopped short by a big rock that seems to have been pushed up against the wall on the left. There is no explanation for the rock squatting in the middle of the room, allowing only a little space for the viewer to walk into the next room. However, when one does walk into the adjoining room, (on the other side of the wall against which the rock has been pushed up) one notices a small heap of rubble on the ground and a hole in the wall. On looking through the hole, one discovers a scene that is wholly incongruent to the gallery atmosphere. It is the dark inside of a cave (a view of the inside of the rock mentioned above) with projections of bat-shadows on a screen. The cave is filled with two types of figures- the Buddha and members of the Taliban (resin sculptures- dimensions variable). Their faces are turned to the darkness, but their forms clearly evoke their identities.

Two things especially stand out in this work: the entire narrative leading to the climactic spectacle inside the dark cavern and the pairing of the Taliban and the Buddha. The presence of the big rock suggests a violent invasion of the pristine whitewashed space of the gallery. It represents an almost clear and present danger, but refuses to tell us exactly what the danger is, as if the space of the gallery is not conducive for this dark tale. For this, the viewer needs to walk to the other side of the wall and look through the hole drilled in the wall. It recreates the obsessive attempt to give ‘us’- the western audience- a view of the ‘real terrorists’. In other words, the present gallery, located in Paris, does not allow a space that will allow this scene (in the cave) to be articulated and thus, makes it necessary for the artist to undertake this elaborate artificial narrative (almost like a journey).

The idea of pairing the Taliban and the Buddha is a clear reference to the destruction of the Buddha statues in Bamyan by the Taliban in 2001. According to the Taliban, statues and representations in sculpture were fundamentally un-Islamic. There is definitely irony, therefore, in restoring not just the Buddha in a clandestine cave but also the Taliban in sculptures. The caves are an imitation of the real caves where the Taliban were hiding out during their long, protracted war against the U.S.A after 9/11. Thus, if one can assume that this dark cave is the usual space for the Taliban, what becomes more ominous are not the figures of the hooded fundamentalists (created in a deliberately caricatured manner anyway) or the shadows of the bats, but the precise rendering of the Buddha itself. It is as if the Buddha has appeared within the confines of the Taliban’s hiding place and is waiting silently like a ghost for answers to damages done. This contemporary reading is given an edge when one considers the cave to be a reproduction of the platonic concept of art and the impossibility of representing ‘reality’ through imitation.

The other major work exhibited here ‘begins’ in a similar manner. ‘L'OMBRE BLANCHE’ is a big (250 x 450 x 210 cm) sculpture of an elephant in the room. It is constructed with buffalo skins on structural steel and resin. The elephant is as present as the rock, described above. However, unlike the installation above, this refuses to generate meaning. It refuses, for example, to gather contradictory placements and identify with single points of access and understanding for the viewer. The buffalo skin is crumpled and sags in places. It is also used to make a cloth that seems to be wound around the elephant’s feet, perhaps tripping it. It is more, in fact, like the elephant in the Indian legend that blind wise men try to interpret. Popularized in John Godfrey Saxe’s poem, it tells the story of six blind wise men who attempt to ‘understand’ what an elephant is like: one of them falls against the sturdy side of the animal and decides that it is like a wall, another one gets hold of the ear and decides it’s like a fan while another one feels the tusk and decides that it is like a spear and so on. It symbolizes the difficulty of grasping every side of an issue of magnitude and any attempt to interpret and argue will inevitably reflect on the interpreter’s lack and blind spots with respect to the ‘complete picture’.

The other exhibits are two series of watercolours on parchments (510 x 43 cm / 410 x 43 cm). They refer to ancient Chinese texts and resemble torn parchments as if recovered from archaeological digs and findings. This extends the underlying theme of the exhibition space imitating the space of a Museum. The elephant could belong to the Natural History section, while the parchments purport to shed light on ideas and art in the ancient world. Along with the brooding, frozen cavern- it all adds up to a somber experience that underlines death and danger and is cynical about contemporary history in a manner similar to Damien Hirst.