Issue 118, Winter 2006 - Carrick-on -Shannon - Helen O'Leary and Sarah Schwartz: Kite project - The Dock - June, July 2006.
Circa 118: Review  | | Helen O’Leary and Sarah Schwartz: from Kite project , DVD still; courtesy the artists | Recent critiques of ethnography and fieldwork, basic practices of anthropology, have raised fundamental questions about the nature of representation. While the implications of these questions for contemporary art practice were being explored at London’s Tate Modern in last September’s Fieldworks symposium, an exhibition on Irish soil has provided an engagement with just these questions and even adds a few more. Kite project is a multi-media artwork and the result of a collaborative effort between two female artists, one Irish (Helen ‘O Leary) and one American (Sarah Schwartz); both of them trained in the US, O’Leary after doing her time at NCAD in Dublin. A text piece by Joseph Lennon, author of the book Irish Orientalism, accompanies the exhibition. The artists visited the city of Uttarayan, Gujarat, in Western India during the annual kite festival of Makarsankranti. Kite project involves the presentation of materials gathered there, including film and photographs, in an effort to, according to Lennon, “explore the more obscure associations between India and Ireland.” A wooden table case occupies the centre of the exhibition space, supporting an array of exotic-looking rocks, some polished and thus reflecting light; smaller other ones are more pointedly colourful. This presentation is reminiscent of an ethnographic presentation of expedition findings; inside beneath the polished glass we discover samples of Indian jewellery amid an assortment of rocks. I thought this a tongue-in-cheek reiteration of fieldwork practices, presenting representative findings, but the presence of Indian jewellery and the seeming randomness of the objects seem to counter that reading. Large-scale photographic images grace the gallery walls, their glossy surfaces mirroring our gaze. At first these appear to be abstract compositions, with patches of colour trapped in black line echoing the sparse aesthetic of O’Leary’s more recent paintings. Closer inspection reveals kites trapped in the heavy line of telegraph cables; these are the fallen kite soldiers of Makarsakranti. On one wall hangs what on first appearance seemed a tablecloth yet proved to be a sample of pure Indian silk on which bandhani tie dye marks the flight paths of battling kites; tenderly the work echoes the colour in some of the surrounding photographs. Approaching a room adjacent to the main space we hear the sound of a bustling city; inside we meet projected footage of Makarsakranti in full flight. The slight movements of the projected image betray the artist’s presence, capturing the film with her hand-held digital camera. We are placed on the rooftops and feel ourselves standing with the artist, allowed to share in the spectacle of thousands of colourful kites in battle. Glass-coated strings for controlling these kites make them deadly to other kites; through collision or friction the battles are waged. The only people that we meet are silhouetted against the setting sun in two dimensions, like the projected film in which they make their appearance, watching the skies. I viewed this exhibition with a friend from Bengal who finally admitted that he “just didn’t get it” and so I concluded that for this reason (failure to communicate meaning) the exhibition was not a success. Does this suggest that the exhibition can only work for those who have not been to the Kite Festival themselves? I might then conclude that this exhibited material is not self-critical enough, that its strength lies in the exotic nature of the material shown. Equally, though, perhaps that would be to generalize and make a mistake myself, an Orientalist assumption that the opinions of my Eastern friend might be taken as representative of others from India. This is a mistake that the artists avoid: seeking a shared heritage of India and Ireland, the battles of our colonial past and present are reflected in the battling kites, an enduring spirit of celebration, and tradition unbroken. This work might be contrasted with that of Susan Hiller, who uses cultural artifacts as starting points but differs in taking the viewer to new territory across cultures. Ireland exists in this exhibition as shadow sister to India’s colonial heritage. In a reversal of past ethnographic practices, which might have viewed countries as India through a rear-view mirror, Kite project problematizes Ireland’s ‘first world’ status and what this has meant for the integrity of our own culture.
Sharon Ní Cuilibin is an autor. Carrick-on -Shannon - Helen O'Leary and Sarah Schwartz: Kite project - The Dock -
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