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Oct 25, 2023

Birds beyond borders

Chorus, on display at the ongoing Sharjah Biennale, captures artist Reena Saini

Chorus, on display at the ongoing Sharjah Biennale, captures artist Reena Saini Kallat's three-decade-long preoccupation with political boundaries

Another piece from Chorus

A visit to a World War II site in Italy for a project in 2015 set the ball rolling for Reena Saini Kallat's Chorus (made between 2015-19). The installation––currently on display at the Sharjah Biennale––has three sculptures modelled on pre-radar devices used during WWII to pick up sounds of enemy aircraft. But, when viewers step in between the sculptures, they are welcomed by surprising melodies, barring a few screechy ones, of bird calls––except these winged creatures do not exist. They are a figment of the artist's imagination.

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Saini Kallat has taken the national birds of historically discordant countries to create a singular species with a hybrid call. So, for the US and Cuba, there's Ea-gon (Eagle and Cuban Trogon), for Palestine and Israel, there's Sun-poe (Sunbird and Hoopoe), for India and Pakistan, there Pea-kar (Peacock and Chukar). "Though national symbols were meant to unite people from a region, they often become points of contention when countries try and monopolise natural forms that don't belong to either side.

These imagined species symbolically seem to unify the otherwise conflicted nations they represent," says the artist, who dipped into the archives of UK's Manchester Museum to create a repository of bird sounds, which she later combined in her studio. "I wanted to present them as conjoined species as a proposition for their coming together in the future," she adds. Over the years, Saini Kallat has created a collection of over 200 such birds, out of which 18 can be heard in the Chorus sculptures. Also part of the installation is a collection of zoological drawings and resin sculptures of these hybrid birds––Hyphenated Lives—concretising the artist's imagination.

Chorus, in a way, captures the essence of Saini Kallat's nearly three-decade-long practice comprising drawing, photography, sculpture and video, which at the least, expresses the urgency of our times, and at its best, is optimistic of a peaceful future. "There is a preoccupation with the artificial or political lines drawn across territories that intersect with natural forms. Incisions on land have bearings on not just people, communities on either side of the borders, but also elements of nature," she says.

In one of her early works, 2 Degrees (2010), for instance, she talks about the river Indus flowing between India and Pakistan. She creates a row of upturned terracotta urns sliced in the middle, with fragments of the pots strewn around. "While the water is the same, it has different names in the two countries. The fact that we are societies linked by civilisation, regardless of the more recent divisions, is an ongoing area of interest for me," she says. Water is central also to her 2020 work Vortex, which was exhibited by Mumbai-based Chemould Prescott Gallery at the India Art Fair earlier this year. In the surrealistic installation, Saini Kallat recreates the borders of countries disputing over rivers in blue electric cables, which is one of her frequently used mediums, and places them on the wall in a shape that resembles a thumbprint––a symbol of identity.

A more recent work, Pattern Recognition (2022), also exhibited at the India Art Fair by Delhi-based gallery Nature Morte, looks at international boundaries in a more literal sense. Based on the 2023 global passport rankings, the artist has revisited the pattern of a Snellen Eye Chart by replacing the letters by maps of countries. They are arranged in a hierarchical pattern, depending on their freedom of mobility in terms of the number of countries the document gives access to. While Japan takes the top spot, terrorism-struck Afghanistan is at the bottom. It is accompanied by corresponding images of protests, conflicting issues, and health crises from the respective nations, arranged in a similar manner. "As I was working and reworking on this, I saw that dominant powers such as the US, Denmark and the UK have moved down the ranking order, and those emerging on top are Japan and South Korea, clearly showing how the power has shifted to Asia," says the artist, who is now preparing for a series of shows in the coming months.

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Following the Sharjah Biennale, which continues till June 11, Saini Kallat will have her largest-ever retrospective––Deep Rivers Run Quiet—at Kunstmuseum Thun in Switzerland (June 9-September 3). It will feature works from four art collections from across the globe. Also in the line-up is a three-month group show (July 15-October 22), titled Between Borders at the Museum Arnhem in the Netherlands.