Rashid Rana discusses his artistic practice

Rashid Rana As told to Reem Fekri

Rana will be showing at Art Dubai this year and is represented by Chemould Prescott Road, Stand A17

“I attended the National College of Arts in Lahore, Pakistan for my undergraduate education and later attended Massachusetts College of Art for my Masters degree.

I think that, because of the global financial crisis and how it has affected private business, creativity and the arts are going to have an even more important position in global society. I think we will se this reflected in the coming years in the amount of resources and attention directed towards arts education.

I guess at the core level my work is an attempt to record, using visual imagery, my time and the world in which I exist. In recent times, almost all my work comes from an interest in exploring images from the broad visual culture which surrounds us. If I look at my work in retrospect, the subject matter has been constantly changing, yet always mimics my formal interests. I would say that, formally I have an infatuation with the 2D image and the many ways it can be understood. I find it really intriguing to look at the history of two-dimensional image making; be it painting, drawing or photography. Regardless of the nature of the image, abstract or representational, the very act of making a two-dimensional image is something that I think of as an abstract thing to do (simply because the two-dimensional image does not quite exist in nature in the same way as sculpture does).

I think it’s difficult to separate cultural identity and environment from who we are as individuals. The thing is that it’s impossible to pick out one aspect of someone’s artwork and identify it as specifically informed only by environment or only from the artist’s subjective view. It’s sort of like the old ‘nature vs. nurture’ dilemma. That being said, I’m very interested in art history, and where my work fits in the trajectory of that history. As far as history, environment, and identity, it’s nearly impossible to escape from these concepts, especially coming from this region of the world, however, it’s truly a great accomplishment if, as an artist, you can creatively deal with these issues without being too dogmatic or superficial. One work that I extremely pleased with for example is Dis-location 4, and if I’m unsatisfied with a work then I generally won’t exhibit it.

Yes, that is true to some extent [that artistic practices with the East are often more politically engaging within the west]. Perhaps, this is primarily because in these regions people are confronted with turmoil in daily life. Because of this it becomes quite hard to justify artwork, which indulges in purely aesthetic concerns.

I think the art market has followed where the rest of the global economy has been headed for the last ten years: India and China. I don’t think this shift will happen overnight like people were saying a few years ago because the market has to even out, but it is definitely happening and will continue over the next 50 years or so. There is a certain excitement happening outside of the Western art world, especially in Asia, because everything in art here is really new.

Another factor which is contributing towards the focus on this region is that post-9/11 there has been increased global attention towards countries with Muslim-majority populations.”

Photo Credits:

Rashid Rana, Red Carpet 3, (Edition of 5), 2007, Digital C Print + DIASEC

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