<p>Showing in Statements, Baseera Khan, Hardeep
Pandhal, and Hangama Amiri will make their Art Basel debuts in 2023</p>
<p><br></p>
<p></p>

Cleo Roberts-Komireddi

Artists of the Asian diaspora turn hybridity into resilience at Art Basel

<p>Among the 18 artists showing in Statements at
Art Basel in Basel this year are Baseera Khan, Hardeep Pandhal, and Hangama
Amiri. Each artist harnesses their diasporic identity to explore experiences of
hybridity and disaffection.</p>
<p>Hyper-attuned to their experience as a ‘femme
native-born Muslim American’, Baseera Khan<span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>’</span>s body is
foundational to their work. Following their win on MTV’s reality show <em>The
Exhibit</em> in 2023 – which awarded the artist a solo show at the Hirshhorn
Museum – Khan’s Statements presentation with <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1287/Simone-Subal-Gallery">Simone Subal Gallery</a>, revolves
around <em>The Protector</em> (2023). For this sculpture, Khan utilized 3D body
scanning and printing to warp their form into a South Asian antiquity. Part of
the ‘Bust of Canons’ series (2021-2023), the figure echoes a 14th-century
Nepalese sculpture, currently displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, of
the Hindu goddess Durga, protector of the universe, slaying the buffalo demon
Mahishasura. <br></p>
<p>Where Durga’s multiple arms carry weaponry gifted by male gods unable to slay Mahishasura, including a trident borrowed from Lord Shiva, Khan’s 3D-printed version presents contemporary objects that stand in for their ancient equivalent. Durga’s conch shell, emblematic of the sound of creation, becomes Bose noise cancelling headphones. The goddess’ bow and arrow – said to be the source of her energy – are Tabi shoes designed by Maison Margiela.</p>
<p> </p>

<p><br>In manipulated photographs presented alongside the sculpture, Khan interrogates the Brooklyn Museum’s Islamic collections. Building on research that informed Khan’s critically acclaimed exhibition ‘I Am an Archive’ at the Brooklyn Museum (October 1, 2021 to July 10, 2022), they insert themselves into photographs of objects, including a 17th-century Iranian prayer carpet, in what they deem ‘performances of intimacy.’ In some images, Khan’s hands, adorned with acrylic nails, hover dangerously close to the museum’s prized possessions in a symbolic assertion of reclamation.</p>
<p>Hardeep Pandhal, presented by <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/2233/Jhaveri-Contemporary">Jhaveri Contemporary</a>, follows his own reexamination of South Asian culture by dealing with the tropes associated with the diasporic experience that Pandhal terms <span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>‘</span>post-brown weirdness.’ The artist<span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>’</span>s Statements installation is tied to Professor Devendra P. Varma, the under-acknowledged 20th-century literary academic, who taught at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia for 31 years. A specialist in English and Gothic romance literature, Varma championed a transcultural understanding of the Gothic phenomenon, arguing for parallels of the genre in Indian, Tibetan, Mongolian, and Nepalese folklore. A short film, <em>The Spell of Silence</em> (2023), stitches footage from a television interview with Varma, conducted by the Canadian broadcaster CTV on Halloween in 1984, with an image of the Tibetan god Mahākāla, a fierce deity festooned with a headdress of skulls who is associated with protection, time, and death, and whom Varma theorized as an inspiration for Bram Stoker<span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>’</span>s <em>Dracula</em>. In the film, the image of Mahākāla disappears under billows of green smoke, sparking a skittish rap performed by Pandhal, who describes himself morphing into a green alien and accessing the land of ‘Gang Green.’ </p>
<p>Works surrounding the film introduce a motley cast of characters who inhabit Pandhal’s nonsensical world called Pintooverse; a reference to the fake name, Pintoo, which his late father used when introducing himself to new acquaintances. Rendered with diffuse airbrush lines, a painted portrait on paper imagines Pintoo as Nintendo’s Mario crossed with a Sikh elder, with a loose turban replacing the Italian’s hat. In large-scale collage paintings, derivate personas appear in hallucinogenic scenes, bouncing through backdrops of castles and gurdwaras. The gamification of identity is suggestive of an acculturation process that requires an assimilation of values, as alluded to by Pandhal’s cricket jumper vandalized with graffiti and the hand-sewn form of a green alien. The garment refers to Conservative politician Norman Tebbit, who in 1990 suggested a ‘cricket test’ to measure the loyalty of Caribbean and South Asian immigrants to Britain.</p>

<p>Textiles are likewise loaded with notions of belonging and displacement for Hangama Amiri. Sewing was a constant activity in a childhood entailing migration from Kabul in 1996 at the onset of the Taliban’s first period of rule. Now a conduit for accessing memories of Afghanistan – considered the crossroads of West, Central, and South Asia – Amiri works with swatches of cloth, mostly sourced from Afghani suppliers, to build intricate textile images. This process is described as <span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>‘</span>painting with fabrics<span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>’</span><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span> by Amy Smith-Stuart, curator of Amiri’s solo show, ‘A Homage to Home' at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum (until June 11, 2023).</p>
<p>Amiri’s Statements presentation with <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/16901/Cooper-Cole">Cooper Cole</a> features four textile works constructed through fabric appliqué which hone in on female agency in Afghanistan amid the Taliban’s systematic curtailment of women’s rights. Based on Amiri<span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>’</span>s recollection of Afghani domestic interiors, works fixate on intimate moments, like the three women shown sitting around the edges of a rug sharing a meal in one work, or the two lying on a bed flipping through a sketchbook in another. In <em>Women Chatting</em> (2023), women sit on a carpeted floor strewn with colored pencils as a child perambulates, showing how women are working around the education ban with home schooling.<span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span> </span>These resilient qualities of adaptation infuse Amiri’s practice, as they do Khan’s and Pandhal’s, with works that highlight the continual negotiation of identities and cultures across – and beyond – time and place.</p>

<p>Dr. Cleo Roberts-Komireddi speaks and writes on contemporary art, often with a focus on art from South and Southeast Asia. She has written for <em>The Financial Times</em>, <em>The Guardian</em>, and <em>The Times,</em> among others, and contributed to books published by Phaidon and Thames and Hudson.</p>
<p>Published on May 5, 2023.</p>
<p>Captions for full-bleed images, from top to bottom: 1. Hardeep Pandhal, <em>The Spell of Silence</em> (video still), 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Jhaveri Contemporary. 2. Installation view of Hangama Harimi’s exhibition&nbsp;‘A Homage to Home’ at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. Photograph by Jason Mandella.</p>

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Showing in Statements, Baseera Khan, Hardeep Pandhal, and Hangama Amiri will make their Art Basel debuts in 2023