Among the gilded linework and shimmering jewels of artist Raqib Shaw’s paintings are references to hundreds of years of history. Through a talented hand for precision aided by porcupine quills and fine needles, Shaw crafts otherworldly scenes filled with decorative objects from cultures spanning time: Persian textiles, mosaic tiled walls, paisley capes, and gilt-lettered books. At the center of this mélange is Shaw himself, literally painted into these worlds of his creation where place and identity can not be clearly defined. “I am a spectator,” the artist explains about his work. “Yet at the same time, I am a player.” His dreamlike worlds have come together to form a fanciful universe in the traveling exhibition, Raqib Shaw: Ballads of East and West, which has recently made its way to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston until September 2.
On view is a collection of more than a decade’s worth of Shaw’s art, including two new tapestries for the Houston show. The exhibition’s title was inspired by a line from the 1889 Rudyard Kipling poem of the same name: “Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.” Shaw, who was born to a family of merchants in Kolkata, raised in the disputed region of Kashmir, and later moved to London after witnessing the work of the Old Masters at the National Gallery, disagrees with the logic of this phrase. “I always felt that in a strange way I am the reversal of Kipling, the colonizee and the colonized exchanging places and perspectives.”
With the emotionally charged paintings of the Italian and Northern Renaissance, the scenic Kashmir valley, and a penchant for luxury in his mind, Shaw creates imagery as a process of better understanding the past and present. “I used to write diaries, but then I started to have my paintings as my diaries. I have a feeling and it is something that I want to express but I really don’t know [initially] what it is going to be.” Such is seen in Ode to the Country without a Post Office (2019-2020), which is a magical scene where Shaw, clothed in a starch white robe and glittering obi-style belt, sits in a mosaic-tiled balcony that is nestled in a mountain valley. He sits among a small dog and a bird free from its cage as he is guiding a flurry of orbs from an illuminated portal into the pink-purple sky.
However, this peaceful moment isn’t a utopia: a city in the valley is lit with fire and under the insurgence of military and presumably rebel fighters. The artwork’s name references a famous collection of poems by Agha Shahid Ali, The Country Without a Post Office (1997), written in response to the deadly Kashmir civil war of the late 1980s and early 1990s, which Shaw experienced. The poems have become a call for freedom and an important piece of literature for the Kashmiri exile community. Like Shahid Ali’s text, Shaw’s Ode provides a moment of hope amidst the destruction of war.
Shaw’s work also pays homage to the artists that inspired his career, and he often intertwines these references in humorous fashion. The Annunciation (After Carlo Crivelli) (2013-2014) recreates Crivelli’s famous altarpiece but envisioned through a chaotic scene of Asian wild animals and hybrids performing acts related to the seven deadly sins. Among this commotion is the Virgin Mary, colored in the divine blue hue of Hindu god depictions, praying as she is being impregnated by the famous UFO-like angel. Similar to the “libertas ecclesiae” (church liberty) that is carved in stone in Crivelli’s altarpiece, the Latin phrase “vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas” (vanity of vanities; everything is vanity) at the bottom of Shaw’s artwork sets the mood.
The work on view in Ballads of East and West is reminiscent of a line from Shahid Ali’s famed poem: “I want to live forever. What else can I say?” Shaw’s memories and dreams are forever encased in his realistic yet fantastical paintings, which serve as statements on the power of beauty and humor in resistance to humankind’s dark nature.
Raqib Shaw: Ballads of East and West • Museum of Fine Arts, Houston • to September 2 • mfah.org
