Two days before her art work was peeled off the walls of a Kochi gallery, Hanan Benammar had written a glowing tribute to the exhibition. The Algerian-French artist said she was "honoured, humbled, and frankly baffled to be part of such a beautiful group exhibition".
She had expected her artwork – verse containing expletives etched on paper – to bring mixed reactions, but did not think that it would be rudely removed by another artist. On October 22, Malayali sculptor Hochimin tore down her art work and owned up to the act of vandalism by videographing his actions and sharing his displeasure at "passing off profanities as art".
Thirty-six-year-old Hanan, based in Oslo, Norway, displayed her work titled Go Eat Your Dad at the ‘Estranged Geographies’ show in Kochi, after having previously exhibited it in Copenhagen, Denmark and Miami, USA. She had collected swear words from various languages and translated them into Norwegian dialects for her earlier shows, the idea behind it being to find the connection between class, language, dialect, faith, and gender. The words were translated to Malayalam for the Kochi exhibition.
"My work is shown in the context of other works, about Islamophobia, anti-immigrant, racist, or misogynist sentiment. It is a reaction to instances of attempts at policing, silencing, and censoring my work. I don't use the term censorship lightly. I work collectively or individually in different formats including music and theatre performances, in which I get very close to the audience," Hanan told TNM.
About Go Eat Your Dad, she said, “When I did this project, it was about understanding what language is because I have been told to watch my mouth, that I don’t use appropriate ways of showing anger, and it looked like I am full of hate. It was interesting to me that the understanding of anger could be class-based. So I began collecting insults from different geographical contexts and also from around me.”
A week into her exhibition at Kochi, sculptor Hochimin pulled down the art work, because he found the language offensive. The medium of the art work was linocuts on rice paper.
The choice of material is linked to her childhood, she said. “Linocuts are associated with my childhood, it marked the entry level of carving. These are materials used in primary school. The rice paper I used is fragile, very light, and therefore an easy target. It was easy to tear down.”
Hanan did expect strong reactions, but not vandalism. She found it ironical that such a work should receive this treatment and said that no one had tried to get in touch with her or engage in a conversation with her before resorting to such an attack.
"People are usually intrigued or amused; some show a bit of shock, and then laugh. But I have not had such angry reactions before. I don't mind that people don't like my work or think it is bad. But I was surprised that an artist, who must have tools to ask questions to me, not only vandalised [my work] but livestreamed it. It was organised [attack]. For several days, they wrote about my work on social media without talking to me or tagging me. They were talking about the chairperson [of the Lalithakala Academy that organised the exhibition] but he is not even the curator of the show. He didn't decide who should be in the exhibition," she said.
Murali Cheeroth, the chairperson, suggested to Hanan that the art work be left on the floor of the exhibition hall, the way they are now, so that it would also speak of the vandalism she faced. As of now, visuals showing the news coverage of the attack are on display on a television, while Hanan’s works lay crumbled on the floor.
“I hope the audience will still make the effort to read and look at the piece in its current condition. The incident becomes a part of the work, and the conversation lives on,” Hanan said.
Hanan works on long-term projects that conceptually deal with geopolitical, environmental, and social issues. She has co-created plays (Ways of Seeing), done sound and video installations, performed music, and also sculpted and curated art. Some of her art works include This is Our Body, Desert Garden, Antiphony, and L'arbre à rumeurs.
Art that provokes is something that has long been experimented with by artists across the world. Famously, Serbian artist Marina Abramovic did her six hour endurance act called Rhythm 0 in the 1970s, inviting the audience to do with her what they pleased, with one of the 72 objects she had placed before them. Such art is expected to create discussion.
Hanan hopes to still hold a dialogue as earlier planned to engage with her audience. She said that she would not hold this experience against the state and she considered it a privilege to exhibit in Kerala. She also thanked the Kerala Lalithakala Academy for supporting her.
The academy has stated that it will move legally against the attackers.