A day after she was accused of using the poetry of young writer Aamir Aziz in some of her artworks without consent, artist Anita Dube stated on her social media page that she had made an ethical lapse in not crediting him. The post’s content was restricted to those in her friends list.
Aamir's celebrated poem Sab Yaad Rakha Jayega was used without his 'knowledge, consent, credit or compensation' by Anita, he revealed in a post on Instagram on April 20. He came to know about it after a friend had visited the Vadehra Art Gallery in Delhi and saw Aamir's poetry stitched into the artwork of Anita, that was on display there. "When I confronted her, she made it seem normal -- like lifting a living poet's work, branding it into her own, and selling it in elite galleries for lakhs of rupees was normal," Aamir wrote.
He wrote this poem during the country-wide protests against the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act in 2020.
In her reply to the allegations on April 21, Anita, who was former curator of the Kochi Biennale, claimed that she was using a poem that she has been in love with. “As a visual artist I work with materials that I love, that become means to critically comment, and the intent of quoting words from Aamir Aziz’s poem was to celebrate them. “Haman hai ishk mastana, haman ko hoshiyari kya” (My love is mad, why would I be cautious) is a good way to describe this. It is the lost old world where there were fellow-traveler solidarities, spirit of the Commons and Copy Left. I have quoted Martin Luther King, Bell Hooks, and others in the same spirit in this exhibition and elsewhere (sic),” Anita wrote.
She said that she made an ethical lapse in only [not] giving credit, but not in checking with Aamir for using words from his poem. “However I reached out and called him, apologised, and offered to correct this by (offering) remuneration. Aamir instead chose to send a legal notice, and then I had to go to a lawyer as well. As far as the accusation of my wanting to monetise the poem goes; I immediately put the works not for sale.”
Prominent voices in the culture field – cultural practitioner Arundhati Ghosh, artist Gitanjali Rao and others – responded to Anita’s statement, marking their disappointment. They questioned her about using the work of a poet who was alive, unlike the late writers she mentioned. Arundhati said that the statement was “an apology of an apology” and Gitanjali asked how many years had it taken for Anita to call the poet. It apparently is not the first time that she had used his poem.
Aamir alleged that she had used his poem in a 2023 exhibition titled Of Mimicry, Mimesis and Masquerade. Anita had not disclosed this either when they spoke first, he said. "Let's be clear: if someone holds my poem in a placard at a protest, a rally, a people's uprising -- I stand with them. But this is not that," he said.
His poem was put in a velvet cloth, hung inside a commercial white cube space, renamed, rebranded and resold at an enormous price without ever telling him, he said in his post. “This is theft, this is erasure,” the poet lamented. "This is the entitled section of the art world doing what it does best -- extracting, consuming, profiting -- while pretending it's radical."
He called it cultural extraction and plunder, “stripping authors of autonomy while profiting off their voices, especially those from marginalised backgrounds. Their work is used without their knowledge, precisely so they can be excluded from the wealth produced through it."
Aamir said that he sent legal notices and asked for answers. He also wants the work to be taken down. The irony is that the poem was against injustice, he wrote, and Anita Dube's act of turning his poem into a luxury commodity proved not only that "injustice is alive, but that it now wears silk gloves and sells itself as art."
The Vadehra gallery that is exhibiting Anita’s work – until April 26 – told TNM that they have been in touch with the poet and his legal representatives. “This is a situation that we have taken very seriously. We immediately ensured that the works Aamir Aziz had concerns with were not offered for sale. We hope that the discussions that are ongoing between Aamir Aziz and Anita Dube can be resolved in an amicable and constructive manner.”