Perhaps one of the most underrated, understated pieces that I was in love with at Documenta is Nilima Sheikh’s Terrain: Carrying Across, Leaving Behind at the Neue Galerie. A sculpture of sixteen canvas scrolls, attached next to each other in a wooden frame. On each scrolls, Sheikh paints figures and landscapes, while printing stories, prose, and poetry. These stories and literature feature South Asian traditions and family, of the colonized, the immigrant and the refugee experience.
Maybe it’s because I’m an English major and I love literature that I liked it. Maybe it’s because my favorite poet’s works are featured on the scrolls. However, there’s something so quaint and poignant about such a simple work.
Some poems depict the bucolic sights of South Asia that I could easily imagine and love, taking a break from the Western-heavy culture throughout the exhibitions. Yet they carry such weight and sadness:
“At a certain point I lost track of you
They make a desolation and call it peace
When you left even the stones were buried
The defenceless would have no weapons”
My favorite section features two lines: “The road which leads me to you is safe/Even when it runs into ocean.” Close by the text, a simple drawing of two figures embracing illustrates the poetry.
Maybe it’s in the simplicity of the piece. While also addressing timely, important issues that many other artists try to do, the piece does it in a poetic way. Critiquing colonialism, the piece uses poems that evokes tragic imagery of the aftermath, giving the viewer a powerful, empathic experience. It gives the mind a break from all the grand spectacles and the competition for attention between other pieces at mega exhibitions. It is quiet and doesn’t scream for attention.
The piece is a very successful example of drawing inspiration from literature to make art, creating an intimate link between the two forms of art. As a writer and an artist, I’ve always been interested in this connection.
Despite my love for this piece, it is interesting to see such instance of art borrowing from multiple other “artists” (writers), as Sheikh’s role in this piece is not only artist, but also a curator of literature in order to create an experience for the viewer. Is this piece relying too much on good literature?
Additionally, despite the work’s depiction of South Asia history and traditions and the critique of colonialism, the use of poetry written in English does raise questions about submitting to the system. However, it is understandable that such literature comes from writers of the diaspora, who most likely were influenced and affected by colonization, using English as their first language. This question brings up the complicated dynamic between the colonizer and the colonized, and the question of identity and sense of belonging for the colonized.