Khalil Chishtee interview

(The Times of India Crest Edition, October 16)

Art today is not just about aesthetics, but more about making statements, voicing an opinion, getting a point across. Everyone has something important to say and many artists use their inspiration to say it in a way that is ‘hatke’, different, eye-catching, attention grabbing. Forty-seven-year-old Khalil Chishtee, a Pakistani by birth who lives in the United States, has a lot to say about the world as it is now, about lost faith and belief, about courage and, with his medium, the state of the environment. He uses trash bags made of plastic, apart from other materials that somehow do not grab the same kind of attention, and has said that “This is the beauty of the contemporary art world that it understands the importance of content than durability.”

The content he creates is in the intent of his works – he explains his view that “humanity is tormented by its compulsive need to categorize and differentiate along any number of physical, cultural, political and economic factors, ignoring the obvious common denominator of our human-ness that makes us alike”. Blame II (2008), for instance, is a graphic representation of crucified martyrdom, while Broke Messiah (2009) has a male figure hung on a wall, the legs mere shreds of plastic skin. Figures suspended upside-down seem to dance, in Unbearable Lightness of Being II (2010), and I Love My Dad (2010) and I Love My Mom Too (2010) are less graceful, almost awkward and caricaturish.

Khalil studied at the National College of Art, Lahore and California State University, Sacramento, and has been part of a number of shows in the US, Pakistan, the UK, Singapore, Hong Kong and the Middle East. This is his first exhibition in Mumbai.

How would you define a “plastic age”? Or is that a literal meaning that you aim at?
'Plastic age’ means literally a plastic age. If you look around you, you would see plastic everywhere; in fact, in all new technology, plastic is the main ingredient used. This is the one material that we use the most.

Why do you use trashbags?
Although I use many materials apart from trash bags to make my art, but I think this plastic speaks the language of our time. Things and trends change within no time in our fast paced lifestyle - if something is very trendy or pricey today, it could become trash by tomorrow.

I Love My Dad and I Love My Mom Too have been called ‘comic’, ‘cynical’ and ‘disrespectful’? Why? Do these pieces make any comment on your relationship with your parents or other family?
Disrespectful? Interesting, this comment! In Pakistan elderly people snub youngsters with, “No one ever told you how to talk to elders?” We hide our wrongdoing in the name of respect or trends. I Love My Dad and I Love My Mom Too refers to all those who live in foreign countries and consider themselves to be ambassadors of their homeland. They are the one who will sell everything in the name of culture, religion or patriotism. If you look at the form of these sculptures, you will notice one Muslim child is carrying a larger-than-life-sized head, exactly the way people in the subcontinent carry wares on their heads and sell them on the streets. To me, when immigrants say great things about their home countries, they are trying to say they love their father or mother, but what is the big deal about that? All of us do love our parents – but we need to learn how to love other people’s parents as much as our own.

You straddle two worlds with many differences. For the US, Pakistan is not all good and vice versa. How do you maintain an emotional/intellectual balance?
Art has made me different from any ordinary individual. To look at things without preconceived ideas or a fixed mindset is a gift that my work gives to me. I can easily see and understand these differences – after all, when you see a ditch, it’s easy to avoid it. I can easily see what Pakistan is doing wrong politically and what America is doing in the name of helping others. I cannot reduce myself to become Pakistani or American; I am a human being who is trying to see things clearly without clinging on to any one thing.

Does your art reflect your life across cultures? How?
I see myself as someone who has lived all his life in the East and now lives in the West. My art is whoever I am.

What are the identities you are recycling here?
When you recycle plastic it remains plastic; but when you recycle people, they change from Indian to Pakistani, from Pakistani to American, or from Hindu to Christian and from Buddhist to Muslim. What I am trying to find out is whether there is a tiny bit of a chance that they become human, which is a greatest and truest identity.

Your sculptures show men (no women?) who are in so many ways anguished, tortured, in pain. Why?
Being a man, that is the only body I am familiar with and have the ability to say anything about. Where a woman’s body is concerned, either I would romanticize it or look at it with some preconceived ideas; I cannot do justice to it because I have very little information about it.

I think ‘anguished’, ‘tortured’ or ‘pain’ are big words for me, but I speak about the suffering one goes through in life. I know we all seek happiness and go to extremes to find it, but in reality there is only one true happiness that I am familiar with: suffering. It is when you get to that state of clarity that you understand that all other forms of happiness are a denial of suffering, which is to live a lie.

You are passionate about Urdu literature and poetry. How do you channel that in your art?
I studied in an Urdu medium school as a child, so it’s very easy for me to read and write in that language; like every other Urdu reader I am a big fan of Mirza Ghalib’s poetry. In some of my work I am exploring his romantic verses in a political context.