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| Sunroop Kaur, Vignettes of Cultural Matter, 2022. Collection of the artist |
Sikhism is the world's fifth largest religion and one of the newest, founded by a succession of ten gurus who lived in the Punjab region of India from 1469 to 1708 C.E. UCLA's Fowler Museum is surveying the recent art of the Sikh community in "I Will Meet You Yet Again: Contemporary Sikh Art."
Though nearly all the art is new, as in 2020s, it is steeped in tragic history. Many of the pieces refer to the 1947 partition of India, a bloody event for the Sikhs, and the 1984 genocidal pogrom known as Operation Blue Star. Each event launched a global disapora, including many of the artists in the show. Today about 500,000 Sikhs live in the U.S., more than half in California. At top, Canadian artist Sunroop Kaur reflects on the deep roots of Sikh culture in British Columbia. The photo-based painting with found textiles commemorates a mill town founded by Sikhs in 1916.
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| Avtar Singh, Mata Dharam Mahat, Guru Nanak in Modern Fields, 2022. Sidhu family collection |
Several pieces marry the precision of Indian miniature painting and contemporary politics. Manjot Kaur's He is Thinking finds Yamraj, the Hindu lord of death, contemplating the Indian constitution. Yamraj, charged with punishing sinners, is considered a model of fairness. The Indian constitution, not so much?
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| Manjot Kaur, He is Thinking, 2022. Sidhu family collection |
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| Sunroop Kaur, Gurudwara Sacha Sauda, 2020. Khanuja collection |
Bholla Javed, a Pakistani Christian artist, mixed soil from a Sikh holy site with his paint to depict a shrine to an incident in the life of Nanak, the first Sikh guru. Nanak used the money his father had given him to start a business to instead feed hungry ascetics.
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| Sunroop Kaur, Farmers Protest, 2021. Khanuja collection |
Last week's Indian farmers protest was a reprise of the 2021 original in which agricultural workers, many Sihk, paraded their tractors in Delhi to protest legislation slanted against farmers. Sukhpreet Singh's
Farmer's Protest is a satiric history painting of the 2021 demonstration. It draws on precedents Eastern and Western (including Ensor's
Christ's Entry into Brussels, Warhol's
Race Riot, and the many permutations of burning Watts).
"I Will Meet You Yet Again: Contemporary Sikh Art" runs through May 26, 2024.
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| Detail of Farmer's Protest |
Comments
After zipping through a video of the ongoing LA Art Show, it's overwhelming how much technical skill or creative know-how, or both, exist throughout any society.
An old-time version of that would be going through the Louvre Museum. In a way, so much lobbed at a person at any one time becomes almost unpleasant or overbearing. I guess that's what curators or cultural gatekeepers are for. However, too many of them - at least nowadays and at a MOCA, LACMA, Hammer, etc - are into the opposite extreme of preferring too much blank white wall space. They also don't mind following overly subjective or politicized tastes of good or bad.