Once religious identity has begun to matter, the point is to make it matter in a conscious and dialectical way, as a play of contradictions where the carefully honed and regardful actors transcend the play with the aid of history itself. Rummana is one such actor. And hereby she not only pitches her identity for display, she constructs a public space for debate.
Geeta Kapur
Home/Nation, 1996 (detail)
Rummana Hussain's oeuvre exists in two parts—one, her early figural works on canvas and paper from the 1980s, and the other her pioneering installations, sculptures and performance works that were among the first in India. During the early 1990s Hussain increasingly turned away from the materials of traditional "high" art, appropriating the material of domestic work—gheru, indigo, terracotta—as creative tools. Digging past the archaic symbolisms that at the time surrounded the female body - woman as a pure virgin, as the body of a new Indian nation state, as mother-guider—Rummana presented a view of the individual woman, in all her complexities. The arc that began with these works accelerated with the social and communal unrests of the time. Hussain’s growing comfort with plurality allowed her to further embark on multi-layered explorations of the marginalized while employing a diversity of mediums including her own body. These seminal works of Hussain - bold, poignant, and provoking, are as relevant and essential today as they were when created almost a quarter-century ago.
Is it what you think? (1998)
Hussain’s work emerged during a pivotal period in the development of contemporary art in India, when artists increasingly questioned established ideas of nation, identity, gender and secularism. The social and communal upheavals of the early 1990s became an important context for Hussain’s works, which brought together the intimate and the political through the body, domestic materials, memory and fragments of architecture.
Rummana, rather than extract herself from the challenging questioning of self that followed, merged both ideologically and physically, her body and her work. Through the 1990s that exploration became more intricate and Rummana more fortified in response, as the urgency within society merged with the urgency within her own body.
“Rummana’s work investigates more than just one level of experience. At it's core is her protest at the intentional subversion of a particular culture, community and gender to a patriarchally and politically hegemonic agenda.”
“It’s necessary to emerge from our insular shells, to come together and try and develop symbols of secularism.”
Rummana Hussain
“Rummana places herself in the space of a possible loss of that future which the earlier form of secularism celebrates. One might even say that with help of her own body she proposes to suture the social wound.”
Geeta Kapur
"Given the militantly right-wing, anti-Muslim, anti-female path that India, along with many other nations, including our own, is now following, her art is more pertinent and potent than ever. A museum should step up and give us the full scope."
Holland Cotter, The New York Times
"...evocations of the female body merge seamlessly with visions of scarred landscapes, alluding to battles fought on and over that body and mirroring the violent intrusion of history into the realm of the personal, the intimate, and the sexual."
ARTFORUM
"Her activist spirit haunts each piece, as well as her persistence in universalizing the personal struggle."
MINT
"Today, the profound influence she had on the generation of cultural practitioners that followed remains her most visible contribution to the Indian cultural scene."
ART ASIA PACIFIC
Rummana Hussain was born in Bangalore, India in 1952 and passed away in 1999 in Mumbai, India.
Hussain's works have been on view at various institutions around the world including The Barbican, The Imaginary Instituion of India, London, UK; Tate Modern, London, UK; 3rd Asia Pacific Triennale, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia; Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) is it what you think?, New Delhi, India; Fowler Museum, Los Angeles, CA, US; Museum Abteiberg, In Order to Join, Monchengladbach, Germany; Smart Museum, Chicago, IL, US; Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill, NC, US; Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth; Art Gallery of Mississauga, Ontario, Canada; National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), Mumbai, India; Asia Society, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Monterrey, Mexico; Tamayo Museum, Mexico City, Mexico; Queens Museum of Art, New York, NY, US; Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada; Rose Art Museum, Brandeis, MA; and the Institute of Arab and Islamic Art, New York, NY. In 1998 Rummana was Artist in Residence at Art in General, New York.
Rummana’s works were featured in the India Pavilion, Our time for a future sharing, at the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019.
Textured Terrain, 1997
Performance
The Tomb of Begum Hazrat Mahal, 1997
Iron, metal, plaster of paris, rice, white clay, photographs, incense sticks, strings, roses, leaves, cloth
Home/Nation, 1996
Fragment from Splitting, 1993
Mirror, Terracotta, Gheru, and Brick
32" x 41" x 10"
Conflux, 1993
Wood, Paint on Acrylic, Gheru and Terracotta
24" x 30"
Dissected Projection, 1993
Wood, Mirror, Terracotta, Acrylic
Is it what you think? 1998
Living on the Margins, 1995
Still from Performance at the National Centre for the Performing Arts, Mumbai
Electric Womb, 1994
Wood, Acrylic Sheet, Light and PVC Tubes
28” x 28”x 6.5”
Hyperbolic Device, 1993
Wood, PVC Tubes, Lights, Kidney Tray and Mirror
72” x 36” x 30”
Earth Picture, 1993
Ink on cut acrylic, terracotta, earth pigment and iron nails on board
48 1/2 x 36 1/2"
Movement, 1993
Charcoal and earth pigment on paper
15” x 16.5", 14” x 18”, 18" x 14”/ In 3 parts
Bodyscape, 1993
Charcoal and earth pigment on paper
23.75" x 28.25"
Strung, 1993
Earth pigment and charcoal on crushed paper
23 1/2” x 28”
Dissemination, 1993
Indigo and earth pigment, ink, charcoal and print on paper
26 3/4" x 31 1/2”
Tower of Babel, 1993
Terracotta and print on plexi, acrylic, indigo, earth pigment, pastel and print on plastic, pasted on board
26 3/4" x 21 3/4"
Love over reason, 1993
Behind a thin film, 1993
Mixed media
Tunnel Echoes, 1994
Mixed media
Tunnel Echoes, 1994
