Anish Kapoor in Boston
I have been asked to speak at the ICA, in Boston, which is hosting the Anish Kapoor show. Here’s a glimpse into what I’m talking about, namely, the difficulty of framing my subject:
As a writer, you are interested in narrative. Point A to Point B. As an immigrant, you embody a narrative. You have traveled from Point A to Point B.
Anish Kapoor’s art challenges the prosaic syntax of the immigrant narrative. In sculptural pieces that defy you to find a beginning or an end, there is no consoling sense of progress or anything like the vulgarity of arrival. You have “past,” you have “present,” you have “future.” But those terms are not divided by prepositional hedges. How do you put your finger on where precisely a spiral begins or ends?
The immigrant tells his story in terms that are familiar. “Here” and “there.” But Kapoor is interested in something else, in “here” and “not here.”
The immigrant’s tale is marked by an anxious clinging to marks of identity; there is also nostalgia; and often, the loud bustle and movement of the airport terminal. What we see in Anish Kapoor’s sculptures instead is a mysterious inwardness, emptiness, silence.
How then to perform the task required of me—to examine how Anish Kapoor’s art relates to the work of Indian writers living in the West?
Please come if you are in the area. June 12, 6.30 P.M. at the ICA, Boston.
My friend Vivek Narayanan is reading in Boston tonight at the Pierre Menard Gallery! Here’s an invite!
