Promiscuous Eye

Maybe(not) Mayfair

I thought Gagosian in Chelsea New York City was intimidating with it’s 50 feet high frosted heavy doors set in a massive stone structure that feels more like an uptown museum than a gallery. I love watching people as they pull the door with all their weight and with even more hesitation. Most are not quite sure if they are ‘allowed’ to go in. But galleries in the west of London seem to be even more intimidating

Imagine you are in Mayfair, one of the poshest areas in London, and everyone around you is in expensive gear. There are a plethora of Bentley’s with drivers sitting in them waiting for their boss to arrive from shopping on Seville Row. However you are the typical tourist awkwardly pulling out the gallery map after every turn struggling to find the next gallery. Trying not to look to out of place, you weave in and out of tiny streets with confidence once you have memorized the street signs, however, it does not help you are probably severely underdressed and really look like you belong back on the Regents St. where the main strip of cheap retail shops and cheesy tourist traps are located. You think goodness I just wanted to go gallery hopping why is it so much work.

You finally find the gallery you were looking for. You walk through a small dark corridor to a wooden door with gold lettering and you realize you must buzz up to the gallery in order to be let in. And you think to yourself that they may not let you in because you don’t look like the desirable millionaire with a thirst for art. Good news is that most times they will let you in, and sometimes they will ask what do you want, but to their credit in those cases they might be preparing for the next exhibition.

Oh, but the intimidation does not stop there. You go to the next gallery and the doors are flung wide open but on each pedestal displaying small bronze sculptures there is this really annoying label that reads, ‘ALARMED-PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH’ in bright red. I know you really want to touch it just to see if there really is an alarm. You wonder what will happen after the alarm goes off, will ten security men suddenly scurry out of the back gallery offices and throw you out, or will the police be called and put you in jail for a night. Can you imagine you are sitting in a dingy cell with maybe a drug dealer and a robber and they ask what are you in for and you reply, “I’m here for touching a bronze sculpture”. The kicker is you barely remember the artist’s name. It is my guess that the gallery assistant will shun and shame you to death and hope the embarrassment will make you leave.

Well in a nutshell that was essence of my experience of gallery hopping in west London (without the setting off of the alarm). I think I might stick to the east on a more consistent basis and go to the west for special exhibits and to visit this wonderful gallery/restaurant/aesthetic wonderland called Sketch. It’s beautiful. I really don’t care what the exhibit is I will be there once a week.

British Museum

British Museum

I finally went to the British museum. I say ‘finally’ because the British Museum has been part of my undergraduate and graduate research for years. The British Museum is the mother of museums. They have successfully documented British spoils acquired through unwelcomed expeditions, colonization, and war. In the beginning my blood would boil at the thought of its history. Just thinking of the arrogance of a museum to display with no shame how they stole and ravaged cultures. Over time I began to chill a bit and come to terms with the fact that this is just a consequence of war.

It all began with a conversation with a highly intelligent know-it-all artist who suggested I look into the repatriation of traditional African objects since I was really getting into the subject of Nazi-era stolen objects. Well I did and never turned back. In the beginning I was naïve and saw the issue in black in white. I felt the royal goods of Benin taken during the British punitive expedition to Nigeria in 1897 should be returned immediately. I studied the issue and wrote about it with passion. I looked at the laws, sociological concerns, anthropological opinions, and even worked for the International Council of African Museums, a non-profit organization who writes security policies. The more research I did the more I realized that the objects in some cases are better off at the British museum simply because they are safe from being stolen and sold on the black market.

The moment when I came faced to face with sculptures I stared at in books for years was not as dramatic as I imagined. I stood for I think the expected time an art historian would stare at an object. I was in complete awe of how detailed the objects were. They worked in wood, ivory and bronze all with the same consistent impressive skill. It was cool to see also the tourist objects made of ivory with ugly European men on horses. I was comparing that to our current tourist objects that I believe are complete junk, but in a couple hundred years you never know, they too could end up on a museum shelf to display the value of mass production.

Hassan Khan

I recently met Hassan on my fourth day here in London after my official move. He was kind enough to accept my invitation to an interview. It proved to be more than expected. I learned a bit about the art politics in the Middle East. Unfortunately most of that conversation extended beyond this interview, but it is touched upon in our conversation.




MP3 File

Image:
Videostill from "The Hidden Location", 2004
4 channel synchronised video installation
52 minutes
courtesty of the artist and Galerie Chantal Crousel