Sacred & Profanity - Two winter appointments
di // pubblicato il 08 Febbraio, 2012
Vast and polycentric, London displays many attractions, distractions and events sporting diverse features. And, along the trajectory of the same stroll, a day dawning with contemplation can always culminate in unholy ways. Starting from autumn 2010 – with an exhibition on the Ancient Egyptian cult of the dead, and a following one on the worshipping of relics in medieval Europe – the British Museum opened a discouse on faith and its accompanying journeys. After the digression of Grayson Perry, sprinkled with irony albeit rather serious, Hajj: Journey to the heart of Islam (running from 26 January to 15 April 2012) ends this series. This is the first major exhibition entirely devoted to the pilgrimage to Mecca, one of the five pillars of Islam, foundational rules for the religion, and ones that every muslim must obey. More precisely, Hajj is the journey that all believers – unless impeded by serious physical or material conditions – should undertake, at least once in their lives, towards Mecca. There, according to tradition, the prophet Muhammad prayed and received revelations; and it's there that, by the same tradition, more than three million pilgrims a year gather to perform a series of rituals, over a thousand years old, all around the Ka'ba (the black stone cube which is deemed to have been built by Abraham and Ismael).
But how to portray, in a lively and dynamic fashion, what orientalist Martin Lings defined as both travelling to a destination of prayer, and a travel back in time? Indeed, the qualities of the journey – nowadays aided by agencies and local services, but carried out since the middle ages in adventurous conditions – seem to be the toughest ones to represent in a museum dimension. Thanks to the British Museum's wealthy collection, and to generous loans from the King Abdulaziz Library of Riyadh and other Saudi institutions, the axis of time is rebuilt along a variety of objects, milestones, tablets, drapings, maps and texts from different ages, up to modern-day souvenirs. Detailed panels explain the worshippers' itineraries before the advent of flying, and several individual accounts illuminate the personal and collective meaning of such an endeavour.
The spiritual experience, at the same time is recalled descriptively, with thorough explanations of the rituals, as much as intuitively: confirming a multidisciplinary approach, rather than a merely educational one, many works of art scattered around the exhibition establish a continuum with the inspiration that this journey evoked throughout history. Magnetism 2012, by Ahmed Mater, sets a tiny metal “Ka'ba” amidst a multitude of magnetised fragments, which thus turn to face the black cube. A powerful metaphor for an ancient practice, the importance of which seems still set to grow. And, even though these implications are rightly omitted from the exhibition, this event seems almost “due” to the British muslims, nearing three million in number, and a strong signal – strengthened by culture and intelligence – in a city that in the last decade has weathered both extremist Islamic terrorism and demonstrations of the xenophobic far-right.
In an entirely different key is the initiative taking place at the Hayward Gallery, part of the Southbank Centre complex, from the first of February to 13 May 2012: Brain Activity is the most important retrospective on David Shrigley, a figure at the forefront of English contemporary art. Mostly famed for his rudimentary and direct drawings, often described as disquieting and humorous, his condition is at once unique and exemplary. His style, in fact, apparently rushed and always balancing between comedy and morbidity, manages to create a world of its own; his characters, his touch, are instantly recognisable, in spite of their resort to a “zero level” of communication (or perhaps because of it). The commentary on an utterly senseless modern urban life though, that leads him to such desperate and detached tragicomic effects that they overwhelm and neutralise also the criticism they imply, likens him to many new British artists, and to the ésprit du temps of 2012 United Kingdom.
An adjective which is questionably applicable to his work is also one which is often brought up in these instances, that is: irreverent. Shrigley indeed works in a belief system where not much is left to revere; maybe the viewer, who is the only one to feel as seduced as – sometimes – insulted. What decay looks like (2001) consists in a rotten tooth and a mirror, which also reflects the visitor, therefore represented to him or herself as “decay”. Assorted objects (2011-12), with its deformed and face-bearing jewellery, seems to parody the wide-spreading bad taste. The very exhibition mocks the viewers by marking a passage with an “Exhibition continues” sign, only to trap them between two sets of glass doors, stuck to watch a stylised metal figure placed on the outside balcony. But, in the great visual variety of his works (one can find animated films, sculptures, paintings, drawings, even taxidermied animals), the word is king; and it's no accident that all the Untitleds are the works on paper that already display text within themselves. Sharp, terse, often stating the ridiculously obvious or nonsense totally removed from the picture, words are the tool that – notwithstanding the simplicity of forms – open the cracks of meaning and, on the face of the viewer, that of a smile. And the meaning does not elope at the end of the line: both faith and Shrigley's art, as he reminds us on a billboard looking onto Waterloo Bridge, are expedients to “fight the nothingness”.
