HAVE I EVER OPPOSED YOU? NEW ART FROM INDIA AND PAKISTAN
18 March – 22 May 2010

C.K. Rajan (b. 1960, India)



From ‘Mild Terrors’ 1991-1996, collage, framed with glass, 30 x 39 cm

C.K. Rajan’s 1991-1996 series of collages from clippings of Indian mass circulation papers lay witness to the radical changes brought about by economic liberalisation in India, contrasting with increasing political and religious fundamentalism across both India and Pakistan. Since the IMF’s bailout of the bankrupt Indian state in 1991 India set on a series of breakthrough reforms that opened up international trade and investment and greater privatisation of industry. India went from having one TV channel to 90 over the course of a few years, by the end of 2000 it was estimated that there over 75 million TV sets, and 38 million cable TV subscribers. The 1992 destruction of the Babri Mosque near Mumbai and the resulting riots, first Muslim, then Hindu, resulted in the deaths of 650 Muslims and 250 Hindus.

Made in the course of this upheaval, the collages of C.K. Rajan lay witness to these changing times and throw the normal events of everyday life into question: a highrise building dislocates the torso of a girl in traditional dance; a powerful hand intervenes in a cricket match as if more powerful forces control the game; a submarine rises to the surface of an otherwise normal water tank suggesting political tensions always looming near.

C.K. Rajan was born in Kerala in 1960 and now lives and works in Hyderabad. Rajan’s collages have been exhibited in Documenta XII, Kassel , Germany in 2007, and the MuKHA Museum in Antwerp, Belgium in 2008.