The Aesthetics of Mystery
by AN PAENHUYSEN
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| Chandan Shafiqul Kabir, Organic form |
"It's a liver, right?" I asked the Milan
based artist Chandan
Shafiqul Kabir. I had guessed correctly. Good instincts because I
don't really know much about how organs look like (except for the heart of
course <3) But I know about the liver through my meridian gym exercises -
it's a tricky one where anger is stored and you can probably sense in my blog
that I'm suppressing, always trying to be nice :-) Did the artist intend
his sculpture to be interpreted symbolically? I didn't ask. I was more interested
in its looks. Chandan's sculptures had caught my eye when I saw them first
on slides during a workshop in Piemonte, Italy, about decolonial thinking in
the arts. Aren't these sculptures beauties? They even have a very nice
feel to it, a bit rough on the finger tips. "Tough cookies," so I
thought with my stomach (only Josef Beuys thinks with his knee).
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| Chandan Shafiqul Kabir, Waiting for Vicinity |
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| Chandan Shafiqul Kabir, Mythical pitcher 1 |
Back home in Berlin, I showed pictures of the
sculptures to my friends. Philosopher Kovo N'Sondé told me he favoured the
sculptures in which one could put something inside, or so it seems at least,
that the sculpture is a beholder, containing a secret of some sort. Kovo N'Sonde knows about the aesthetics of
mystery. He has been studying knots in Congolese art, and that's exactly what
also Chandan has been doing, but then the Bangladesh way: knotting. As N'Sondé
writes: "Dans l'esthétique occidentale, la verité est souvent
synonyme de dévoilement [...]. Dans l'esthétique koongo, il convient
plutôt de concevoir qu'il y a dénouement." (In the Western
aesthetics, truth is often synonymous with unveiling. In the Congolese
aesthetics one talks rather about denouement (unknotting)).
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| Chandan Shafiqul Kabir, Mythical pitcher 2 |
I like this idea of denouement rather than unveiling in the practise of art.
Unveiling has something brutal to it, a laying bare with a brusque movement of
the hand. The unknotting has a patient element to it, a slow creation of a
tension, like in those good old detective movies when Hercule Poirot unfolds
the strands of a plot surrounded by all the possible suspects. And although in
the end you know who did it (always the least expected one), you're left
a little confused about the how. Let me finish with a
beautiful Congolese expression that Kovo quoted: "La parole qui sort
de la bouche est une corde qui se lie d'elle-même." (The word that exits
the mouth is a rope that knots itself.)*
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| Chandan Shafiqul Kabir, Mythical pitcher 3 |
* Steve-Régis Kovo N'Sondé, "De l'évolution de la représentation des figures de
l'authorité politique et religieuse chez les populations koongo à Kongo,
Loango, Ngoyo and Kikongo (XVII-XX siècles)", Musée du Quai
Branly, September 2014.
An article by An Paenhuysen
Original edition here
© An Paenhuysen
All works by Chandan Shafiqul Kabir
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All works by Chandan Shafiqul Kabir
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NAU NUA | ARTS MAGAZINE edition by Juan Carlos Romero
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