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This is a past display. Go to current displays
Six white and grey diamond shapes on black

Lala Rukh Rupak 2016

Courtesy of the Estate of Lala Rukh and Grey Noise, Dubai 

Lala Rukh

In Rupak, artist Lala Rukh gives visual form to the live quality of sound

Rupak 2016 is Rukh’s last major work. It consists of an animation and 88 drawings. The soundtrack features a tabla – a drum from the Indian subcontinent. The work takes its title from the rupak taal, a rhythmic pattern in Hindustani music.

Lala Rukh was a socially and politically engaged artist who had a deep interest in music. This was sparked by her engagement with the All Pakistan Musical Conference, an organisation created by her father, Hayat Ahmad Khan, in 1959. It promoted diverse types of music from around the country.

In her drawings Rukh creates a form of visual annotation for a musical tradition that is largely based on memory and improvisation. The square-shaped units, which make up the various configurations, derive from calligraphy. They run along a single line in the black-on-white drawings, while they pulsate in and out of sight in the white-on-black animation. Rupak encapsulates Lala Rukh’s precise, minimal visual language. The artist often condensed complex subject matters into concise forms.

Curated by Devika Singh

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Tate Modern
Blavatnik Building Level 3

Getting Here

1 February – 3 July 2022

Free

Lynn Hershman Leeson, Check  1974

1/13
artworks in Lala Rukh

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Laura Aguilar, Clothed/Unclothed #4  1990

Clothed/Unclothed #4 and #34 depict the photographer, artist and social activist Willie Middlebrook 1957–2012, a friend of Aguilar’s, solo and with his two children.

Gallery label, November 2022

2/13
artworks in Lala Rukh

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Laura Aguilar, Clothed/Unclothed #28  1994

Aguilar shows us how the camera can be used to imagine different ways of being. Her images specifically counter white, heteronormative, able-bodied images of women that proliferate. As a Chicana photographer and video artist, Aguilar used the camera to explore herself and the intersection of Chicanx, Latinx, immigrant and queer communities in Los Angeles in the 1980s and 1990s.

Gallery label, November 2022

3/13
artworks in Lala Rukh

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Laura Aguilar, Clothed/Unclothed #24  1991

Aguilar explained, ‘My work is a collaboration between the sitters and myself... Hopefully the universal elements in the work can be recognised by other individuals’ communities and can initiate the viewer to new experiences about gays, lesbians, and people of color.’ For the artist, the viewer ‘is as vulnerable as the nude person because as they view the images, they are hopefully seeing images of themselves.’

Gallery label, November 2022

4/13
artworks in Lala Rukh

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Laura Aguilar, Clothed/Unclothed #30  1994

Aguilar often turned the camera on herself to explore her identity, exposing her own vulnerabilities and inner conflicts. She extended this sensitivity to the people she photographed, portraying their vulnerable and intimate sides while retaining a direct and candid quality, even when carefully constructed in the studio. The series Clothed/Unclothed 1990–4 show people from Aguilar’s social circles, including the LGBTQIA community, the Chicanx art community, academics and other professionals in Los Angeles. She collaborated with her sitters to explore universal themes around the construction and representation of identity that relate to queer forms of community and kinship.

Gallery label, November 2022

5/13
artworks in Lala Rukh

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Laura Aguilar, Clothed/Unclothed #34  1994

Foregrounding care and trust in her art practice, Aguilar created collaborative and reciprocal relationships with her sitters. Rejecting traditional family portraiture, the subjects remain intertwined as they hold our gaze. Bodies are close and connected, both clothed and unclothed, revealing their deep connection as a unit.

Gallery label, November 2022

6/13
artworks in Lala Rukh

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Lynn Hershman Leeson, Roberta Construction Chart #1  1975, printed 2009

Lynn Hershman Leeson created, performed and documented an alter ego, Roberta Breitmore from 1973 to 1978 to ‘focus on the blurriness between fiction and reality’. During her four-year existence, Roberta Breitmore had a bank account and library card, rented an apartment and went on dates. She did not plan for the character to be so developed but ‘when you start to define how you make somebody real, she needs to be fleshed out and have a history.’ Roberta Construction Chart #1 gives detailed instructions on how to create Roberta’s appearance. It doubles as a visualisation of ‘femininity as masquerade’, highlighting the tropes and traits that tend to be associated with femininity.

Gallery label, November 2022

7/13
artworks in Lala Rukh

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Lynn Hershman Leeson, Untitled (Roberta’s Signature in Guest Book)  1975

8/13
artworks in Lala Rukh

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Lynn Hershman Leeson, Lay Off & Leave Me Alone  1976; printed 1978

Roberta Breitmore was a fictional person, created, enacted and documented by Lynn Hershman from 1974 to 1978. During her four-year existence Roberta had a bank account and library card, attended weight watchers and rented an apartment. Roberta Construction Chart #1 gives detailed instructions on how to create Roberta’s appearance. In Roberta’s Body Language Chart, Roberta is photographed during a psychiatric session with annotations interpreting her body language. Hershman later recalled: ‘With the completion of Roberta, I finally closed the chapter on that idea of the single woman – Roberta and me – as victim.’

Gallery label, June 2011

9/13
artworks in Lala Rukh

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VALIE EXPORT, Action Pants: Genital Panic  1969

This set of posters was produced to commemorate an action performed by VALIE EXPORT in Munich in 1968. She entered a cinema wearing trousers with a triangle of fabric removed at the crotch and walked between the rows of seated viewers. Her action was intended to confront the cliché of women’s cinematic representation as passive objects. The posters were then fly-posted in the streets. ‘I wanted to be provocative, to provoke, but also aggression was part of my intention...I sought to change the people’s way of seeing and thinking’, the artist has said.

Gallery label, July 2008

10/13
artworks in Lala Rukh

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Jo Spence, with Rosy Martin, with David Roberts, Libido Uprising Part I and Part II  1989

11/13
artworks in Lala Rukh

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Laura Aguilar, Clothed/Unclothed #14  1991

Clothed/Unclothed #14 shows the academic Luz Calvo, first in jeans and shirt, and then naked with a sticker across their genitals stating ‘FUCK YOUR GENDER. QUEER NATION’. Queer Nation is an LGBTQIA activist organisation founded in 1990 in New York City, known for its confrontational tactics and slogans giving visibility to people identifying as queer. ‘Fuck your gender’ works both as a rallying cry against traditional gender roles and as a playful invitation to engage in queer encounters.

Gallery label, November 2022

12/13
artworks in Lala Rukh

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Lynn Hershman Leeson, Roberta’s Body Language Chart  1978; printed 2009

In Roberta’s Body Language Chart, Leeson’s alter ego, Roberta Breitmore is photographed during a real psychiatric session. The annotations interpret her gestures and postures. Leeson carefully constructed Roberta’s character: ‘She had a different background. She was younger than I was. She went to therapy because she was broke and lonely and kept having negative experiences.’ Eventually Roberta began to blur the lines between performance, alter ego, and the artist’s everyday life: ‘In fact, she’s more real than I am, because I couldn’t get credit cards, and I couldn’t get other artifacts of life and the records that she easily acquired. So for me, it was kind of just living her life.’

Gallery label, November 2022

13/13
artworks in Lala Rukh

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Art in this room

T13026: Check
Lynn Hershman Leeson Check 1974
L04392: Clothed/Unclothed #4
Laura Aguilar Clothed/Unclothed #4 1990
L04394: Clothed/Unclothed #28
Laura Aguilar Clothed/Unclothed #28 1994
L04389: Clothed/Unclothed #24
Laura Aguilar Clothed/Unclothed #24 1991
L04395: Clothed/Unclothed #30
Laura Aguilar Clothed/Unclothed #30 1994
L04396: Clothed/Unclothed #34
Laura Aguilar Clothed/Unclothed #34 1994
P20339: Roberta Construction Chart #1
Lynn Hershman Leeson Roberta Construction Chart #1 1975, printed 2009
P20341: Untitled (Roberta’s Signature in Guest Book)
Lynn Hershman Leeson Untitled (Roberta’s Signature in Guest Book) 1975

Sorry, no image available

Lynn Hershman Leeson Lay Off & Leave Me Alone 1976; printed 1978
P79233: Action Pants: Genital Panic
VALIE EXPORT Action Pants: Genital Panic 1969
P80411: Libido Uprising Part I and Part II
Jo Spence, with Rosy Martin, with David Roberts Libido Uprising Part I and Part II 1989
L04393: Clothed/Unclothed #14
Laura Aguilar Clothed/Unclothed #14 1991
P20340: Roberta’s Body Language Chart
Lynn Hershman Leeson Roberta’s Body Language Chart 1978; printed 2009

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