These films pose questions about the passage of time, movement of people and marks made by historical events. Seemingly frozen in time, a naked and vulnerable middle-aged white man passively waits; but, for what? Sutapa Biswas subverts historical authoritarian archetypes and addresses colonial imbalances of power. Employing the solitary figure of a lone dancer to emphasise an otherwise empty landscape, Taus Makhacheva’s work comments on who and what is left behind in the aftermath of enforced movement of people as a result of military invasion; or, as in this case, annexation. Kiluanji Kia Henda’s film, meanwhile, features no people at all. Echoing with history and the failures of imperialism, it hints at transience and impermanence, the traces of people who have left and of those yet to arrive.
On view:
Sutapa Biswas
Untitled (The Trials and Tribulations of Mickey Baker) 1997, re–edited and re–mastered 2002
Video, colour
10 mins
Presented by Tate Members in 2013
T13978
Engaging with ideas of temporality, stillness, and the idea of ‘static film’, whereby film is used as a medium to capture the passage of time rather than movement, Untitled (The Trials and Tribulations of Mickey Baker) shows a nude man standing in a living room, gazing out of the window. Based on American painter Edward Hopper’s A Woman in the Sun c.1953, Biswas subverts dominant gender roles, by portraying a late middle-aged white male who is undressed and vulnerable, rather than a woman. In doing so she alters the traditional power-dynamic between artist and subject. Western art has a centuries-old tradition of fetishising and exoticising the bodies of women and people of colour, but here Biswas, herself a British-Indian woman, places a traditionally powerful figure, the middle-aged white male, within the gaze of the viewer.
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Taus Makhacheva
Gamsutl 2012
Video, high definition, colour and sound (stereo)
16mins 1sec
Presented by Elchin Safarov and Dilyara Allakhverdova 2014
T14216
Gamsutl is an abandoned settlement in the mountains of Dagestan, Russia, carved from the rocks surrounded by high cliffs to make it both self-sufficient and inaccessible to invaders. In the late 1950s, its residents began to be moved to collective farms, and today only one of them remains. Focusing on a lone figure, Makhacheva’s film presents a peculiar ritual of remembering and re-enacting the past of her home. Taking on various identities, the dancer’s movements reference the history of the town and the area, frequently taking his cues from his environment, making the cracks and angles of the rocks part of his actions. Recreating characters of the past, the performer adopts certain poses from Russian painter Franz Roubaud’s 19th century panoramic representations of the Caucasian War (1817–64), which resulted in Russia’s annexation of parts of the North Caucasus including Dagestan.
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Kiluanji Kia Henda
Concrete Affection – Zopo Lady 2014
Single channel video
12 minutes
Courtesy of the artist
Inspired by Ryszard Kapuściński’s 1976 book Another Day of Life, which documents the last days of Portuguese colonial rule in Angola, Kia Henda reflects on the effects that this time had on the city of Luanda and the country as a whole. Drawing in particular on the exodus of Portuguese people in 1975, and the subsequent arrival of many Angolans who were forced to move to the city from rural areas, Concrete Affection – Zopo Lady shows the deserted streets of the Angolan capital, imagining the interlude in this movement of people. The voice of an off-screen narrator can be heard as he runs through the empty streets and buildings trying to come to a decision on whether to remain in or leave the country. The absence of people, referencing the fate of those who are forced to migrate, creates an eerie, apocalyptic atmosphere as the voice states: ‘The city is being stripped of its memory. All that remains is its skeleton, the ground zero of history.’ In Kia Henda’s film, the city of Luanda becomes an empty vessel; one historical narrative has just ended, while the new one is waiting to be written.