This year, India and Pakistan are represented at the Venice Biennale for the first time. In an expression of solidarity, the two countries, often in conflict, installed projects under a single title, “My East is Your West,” and the same roof, Venice’s 17th-century Palazzo Benzon.
Here, we pass through the palazzo’s velvet-covered rooms to discover projects from Shilpa Gupta of India and Rashid Rana of Pakistan. Both exhibitions surface deep-seated issues of border geography, class struggle, and identity in a region mired in political controversy. Gupta’s focus is an extensive researched-based exploration of the border fence that separates India and Bangladesh.
In an ongoing performance, an actor writes on a long, scroll-like cloth that accumulates in a towering pile – its length represents a tiny fraction of the 3,400 kilometer barrier between the two countries. Rana offers a live video feed that connects a room in the palazzo to a small structure in Pakistan. Lahore locals and visitors to the Venice Biennale interact, erasing geographic boundaries and highlighting themes of globalization.
