Anjali Pyndiah

2011-12-05T22:37:00.000-08:00

Revamping the Folk museum of Indian Immigration

Digitising the museum’s archives – making research information, photographs, videos and recordings accessible to the museum visitor

Creating user friendly multimedia applications to reach a younger audience

Creating an edutained environment for easy learning

Creating more interest in museums objects by allowing interaction via touch screens

Multimedia Application on Popular Cults & festivals in Mauritius

Multimedia Application on Places of origins of Indentures Labourers

Audio Application on Folk Tales and songs in Bhojpuri

2011-12-05T00:28:00.000-08:00

The Construction of inter-cultural identities

Mauritian Creole and the Arts in Post Colonial Mauritius

International Conference on Contemporary Mauritius

Gitanjali Pyndiah

Abstract

In his book, L’interculturel ou la guerre, Issa Asgarally advocates a philosophy of interculturalism as opposed to multiculturalism to achieve more corporation and peace amongst nations. He also believes that in Mauritius, besides literature, the arts and the process of creolisation both have the potential of creating bridges between cultures to promote ‘diversity in unity’ and not ‘unity in diversity’. The paper illustrates the differences between multiculturalism and cross culturalism and the related concept of interculturalism. Through a critical analysis of the evolution of the arts since pre Independence and its relation to MC, this paper also attempts to show why a creative arts scene in post colonial nations like Mauritius is important to create an alternate point of view to Government’s policies of multiculturalism. The works analysed in the paper relate to the visual arts in particular. The parallel phenomenon occurred/occurring in relation to theatre and new media is also critical to the understanding of MC in the arts. The concept of hybridity by Bhabha and creolisation are also explored as frameworks for understanding the evolution of the arts in Mauritius.

Keywords

Interculturalism . cross cultural . morisien . Mauritian creole . visual arts . theatre . media . multiculturalism

Introduction

Issa Asgarally uses the terminology ‘interculturel’ in French to refer to a new way of perceiving and living within different cultures which can be achieved by analysing historical events and causes of conflicts and establishing identities which are not solely based on one factor such as race, class, religion, gender, etc. In English, the term ‘cross cultural’ is mostly used to define something which covers more than one culture and to make the difference with ‘multicultural’ which literally means multiple cultures and politically refers to the acceptance and promotion of multiple cultures. In this paper, the terminology ‘intercultural’ will be used to imply interaction (Fries 2002) and the acknowledgement of cultural differences (Bhabha 1988) and to stay as close to Asgarally’s literal translation of his definition of what is ‘l’interculturel’.

“… une nouvelle manière de concevoir l’identité, de transcender le multiculturalisme, de promouvoir le véritable échange entre les cultures, de penser et de formuler les expériences historiques ”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared that multiculturalism, or Multikulti, ‘has failed totally’. 'Multiculturalism is dead', was the headline in Britain's Daily Mail on 7^th July 2006, the first anniversary of the London bombings. Multiculturalism in western politics refers to policies and strategies adopted to govern or manage the problems of diversity (Hall 2000). Historically, support for policies of multiculturalism reflected the human rights revolution (Wessendorf 2010) after the atrocities of World War II and while ideologically it aims to promote multicultural inclusion, there are now much debates amongst state officials, academics and social activists around the fact that multiculturalism divides communities and people into separate categories—as Black, as Asians, as Chicanos (Lowe 1991).

In a postcolonial context, multiculturalism is a western construct inherited by colonial politics and adopted to ensure political representation of each ethnic group brought together by colonisation. Leaders and policy makers in Mauritius adapted concepts of multiculturalism to the local context around Independence by ensuring that the constitution protects members of each ethnic group from discrimination and prejudice and allows for freedom to choose its religion and language. While some multicultural societies have either eliminated minority groups or assimilate the minority groups with the majorities by suppressing language and culture, Mauritius has tried to put each ethnic and religious group on an equal legal footing.

However, debates around the concepts of multiculturalism goes back to the1980’s (Verma 1989) in European countries. “Over the years the term 'multiculturalism' has come to reference a diffuse indeed maddeningly spongy and imprecise, discursive field: a train of false tails and misleading universals. Its references are a wild variety of political strategies”, Stuart Hall observes (2001). According to Vertovec and Wessendorf (2010), Multiculturalism as a fixed ideology stifles debate and denies problems, fosters separateness and provides a haven for terrorists.

This paper is not about the history of multiculturalism in political or literary fields, nor about the various definitions given and measures taken by different countries in the name of multiculturalism but about understanding the concepts of interculturalism which attempts to reconstruct concepts around identity, culture and difference. Based on this tendency, this paper aims at demonstrating how the arts and its development through the evolution of Mauritian Creole has been producing an alternate point of view to the notions of multiculturalism since Independence and is following the trend of Asgarally’s ‘interculturalism’.

Interculturalism

“L’interculturel consiste à privilégier l’unité fondamentale des hommes et des femmes en tant qu’êtres humains avant d’explorer leur différence incontournable. Le multiculturalisme est la démarche inverse. On privilégie la différence pour ensuite appeler à l’unité – souvent introuvable – d’où le slogan ‘unité dans la diversité” (Asgarally 2009).

Issa Asgarally firmly believes that if we continue to promote concepts of multiculturalism via our system of education we will face other social conflicts such as the riots of 1999 around Kaya’s death. Interculturalism is an intellectual revolution which should be transposed on the politics of the world as well. Any intercultural exchange implies recognizing someone as a unique identity and not identified to a group whether social, religious, geographic or any other (Asgarally 2009).

Before attempting to construct intercultural identities, the concept of hybridity as denoted by Bhabha allows us to understand why identities are not fixed and move within an in-between state in post colonial nations.

“The social articulation of difference, from the minority perspective, is a complex, on-going negotiation that seeks to authorize cultural hybridities that emerge in moments of historical transformation... The borderline engagements of cultural difference may as often be consensual as conflictual; they may confound our definitions of tradition and modernity” (Bhabha 1994)

Bhabha doesn’t see culture as static and when cultures confront each other the liminal space which is created on the edges of the overlapping cultures create possibilities “of a cultural hybridity that entertains difference without an assumed or imposed hierarchy”. According to Bhabha, identity, culture, and differences never come in pure and homogeneous forms but moves in an ‘in-between’ space between tradition and modernity, between ancestral and colonial cultures and in the case of Mauritius between the various cultures superimposed on each other. Based on the notion of identities born and constantly changing in post colonial spaces where multiple cultures cohabit, one physical element was born out of these new emerging and merging identities; Mauritian Creole. Creoles are natural languages developed by the mixture of other languages and are forms of hybridity, as used by Bhabha.

Language

There is extraordinary power in the possession of a language” (Fanon 1967)

Frantz Fanon, French philosopher, known as a radical existential humanist, was passionate about the issue of decolonisation. He believed that decolonisation takes place with the independence of language and culture. In Black Skin, White Masks (1967), Fanon puts emphasis on the close relationship between language and decolonisation. According to him, speaking the language of the colonial culture implies rejecting one’s culture and blindly adopting the culture of the coloniser. Fanon (1967) states that “the colonized is elevated above his jungle status in proportion to his adoption of the mother country's cultural standards”.

“To speak means to be in a position to use a certain syntax, to grasp the morphology of this or that language, but it means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization ... A man who possess a language possess as an indirect consequence the world expressed and implied by this language” (Fanon 1967)

Although Fanon refers to the binary between black and white, the notion of valuing creole as a language of a hybrid culture is similar to the case of Mauritius.

‘We Mauritians have something in common. It is a very useful tool for the creation of a nation. It can release the feelings of loyalty, self-respect and complete participation, It is the Creole which we speak.” (Virahsawmy 1967)

A politics of cultural protest can be traced back to 1967 with linguist, Dev Virahsawmy’s insistence on the importance of an autonomous language, the Mauritian Creole in achieving national cohesion, cultural and political liberation. We can say that the setting up of a plantation economy which exploited the slave trade to acquire labour from Africa and Madagascar gave birth to Mauritian Creole. When the British took over, and after the abolition of slavery, another form of colonial exploitation brought about half a million of workers from different parts of India and a small contingent from China. According to linguist Virahsawmy, the mixture of cultures and languages in the Mauritian context brought certain characteristics to MC which differentiates it from other creoles.

Virahsawmy and Fanon form part of the first generation of writers after the wave of colonisation who speaks in a language of resistance inspired by theories of post coloniality. Virahsawmy’s plight to give more value to the creole language is unfortunately not shared by other academics and by a section of the population. The taboo around Creole is not a unique phenomenon to Mauritius and recurs in other post colonial nations in the process of creolisation.

‘The middle class of the Antilles never speak Creole except to their servants. In school the children of Martinique are taught to scorn the dialect. One avoids Creolisms. Some families completely forbid the use of Creole, and mothers ridicule their children for using it’ (Fanon 1967).

In Mauritius the same phenomenon recurs even among intellectuals who still see MC as a ‘low’ (Fergusson 1959) language. Mooneeram (2009) explains that MC and French have been in a diglossic relation since the early eighteenth century.

Diglossia is described by Charles Fergusson (1959) as the linguistic situation of a community where two or more varieties of the same language are of unequal status with a high and a low variety. A stable diglossia seems to coincide with the colonial order when a European language, the high variety is used in official and political fields and when the language of lower prestige, the low variety, is left to casual everyday conversation and popular songs intended for light entertainment, a situation which initiates and perpetuates prejudice against the low language” (Mooneeram 2009)

Mooneeram acknowledges that creole languages “lack the bulk of historiographic documentation devoted to European and other established literary languages” but stresses on the history of the language over 200 years of slavery, resistance to the coloniser’s culture and the creation of a new language which reinvents traditions and customs therefore achieving an identity not prescribed by the coloniser. This process of creolisation which the entire world is presently experiencing and which cannot be stopped, according to Glissant (1998), is the point of contact between cultures in a specific location which do not only produce a hybrid culture but an unpredictable outcome. This revealing outcome is still in a transition and Glissant believes that nations which are experiencing the process of creolisation have the potential of being models of peace and unity by avoiding policies of multiculturalism.

“…le multiculturalisme est une manière commode d’évacuer les problèmes. On dit : c’est multiculturel donc, c’est très bien. Mais c’est faux, car le phénomène d’interchange n’existe pas encore. Cela ne fonctionne que dans un seul sens : il n’y a pas d’interpénétration” (Glissant 1998)

We can hear Glissant’s echos in Asgarally.

“ la creolité n’est pas l’interculturel. Pas encore. Mais elle peut y mener. .. Le monde dans sa diversité et sa richesse doit se retrouver dans la creolité” (Asgarally 2009)

In Mauritius, we detect two occurrences in opposition to Government policies of multiculturalism after Independence. The direction of language development through the evolution of MC and the Arts through theatre and then later visual arts were moving towards a philosophy of interculturalism.

The arts in Mauritius

On this earth of ours where everything is subject to the passing of time one thing only is both subject of time and yet victorious over it: the work of art. (Malraux 1977)

The arts, a subdivision of culture, encompasses artistic pursuits that express and communicate through visual arts, literary arts and the performing arts among others. A study of the History of Western Art takes us back to the first forms of cave paintings around 32000 years ago. While the history of Mauritius, since the discovery of the island by the Arabs, is only about 500 years, the first piece of drawing in relation to the island of Mauritius goes back to probably the first illustration of a map of Mauritius drawn by the Dutch around 1695 which gives Mauritius a geographical entity on the world map.

In order to truly discuss about the arts in Mauritius, we have to refer to the sega which is the first form of expression born in Mauritius, amongst the descendants of African slaves under French occupation.

“As far back as 1768, travellers to Mauritius were bringing back tales of slaves' singing and dancing which seemed to their entranced eyes so different and special” (Bernadin de St Pierre)

If we refer to Mooneeram’s diglossic relation between French and MC we can understand that MC, within folklore songs shared amongst the community of slaves and then later used orally as a dialect to communicate with Indians and Chinese immigrants, didn’t derive much attention. After a century and a half of British rule, MC was the mother tongue of a majority of Mauritians and ‘acquired a supra ethnic role long before Independence’ (Mooneeram 2009) by being a lingua franca between all ethnic groups of the island and replacing Bhojpuri among Indians.

Flourishing in parallel to the sega which comprised of dance, music and oral texts in Mauritian Creole, was the development of theatrical plays as early as 1753 in the French tradition to entertain the Francophone social elite (Chelin 1954). Theatre was very popular in Isle de France and in 1754, Jean Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier, Governor–General of the island, erected the first ‘salle de spectacle’ (Benoit 1994). This paper aims at pinpointing the relevance of MC in the evolution of the arts since colonial times and its importance in defining what could build Mauritian identities though the arts in the future. Theatre remained in the realm of the French elite until the early 1900. During the war, there were fewer subsidies for groups of performing artists from Europe to come to the island. For practically four years, the inhabitants of the island were deprived of artistic activities. Parallel to this, a lack of enthusiasm for theatre was felt on the part of other ethnic group with the worker of African descents preferring music to theatre, Asians cinema and part of the French community opting for other activities like swimming or outings at the sea (Benoit 1994). In the years following the war, the French theatre would slowly lose its exclusivity at the theatre of Port Louis. In 1917, The Mauritius Hindoo Modern Dramatic Troupe played Harry Chandr at the Port-Louis Theatre. The rise of Mauritian performing artists like Max Moutia marks a new beginning in the history of theatre in Mauritius. Benoit (1994) recalls by 1922 a ‘certain change in the time’ when theatre in the French tradition used to be the entertainment of the elite French descendants.

“ On n’étaient pas rassasié de théâtre, mais un certain changement était tout a coup survenu …Il y avait eu évolution ..On allait encore au théâtre mais dans l’atmosphère on sentait la différence” (Benoit 1994)

Under British rule, in 1932, the creation of Mauritius Dramatic Club performing English plays did not revive theatre in Mauritius. Theatre in English and French was not longer responding to the requirements of the majority.

While the sega developed in parallel with the Creole language as a subconscious way of resistance during colonial times, it is only in the 1960’s that a consciousness is felt and voiced out amongst a young generation of students, among others HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dev_Virahsawmy" \o "Dev Virahsawmy" Dev Virahsawmy, Jooneed Jeeroburkhan, Tirat Ramkisoon, Krishen Matis, Ah-Ken Wong, Kreeti Goburdhun, Vella Vengaroo who created the Club of Students to debate on all ideological topics including politics and culture (MMM 2009). The need for political freedom was expressed in the movement for cultural freedom by artists, writers and intellectuals. The sega developed into the ‘sega engazé’ (commited song) with the very first santé engazé believed to be ‘Montagne Bertlo’ written and composed by Jooneed Jeeroburkhan in 1969 in Mauritius.

While the sega was born and developed in Creole, theatre as a form of artistic activity was initially inherited by French colonials but evolved around the same time of the santé engazé into the theatre of protest (Mooneeram 2009) born out of plays written in MC by post independence Mauritian writers. There is a similar phenomenon occurring amidst the movement for cultural freedom in the visual arts which reaches its apogee with the arts being democratized amongst intellectuals and visual artists out of the arena of the French cultural elite.

In theatre, playwrights who were fluent in both English and French decided to write in MC to use their mother tongue as dramatic language to voice out their anti colonial sentiment. Azize Asgarally, Dev Virahsawmy and Henri Favory were experiencing with the linguistic and aesthetic potential of MC and remained the most influential playwrights of the post colonial period. Their plays were reaching a wide audience in Mauritius, irrespective of class.

The visual Arts in Mauritius

This paper is about contemporary visual arts and the cultural implication of a flourishing arts sector in a country. To understand the critical relevance of the visual arts we have to refer to the time when art history within western perspective in the 19^th century became a discipline that involves understanding context, form and social significance. Although until 1900, the history of art covered aspects of Western Art as central to the meaning of Art, the shift in the ‘first universal world of art’ as Malraux (1978) calls it, recognises art made by other cultures. For Malraux, art – whether visual art, literature or music – is much more than a locus of beauty or a source of “aesthetic pleasure”; it is one of the ways humanity defends itself against its fundamental sense of meaninglessness – one of the ways the “human adventure” is affirmed (Derek 2009). As from then on, with art theory derived from vast disciplinary fields, study of both occidental and oriental aesthetics and philosophy of art, the analysis of art objects become critical to art practice. Reference to museum studies and curatorial practice has to be made to understand the multidisciplinary aspect of the visual arts.

In Mauritius, just like theatre, visual artists before Independence were initially illustrators like Milbert who were draftsmen interested in the fauna, flora and exotism of people in Mauritius, then painters and sculptors capturing the landscape of the island and exhibiting mainly for a Franco-Mauritian audience and member of the bourgeoisie. The intellectual revolution around Independence is felt in the visual arts with two main protagonists Firoz Ghanty and Ismet Ganti, self taught visual artists who initiated the Groupe 1 to contest the conventional modes of representation and thematic of the visual arts of the time. The Groupe 1, which consisted of Yacoob Patel, Shah Nawaz Bucktowar, Dev Soobrayen, Remy D’argent and Rosa Henry as well, aimed at bringing a more critical art practice to the public. The philosophy behind the Groupe 1 is sometimes recurrent in the brothers’ contemporary works. The brothers analysis of the state of the arts in 2004 published in the weekly newspaper Weekend reveals their commitment of the cause of the arts in Mauritius. Amidst the cultural movement occurring around Independence in the literary fields, theatre and the visual arts is born the will to create a Mauritian identity, what is called ‘mauricianisme’ now. The Ghanty borthers make an interesting point in noting that two forms of ‘mauricianisme’ were running parallel. While the new Government made up of Mauritian intellectuals were preparing Mauritius for Independence and were thus working towards giving equal power to the different ethnic groups upon a multicultural philosophy, artists and intellectuals were opposing this new direction and were envisaging a new nation which could be built upon features which could unite people as Mauritian and not divide them. The plight of these intellectuals to raise Mauritian Creole to a language for all, recognising that it should remain the ancestral language of African descendants is justified when we see that the language is now spoken by more than 80% of the population and is integrated in mainstream media.

50 years after Independence, many artists and intellectuals are still involved in creating the form of intercultural nation which Issa Asgarally strongly believes in. This paper is an attempt at dissecting the works of a particular contemporary visual artist Nirmal Hurry who was born around the cultural upheaval of Independence and who received an academic education in the visual arts within both Indian and western tradition and who is on a quest to deconstruct the ideologies around multicultural Mauritius. The process of decolonisation takes place within artists/ intellectuals’ plight for affirming their identity/ identities and creates the path to a constructive phase of post colonial thought.

Hurry

‘… la nature de l’arc en ciel est d’être éphémère’ Asgarally (2009)

Hurry’s philosophy is inline upon Asgarally’s reflection of the ‘rainbow nation’ slogan which is so popular on our tourist brochures. What is particular with Hurry is his insistence to bring voice to his artworks via MC. We can recognise Hurry’s works by the poetic pieces which complement his installations. Hurry seems to purposefully experiment with language and observe the reaction and understanding of his audience. He strives to use the creole 'd'antan', fully aware that certain expressions and words are not fully understood by the contemporary art connoisseurs. As early as 1988 the urge to give meaning to his works via the use of Mauritian Creole (MC) was felt. 'Reveni', meaning ‘coastguards’ was a title given to one of his earlier sculptural birds, standing stiff and imposing or “Mone gagne 40”, with its double meaning: 'I'm fed up'. Hurry’s search for a 'purity' of use of Creole, the language born out of the melting pot of cultures brought together with colonial rule, brings him to delve into his past to break away from the ‘urban’ Creole which he believes has lost its essence with an unnatural bourgeoisie’s enunciation (“Mo pe viens la” for instance). When asked why he started writing in Creole, he simply replied that he feared the degeneration of the language and therefore took on a subconscious mission to preserve it. Hurry makes a very interesting point on the fact that he doesn't write grammatically correct MC because he studied French grammar at school. His texts are written to be heard as short theatrical pieces, not read and analysed as poetry. Nirmal Hurry’s sensitivity to language is understandable when he recounts his various experiences and observations of the changing aspects of Creole throughout the historical and cultural landscape of post colonial Mauritius. He, very clearly, remembers his school days when he would be encouraged to speak in Creole despite the fact that his immediate family were Bhojpuri speaking. Creole was the language of the future, of descendants of Indian immigrants who would help shape Mauritian politics. Hurry’s childhood and adolescence, bathed in the music of carefree rural family life, is transposed over his early works of magical poetic birds all made of found objects which belonged to the life of others before, which he infused new meaning to. Hurry’s early works were like ‘visual poetry’ where the artist is more involved in form and material to attain some level of sculptural perfection. The organic and natural feel of his birds denotes a bygone time of innocence and freedom. Although the initial works carried the romantic gaze of the artist, ‘En ba la mer, en ba dilo’ ... , experimentation with MC would soon allow Hurry to engage with his community and develop a more critical practice.

When texts become the voice of the artwork

What brought a change in Hurry’s art practice? What provoked an engagement with Mauritian politics? Hurry, over the years from his experience in France at L’Ecole des Beaux Arts (1983 - 1988) to his years of study at the Jamma Millia Islamia (1996-1998), New Delhi, has moved his poetic gaze to a more political engagement with his country. ‘Maladie Sociale’ a piece of work started in his last year of study in India illustrates the dialogue which Hurry starts to establish with the local audience. It becomes important for the artist to impart a social message to his work and the language used here is fundamental. Hurry writes in Mauritian Creole. Although Hurry connects with his audience on two complementary levels – visual and written, he capitalizes on MC to write poems and texts which are, since 1998, crucial elements to his art works.

While the visual arts usually incite less visibility than theatre for instance, the natural propensity of certain visual artists such as Hurry to give meaning to their works via the medium of language reinforces the notion of a strong sense of ‘mauricianisme’ felt by the community of artists in Mauritius. While linguists, writers and other social groups have been and are still working towards the valorisation and standardization of Mauritian Creole, in the visual arts, we notice a fervour on the parts of certain post-Independence artists to intentionally use MC as their medium of expression. Although Hurry insists that his use of MC does not contest the use of inherited colonial languages which is English and French in the Mauritian context, he is conscious that Creole helps him affirm his identity in a young post colonial nation still in the making. In the Visual Arts the use of texts in MC - either in texts as integral part of the work or in the forms of poetry, title or caption complementing the work, have been used by other post colonial artists before Hurry. These visual artists believe that art should trespass the elitist framework where it usually evolves and, expression in MC, once a dialect with no literary recognition, affirms that anti-colonial stance. Ismet and Firoz although not persistent in their use of Creole in their works like Hurry, explore other areas of representation of what consists Mauritian society.

A few of Hurry’s poetic pieces will be discussed in this paper to demonstrate his philosophy of denunciation and his attempt at making his audience inspire to an intercultural society. First and foremost, reference has to be made to the particular installation which was rejected by the Salon D'Ete, annual group exhibition organised by the National Art Gallery, for the poignant text which was part of the installation. The work was actually accepted with the condition that the text is not displayed at the Exhibition. The post colonial text becomes an instrument of political resistance and denunciation which reconstructs the reality of Mauritian art politics in people’s collective minds. The text denounces the frustration of artists who deplore the lack of consistent policy making in the Arts in Mauritius. The sarcasm in his tone in pinpointing the unstructured art strategies implemented after Independence is tangible. The local expression ‘lighting a red candle’ refers to an endless wait, as is the case of artists whose fate depends on strategies put in place and obliterated every five years by the political party in power.

‘Laisse moi raconte ene ti zistoire

Avant ki li asoir

Pou pas perdi l’espoir

Mone senti grandi depuis 68

Ti dir moi no 18 fer moi vinn adilte

Mo rever ena piti

Enefois li ti ene zoli tifi

Ti pou apelle li Gallerie

Fine perdi li akoz l’anemie

Enefois liti ene bon zenfant

Ti pou mette so nom Permanent

…

Mo pé perdi mo kiltir

Mo pé perdi mo natir

Mo pé perdi mo lamer

Mo pé perdi mo later

Tou pé perdi, mo bien peur

….dans la ville des fleurs.

In ‘Trapped in the Rainbow nation’, Hurry narrates the fate of those, like himself, who refuse to be designated by their ancestors’ origins or ethnicity. According to Hurry, the rainbow nation as exploited for the tourism industry prevents the search for a true Mauritian identity. His writing infused in humour is a plea to discard the superficial garb of hypocrisy and communalism and urges for the construction of a Mauritian identity which overlooks race, creed or religion of the different communities co-habiting in Mauritius.

‘Li qui pena Cente Kiltirel,

Li qui pas fine grimpe montagne le Morne,

Li qui pas fine monte peron Apravasi Ghat,

Li qui boute ine garder pou li ?

…

Moi qui pas sorti l’Afrique

Moi qui pas sorti l’Europe

Moi qui pas sorti l’Inde

Moi qui sorti la Chine

Eh moi qui sorti dans vente mo mama – mo pas mauricien moi ?

(Hurry 2011)

Hurry truly follows the first wave of post colonial writers and poets such as Fanon in his resistance to what we inherited and are still disseminating from colonial cultures. His different way of perceiving the world still makes other visual artists and part of the local audience uncomfortable. We may wonder why our cultural scene is not as critically engaged as in other post colonial creolophone nations which are as isolated, insular and small as Mauritius. We can at least find comfort in those artists and intellectuals who are voicing out via their literary and visual artworks.

Asgarally states that it is actually in the fields of the arts that we can find many examples of interculturalism. In reference to multiculturalism, he states:

‘Une telle perspective renferme, on le voit, les sens anthropologique et esthétique de la culture, c’est-à-dire, d’une part, l’ensemble des coutumes, des modes de vie d’un peuple, d’autre part, la peinture, la sculpture, la musique, la danse, le théâtre, la littérature, l’histoire.’

Although Asgarally was mainly referring to the influence of multiple exotic cultures in European paintings sculptures and music and the reverse situation of new colonised cultures under the influence of colonial modes and techniques of representation, he genuinely meant that the movement in the arts since colonial times was an intercultural exchange ‘sous le signe du partage et du respect’. Hurry is among those visual artists who denounce policies of multiculturalism in his works and who question, without being able to always find practical solutions, the reason why the leaders of Mauritius cannot see beyond their philosophy of multiculturalism.

The phenomenon of using Creole in mainstream media and advertising, to impart messages and not to theorise upon giving more respect to Creole as the ancestral language of African descents, is important as it shows a change in the perception of the younger generation. An observation of local chatrooms, social networks, SMS messages denotes a natural propensity to write in Creole. Many people aged 20-35, born outside of Mauritius of parents of different nationalities or cultures who are very fluent in English and French are establishing websites, blogs on Mauritian culture to display their identities which are not related to ancestral language or tradition. Advertising is also playing a role in shaping a Mauritian culture which deconstruct the exotic point of view of selling Mauritius to the outside world. The use of MC is now a familiar phenomenon on our billboards, posters and other items of advertising. The use of MC is critical in reversing the coin of multiculturalism which is in fact placing cultures in compartments. Like Issa Asgarally states, we shouldn’t aim at unity in diversity but ‘diversity in unity’. The lobby should be more proactive. It is not about respecting differences but delving into those differences and understanding that those differences make up each one of us. The notion of hybridity (Bhabha 1994) in a global world makes us all hybrids with certain characteristics which makes each one of us unique based upon the multiple differences which make each one of us.

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Malraux, A 1977, Promenades imaginaires dans Florence, TV programme in series entitled ‘Journal de voyage avec Andre Malraux: A la recherché des arts du monde entier’, TFI, 12 April

Malraux A, 1998

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Mooneeram, R 2009, From Creole to Standard: Shakespeare, Language, and Literature in a Postcolonial Context, Rodopi Bv Editions, UK

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Ramduth, H 2007, Art in Mauritius post Independence issues and perspectives, School of Fine Arts, MGI, Mauritius

Ramharai, La literature mauricienne d’expression creole, no. 100

Verma , GK 1989, Education for All: A Landmark in Pluralism, Routledge, London

Virahsawmy, D 1967. ‘Insularity and all that’, Lexpress 5 october

Wessendorf & Vertovec (eds) 2010, Backlash against Multiculturalism? European discourses, policies and practices, Routledge, London, New York

Project coordinator - The book project in kreol

2011-11-25T02:34:00.000-08:00

initiating a project that could stimulate and involve the patients at different levels. understanding the potential of each person ... inline with the therapy

establishing the themes of the book around the Dodo, evolution, conservation, history of the island before human invasion

coordinate art workshops around illustrations needed for the book and participating to story-writing at Friends In hope - once a week

Translation of texts in kreol

Design of Book layout and montage

Cover design

monitoring with printing press

Friends in Hope - Association for the support of people with psychiatric disorders

www.friendsinhope.com

Book cover

Some Inside pages

Book cover

2011-11-25T02:07:00.001-08:00

Behind the Purple Curtain - A political Autobiography

Logo Design

2011-11-25T01:50:00.001-08:00

Pyramid BPO centre

Art Exhibition Review & Catalogue

2010-07-20T13:13:00.000-07:00

Text

the commemoration

This exhibition of contemporary art, made possible by the collaborative efforts of the National Art Gallery and the School of Fine Arts (Mahatma Gandhi Institute) regroups 20 visual artists and 8 art students. Drawn from the works made during a two-week artists’ workshop at the MGI School of Fine Arts, this exhibition aims at presenting the different visual sensibilities

which can emerge from a single theme, here the commemoration of the naval battle of Grand Port in August 1810. In Mauritius, we have a relatively small visual art scene and a workshop creates the ideal space to regroup artists under one roof for several consecutive days of interaction. The creative dynamics which surfaced from this exchange has given rise to this exhibition.

Throughout the workshop we have noticed different lines of thought taking shape and we have, for the purpose of a more interesting reading of this catalogue, divided the exhibition into 3 sections: the commemoration, the questioning and the subversion. These sections do not have finite boundaries as we realised that the thoughts behind the artworks in each individual section often overlapped with the others. The idea was to give a more critical approach to this thematic exhibition and allow the audience to get a glimpse of the richness of contemporary art practice.

The theme explored in the first section, the commemoration, brings us to the core of the event, the commemoration of the bicentenary (1810-2010) of the battle of Grand Port. This workshop forms part of various other activities organised for the celebration; the re-construction of the small village of Old Grand Port during the French era or a new museum retracing the different periods of colonial Dutch, French and English rule. Geeta Mohit Pursun, Malika Dhurn Teeluck, Manoj Auckel, Runveer Rawoo, James Castel and Vick Shibdoyal are among the artists whose narrative pieces allow us to dive into our colonial past and visualise the naval battle between the French and the English on those nights of August 1810 in Grand Port. While Malika transmits a positive attitude to the colonial system which has brought people of different origins together on an island like Mauritius and which has now given shape to a multicultural society, Manoj,

inspired by a quote of late Jean Paul II, would prefer to see human wars as past occurrences which ‘find no place on humanity's agenda for the future.’

the questioning

Why do we celebrate wars? Why do we think we can solve conflicts through wars? Why are there so much greed, violence and thirst for power and territory? Why? Why?

“Questions as large as these cannot be answered. One might even say that they should not be answered; the questions are more productive as they open up lines of inquiry” Where in the world, Kavita Singh, Associate Professor, JNU, New Delhi

The workshop created a platform for the exchange of ideas and allowed for discussions on the significance of the event. Many questions were raised and certain artists found their moment of creativity in a turmoil of unanswered questions while others evoked certain social and political realities which were hard to comprehend, least find answers for. This section regroups those artists who felt the need to venture out of more conventional modes of representation. Within Kavita Singh’s line of thought, the artwork has the potential to create a dialogue with its audience as well as with the artworld. It establishes an almost direct interaction with the viewer/ reader and allows other interpretations to be formulated. Neermala Luckeenarain, Parmessur Dausoa and Kessavadee de Portzamparc put emphasis on the impact that the battle had on the lives of the people. They do not portray the victory after the battle but the silence of the night after the killing, the stains of blood on the wounded and the dead, and the shattered lives of those left to pick up the pieces in the aftermath of the war. Gerard Foy in ‘Traces’ is also disheartened by what colonial wars have left on our collective memories. The traces of the past are indelible.

Varsha Rambarassah, Sultana Haukim, Jayah Bucktowar-Soobul and Nalini Gopaul were inspired to tackle deeper issues around the theme of the exhibition. Jayah evokes, in her text, the power relationships between the conquered and the conceded while Nalini, Sultana and Varsha symbolically use the colours of the English and French flags in their installations/ canvases to depict the aggressivity of the war which took place in Grand Port, the greed for power and colonial dominance.

An eternal pondering over the imperfections of humanity!!

the subversion

“... nothing is more closely linked to history than an act of subversion”

Bourdieu

We realised that certain artworks produced during this workshop allowed for a more radical approach. The artists concerned in this section condemn the commemoration of an event which was celebrated 200 years ago by colonial rulers. A war, a battle cannot be celebrated, least by a nation colonised by those same colonial powers. Although fully aware of the central theme of the workshop, the artists, here were more attracted to the idea of denouncing, of provoking their audiences and their other fellow artists. Provocative artworks have been created since the 1920’s in Europe, under the Dadaist’s cultural movement which changed the way art was perceived, as beautiful decorative objects of contemplation.

Artists believe that their art/ anti-art are only a reflection of their society. Art produced for the sake of shocking very often get circulated in the global art networks. If we want to be part of the bigger international art landscape and create a dynamic and critical visual art scene in Mauritius, artists should not fear to be ‘outrageous’. Spurts of creative energy in any forms of art become possible when artists are given the space to express their most inner apprehensions and frustrations.

What is central to the lines of thought of artists in this last section is the political consciousness of their works. They purposefully produce artworks to provoke, although the works here are far from being called ‘outrageous’. Firoz Ghanty, Ismet Ganti, Krishna Luchoomun and Nirmal Hurry go beyond the battle of Grand Port and portray an antithetical approach to the commemoration of any wars. Krishna and Hurry both use Mauritian Creole to affirm their identity and denounce the absurdity of celebrating a colonial war. They make us ponder on how history is written to celebrate great victories and great battles in the winner’s perspective. Mauritius has yet to write its history within a collective point of view. Firoz goes further to call the commemoration a ‘non-event’ as he affirms that we, as an emerging nation out of a colonised past, have no reason to make a celebration over a battle which the French won over, what was only, a strategic plot of land. Ismet also believes that this battle didn’t change anything to the history of our country. The battle won by the English a few months later has more relevance as it marks our history in making Mauritius a British colony. Finally, Ismet’s vision of this battle as being potentially a theme for Mauritian folk stories rather than a historic event adds a grand dimension of eeriness and fantasy to it.

Gitanjali Pyndiah

August 2010

Artist's review - Nirmal Hurry

2010-07-07T10:54:00.000-07:00

Mo langaz, mo l'art engazer (When art becomes critical practice)

Nirmal Hurry

From poetic to politic ... journey of a visual artist in post colonial Mauritius

We’ve come to recognise Hurry’s works by the poetic pieces which complement his installations. Although Nirmal Hurry aims at creating a dialogue with the local person, his poems, very often coated with subtle irony are not always properly decoded by either the art community or the general public. Hurry seems to purposefully experiment with language and observe the reaction and understanding of his audience. He strives to use the creole 'd'antan', fully aware that certain expressions and words are not fully understood by the contemporary art connoisseurs. As early as 1988 the urge to give meaning to his works via the use of Mauritian Creole (MC) was felt. 'Reveni', meaning ‘coastguards’ was a title given to one of his earlier sculptural birds, standing stiff and imposing or “Mone gagne 40”, with its double meaning: 'I'm fed up'. Hurry’s search for a 'purity' of use of Creole, the language born out of the melting pot of cultures brought together with colonial rule, brings him to delve into his past to break away from the ‘urban’ Creole which he believes has lost its essence with an unnatural bourgeoisie’s enunciation (“Mo pe viens la” for instance). When asked why he started writing in Creole, he simply replied that he feared the degeneration of the language and therefore took on a subconscious mission to preserve it. Hurry makes a very interesting point on the fact that he doesn't write grammatically correct MC because he studied French grammar at school. His texts are written to be heard as short theatrical pieces, not read and analysed as poetry. Nirmal Hurry’s sensitivity to language is understandable when he recounts his various experiences and observations of the changing aspects of Creole throughout the historical and cultural landscape of post colonial Mauritius. He, very clearly, remembers his school days when he would be encouraged to speak in Creole despite the fact that his immediate family were Bhojpuri speaking. Creole was the language of the future, of descendants of Indian immigrants who would help shape Mauritian politics. Hurry’s childhood and adolescence, bathed in the music of carefree rural family life, is transposed over his early works of magical poetic birds all made of found objects which belonged to the life of others before, which he infused new meaning to. Hurry’s early works were like ‘visual poetry’ where the artist is more involved in form and material to attain some level of sculptural perfection. The organic and natural feel of his birds denotes a bygone time of innocence and freedom. Although the initial works carried the romantic gaze of the artist, ‘En ba la mer, en ba dilo’ ... , experimentation with MC would soon allow Hurry to engage with his community and develop a more critical practice.

When texts become the voice of the artwork

So do we ponder enough over the politics of language in Mauritius?

It’s important to understand the role that Mauritian Creole, which will hopefully simply be called Morisien, is playing in the cultural set up of Mauritius. In Mauritius, a politics of cultural protest can be traced back to 1967 with Dev Virahsawmy’s insistence on the importance of an autonomous language, the Mauritian Creole in achieving national cohesion, cultural and political liberation. He was convinced that MC was the only language which could translate the experiences of Mauritius for a ‘theatre of protest’, born out of plays written in MC by post independence Mauritian writers.

‘We Mauritians have something in common. It is a very useful tool for the creation of a nation. It can release the feelings of loyalty, self-respect and liberation. It is the Creole which we speak.’

While the visual arts usually incite less visibility than theatre for instance, the natural propensity of certain visual artists such as Hurry to give meaning to their works via the medium of language reinforces the notion of a strong sense of ‘mauricianisme’ felt by the community of artists in Mauritius. Linguists, writers and other social groups have been and are still working towards the valorisation and standardization of Mauritian Creole. In the visual arts, we notice a fervour on the parts of certain post-Independence artists to intentionally use MC as their medium of expression. Although Hurry insists that his use of MC does not contest the use of inherited colonial languages which is English and French in the Mauritian context, he is conscious that Creole helps him affirm his identity in a young post colonial nation still in the making. In the Visual Arts the use of texts in MC - either in texts as integral part of the work or in the forms of poetry, title or caption complementing the work, have been used by other post colonial artists before Hurry. These visual artists believe that art should trespass the elitist framework where it usually evolves and, expression in MC, once a dialect with no literary recognition, affirms that anti-colonial stance. The rejection of colonialist languages becomes central to the political and cultural struggle against remaining forms of Imperialism. The intentional use of writing in MC, language which is spoken by more than 80% of the Mauritian population instead of French or English, both inherited by colonial cultures, is itself a quest for a recognised Mauritian identity. Hurry’s works, after 1998, take on a social and political dimension. Aware of economic and social inequalities in post independent Mauritius, Hurry refuses to hide behind decorative arts.

He uses his installations and texts as voices of dislocated people in search of distinctiveness: “Mo la terre! Ki mo ne pli proprietaire!”. His quest compels him to develop a consistent style in his texts while his visual works are quite often complementing the texts than vice versa. We can even say that the fusion of sculptural works with satirical poems in MC has now become his trademark. His poems follow the tragicomedy genre where humour is purposely used to confuse the reader of the dramatic intent of the written work. Hurry also attempts to use rhythmic verses in his poems which help establish a dramatic tone and set the mood for the various themes of oppression which his works deal with.

“Dans zanfan nous ti rest dans camp

Divan aucap ti amene coup de vent

Quand pavillon lors station

Ena tension dans bitation …

At the same time black humour lightens the mood and eventually reminds us that other global preoccupations tend to put aside our internal struggles as individual nations. In ‘Caught in the Rainbow nation’, Hurry narrates the fate of those, like himself, who refuse to be designated by their ancestors’ origins or ethnicity. The rainbow nation as depicted by the media is but a trap, a web of neo-imperialism which prevents the search for a true Mauritian identity. His writing infused in humour is a plea to discard the superficial garb of hypocrisy and communalism and urges for the construction of a Mauritian identity which overlooks race, creed or religion of the different communities co-habiting in Mauritius. Decolonisation can only take place with the independence of language and culture and the plight of writers, intellectuals and artists who believe in the importance of MC in nation building seems totally justifiable. Upon this, reference has to be made to the particular installation of Nirmal Hurry which was rejected by the Salon D'Ete, annual group exhibition organised by the National Art Gallery, for the poignant text which was part of the installation. The work was actually accepted with the condition that the text is not displayed at the Exhibition. The post colonial text becomes an instrument of political resistance and denunciation which reconstructs the reality of Mauritian art politics in people’s collective minds. The text denounces the frustration of artists who deplore the lack of consistent policy making in the Arts in Mauritius. The sarcasm in his tone in pinpointing the unstructured art strategies implemented after Independence is tangible. The local expression ‘lighting a red candle’ refers to an endless wait, as is the case of artists whose fate depends on strategies put in place and obliterated every five years by the political party in power.

Mo pé perdi mo kiltir

Mo pé perdi mo natir

Mo pé perdi mo lamer

Mo pé perdi mo later

Tou pé perdi, mo bien peur

….dans la ville des fleurs.

Hurry induces us to laughter, to tears, to an eternal pondering...

Gitanjali Pyndiah

June 2010, Mauritius

Ties 2009 - International Workshop

2010-05-13T13:46:00.000-07:00

Video installation

Morphing identity

Endemism is defined as the ecological state of being unique to a particular geographic location. Seed colonisation from Africa and Asia and evolution into new species have given unique characteristics to the landscape of Mauritius. Certain seed dispersers mix within themselves and are thus common and in abundance. Other dispersers evolve separately from their original habitat, become endemic to the island and are found nowhere else in the world.

The world’s population is a scattering of seeds, a ‘diaspora’. What is ‘indian’? What is ‘mauritian’? What is ‘african’? A Belonging to fixed geographical locations witnessing the movement of people. Do we look at us or across us? Do we struggle to preserve old identities? Do we accept the comfort of discomfort of a cultural status quo promoted by political policies of multiculturalism? Or do we attempt to thrive in an intercultural space of multiple identities?

Website design

2009-10-05T10:19:00.000-07:00

http://www.maisoneureka.com

Book Cover

2009-05-18T06:47:00.000-07:00

Cover

http://www.amazon.com/Creole-Standard-Shakespeare-Literature-Postcolonial/dp/9042026235

Website Design - Insular Art

2009-05-13T06:13:00.000-07:00

Website design and development for artists of the Indian Ocean - pARTage and La Commission de L'Ocean Indien

http://www.artshost.org/partage/insular

Museum Project

2009-05-13T03:47:00.000-07:00

Interactive project for the Folk Museum of Indian Immigration on 'Agricultural Tools & Implements and its evolution'. This multimedia application was designed for the Museum to make information more accessible and more appealing in a visually interesting format. The aim is to convert cultural spaces into a dynamic area which invites interaction with its audience. The interactive application also allows for more mobility of museum exhibits as it can be viewed or projected in a different place via a computer.

This project constists of nearly 20 pages of texts, images, videos and interactivity and acts as a digital archive. The content includes detailed descriptions of agricultural tools brought to Mauritius during colonisation and covers the historical, economic and religious context in which these tools were used.

CDrom on Ecology

2009-05-13T03:45:00.000-07:00

Mauritian Forest - Where the old trees are!

Interactice CDrom with about 30 pages of texts, animation, pictures on the biogeography of Mauritius, the different forest types, history of human invasion and forest conservation.
The Cdrom still under development is conceived with the specific aim at creating awareness on the beauty of endemism, its uniqueness and the responsibility of each person to preserve the 2% endemic forests left and its animal species.

The team working behind the project believes that people should learn about the history of the Mauritian flora and fauna and understand the fragility of the island's eco-system. We also aim at introducing concepts like renewable energy, recycling, conservation and sincerely hope that people's outlook to their environment will be transformed positively.

pARTage Residence 2009

2009-05-13T03:41:00.000-07:00

Webpage on the three artists in residence 2009.

http://www.artshost.org/partage/residency2009.html

Duna

2009-05-13T03:09:00.000-07:00

Photography & Graphic Works for Duna, Shop specialised in designer accessories