The Museum of Fine Art’s “Megacities Asia” promises a back-and-forth dialogue with the social sciences, a productive means to distill Asia’s complex demographic and socioeconomic change into visceral, immediate structures. The exhibition also allows westerners an insight into the informal nature of space as it is developed in these megalopolises. In addition to viewing the exhibition itself, I was able to attend a panel discussion on urban change as it relates to the City of Boston, as part of the museum’s “City Talks” series of public lectures.
Moderated by the MFA’s Jen Mergel, this panel sought to shed light on how residents deal with change, attempting to figure out what exactly to do in cities that often seem like they’re made of clay, constructed and reconstructed a million times over. It was a valiant effort to link the lofty themes of “Megacities Asia’’ to everyday life and the nature of place in Boston. If the panel achieved anything, it definitely stirred the audience to consider how larger cultural narratives are built up by a series of individual stories, the aspirations of households and blocks, beyond more macro-level planning efforts. Panelists, affiliated with the Fenway Community Center, Northeastern University and Discover Roxbury discussed the nature of power structures as they relate to planning and community input, the importance of ownership in both an economic and cultural sense, and their thoughts on transition.
The exhibition itself was colored with these themes, of economic hegemonies and the spatial manifestations of what happens with informal, neighborhood networks collide with larger, definitional impositions on physical space. The pieces turned informal pieces of cultural history into statements on how such histories should be treated.
Take off your shoes and wash your hands
Subodh Gupta (Indian, born in 1964)
2008
Brass, stainless steel utensils
*Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth
*Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Venu
Asim Waqif (Indian, born in 1978)
2012
Bamboo, cotton and jute rope, tar and interactive electronics (interactive system is triggered by shadows)
*Collection Galerie Daniel Templon, Paris, Brussels
*Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Subodh Gupta’s “Take off your shoes and wash your hands” is a carefully arranged installation composed of steel cups, plates and bowls, common to any Indian kitchen. Dizzying due its size and careful arrangement, this installation elevated the history of everyday objects, their connotations and symbolism much greater than the simplicity of their physical forms. Similarly, Yin Xiuzhen’s “Temperature” depicts the remnants of places discarded and demolished as part of Beijing’s gentrification, rubble juxtaposed with bright scraps of fabric, capturing the innards of buildings and its previous residents. This particular piece served as a representation of how buildings and physical spaces tend to preserve individual stories. Asim Waqif’s “Venu” pays tribute to a traditional form of structure-making, an interactive bamboo installation that allowed viewers to touch and feel what it might be like to be contained in such a structure. As a piece, it conveys a sense of defiant resilience against more conventional, western forms of building, while also maintaining an inviting sense of discovery.
Towards the end of the panel, an audience member asked a pointed question. Why aren’t there neighborhood walking tours of Boston’s fens? The underlying point being, “why can’t the city figure out how to use this resource properly?” The panelists saw this question as a proposal to formalize how a certain resource “should” be understood. Streetscapes and neighborhoods, they argued, should not be organized into point-by-point guided tours. The quality of a neighborhood should not be conflated with the formality of its utilization. I paid most attention to the panelists’ thoughts on informality, and how individual histories might define a neighborhood, far more than a walking tour of scripted, anecdotal information. Histories are still histories, even if they’re not being actively capitalized on. Understanding a streetscape or a property in a way that is personal or informal in some ways feels countercultural, in that it plainly and unashamedly asserts the value of individual memory and discovery above anything else.
Build me a nest so I can rest
Hema Upadhyay (Indian, 1972-2015)
2015
300 handmade river clay birds (made by Kolkata craftsman), altered with acrylic paint, wire, printed text
*Courtesy Studio la Città and Hema Upadhyay
*Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The late Hema Upadhyay’s “Build me a nest so I can rest” aligns the memories and aspirations of individuals with the place they’ve chosen to live. Lined-up terra-cotta birds provide a sense of whimsical and tragic continuity, in their mouths, quotations of famous individuals about a city and their hopes for their lives within its confines, for all its shifting composing elements.
The installations and the panel discussion asked what happens to informal elements that aren’t adaptable to new spatial hierarchies, and why this question matters in the first place. We can think of space, landmarks, and the places we live in in terms of our day-to-day activity, personal history, or their officially described purpose. Of course, it’s a natural human tendency to impose emotional and cultural intangibles onto the tangible surfaces around us. In the midst of rapid change, such a tendency becomes oddly subversive.
Megacities Asia runs until July 17, 2016. More information about the Museum of Fine Arts and the exhibition can be found here.
