Courtesy of Peel Art Museum and Archives, Brampton Ontario, Canada
Raina.
Standing in front of the Kashmiri Gate in Lahore, Pakistan, the artist Jagdeep Raina was overcome with emotion. At first, his reaction was inexplicable. He grew up a world away in a Toronto suburb and had not visited his family’s homeland in 14 years. Why did he feel so much as he gazed at the wooden monument dating back to the Mughal Empire? Raina brought a tripod to the site and began documenting the gate to understand what it signified to him.
The product of that effort was a short film that the Yale Center for British Art screened last week as part of its ongoing “At Home: Artists in Conversation” series. The film layers shots of the gate with evocative charcoal drawings of figures sitting outside, riding horses, and relaxing at home — only to be washed away by blood dripping from disembodied hands.
The drawings allude to the political violence that ensued when India gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1947. The Indian subcontinent was then divided into two nations: Muslim-majority Pakistan and Hindu-majority India. That division, referred to as “partition,” displaced between 10 and 20 million people and motivated sectarian violence that left over 1 million dead.
Ohadi-Hamadani and Raina.
In his talk accompanying the screening — moderated by Maryam Ohadi-Hamadani, a postdoctoral research associate at YBCA — Raina explained that producing the film allowed him to explore the emotions he experienced at the Kashmiri Gate, one of the few landmarks of its kind that was not destroyed under British rule. The gate would have once led Raina to his grandfather’s village, which was destroyed during the political violence of partition.
Raina recalled that, gazing at the structure, he imagined his grandfather walking under it on his way home. He also thought of his uncle who lived in Lahore and likely entered the Kashmiri Bazaar through the gate. Raina described the experience of standing in front of the gate as “hypnotic” and “out of body,” realizing that “we never would have left” if partition had not happened.
Raina’s talk marks a notable turn for the Yale Center for British Art. The museum has no shortage of artwork made in India. Indian landscape paintings by British artists such as Thomas Daniell (1749 – 1840), Edward Lear (1812 – 1888), and William Simpson (1823 – 1899) line the museum’s walls. But until recently, few works in the collection have portrayed India through the eyes of Indians themselves, rather than their colonizers.
In his talk, Raina — currently a Mellon Arts and Practitioner Fellow at the Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration — spoke about his desire to “reimagine the history of empire through a visual lens.” His artwork explores themes of loss, forgetting, and remembrance that are deeply personal to his family who, like millions of others, lost their homes during partition. His artwork is strongly influenced by that historical moment and reflects his dedication toward liberating his family’s history visually.
Film is a new medium for Raina. First a drawer and painter, he became an expert weaver and embroiderer in recent years after learning regional techniques from Kashmiri and Punjabi artisans. Familial ties to textiles lured him in; his mother’s ancestors were skilled embroiderers and his prized possession is a fragile Kashmiri shawl that has been in his family for about 200 years.
Raina’s visually arresting tapestries display the artist’s imagination, technical precision, and commitment to encapsulating the many “histories,” as opposed to the monolithic “history,” of northern India and Pakistan. It was important to Raina to depict the region not only as a contested space, but also “a place where people laugh and … hang out,” he said.
Jagdeep Raina
Paradise Lost.
In “Paradise Lost,” an embroidered tapestry that Raina made in 2019, six figures are sitting outside on what looks like a beautiful day somewhere in northern India or Pakistan. Nods to the region’s material history are made throughout the tapestry: the patterned rug that the figures sit on, the elegantly wrapped turbans worn by the men, and the draping shawls worn by the women. The scene is idyllic but the title of the work, “Paradise Lost,” is hard to overlook. The work is an ode to what could have been if “violent migration,” as Raina put it, was not forced upon his family and millions of others in 1947. It is also Raina’s attempt to reclaim a lost archive — one that captures happy moments as well as the periods of distress.
Raina’s work proves that family histories can be used to tell global stories. His short film, charcoal drawings, and textiles convey multilayered histories of war, migration, and material design of South Asia that upend “the archive” as we know it.
At the end of the conversation, moderator Maryam Ohadi-Hamadani — a postdoctoral research associate at YBCA — suggested the importance of that archive, noting that “we forget more than we remember.” Raina’s work seeks to change that. In one telling moment, he expressed interest in pursuing archival studies as a potential vocation. At age 30, he has already begun a career that allows him to remember and reclaim the past.
A recording of this event will be published on the Yale Center for British Art’s website in the next few weeks. You can find recordings of previous “At Home” conversations and other YCBA events on the site as well. The next Yale Center for British Art “At Home” event will be held on Wednesday, Feb. 10 from 12 p.m. to 1 p.m. New York Times art critic and Yale College alum Jason Farago will be delivering this year’s Norma Lytton lecture at the event. Admission is free and attendance is virtual.
