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‘Muqaddimah’: Artist Aziz Hazara’s critique of the Afghanistan conflict
Summary
Through performative acts and montages of absurdities in his new solo show, Aziz Hazara offers resistance to propagandist narratives
At the end of the 18th century, when both industrialization and colonialism were emergent, the British were trying to figure out the most efficient ways to control a large number of people. The man of the moment was a social theorist, Jeremy Bentham, who proposed the idea of the Panopticon (from the Greek for “all seeing"). He suggested that people would follow rules and allow their lives to be controlled by their government if they believed that they were being watched at all times. An early application of the concept was in the architectural designs of prisons in colonial India.
Fast forward a couple of centuries, and turn our focus to neighbouring Afghanistan. The Americans, despite spending billions, are struggling to occupy the rugged terrain where the Taliban push back through hit-and-run ambushes and suicide bombers. In a classic neo-colonial tactic, they activate their version of the Panopticon in the 2010s – large spy balloons called Aerostats which now hover over key cities like Kabul and Kandahar, taking high-resolution surveillance images and keeping an eagle’s eye view over the entire local population.
Muqaddimah is Berlin-based Afghan artist Aziz Hazara’s first solo show at Experimenter Colaba, Mumbai. Here, he presents his evolving multidisciplinary practice comprising of video installations, photography, sound and sculptures. They shine light on what it is actually like for civilians to live in a country which is mired in never-ending wars, and question the narrative put forth by the American defence-entertainment-news troika. Night raids, which Hazara touches upon in his other works, also underscore the same invasion of privacy. I asked him for an example of how it affected the day-to-day lives of the civilians. “You know how during the summer, people slept on the rooftops to beat the heatwaves. Once the balloons appeared people just retreated indoors. They became wary of venturing outside at all times." Hazara was back in Kabul few months back. “The balloons were gone, the sky was clear, and I experienced an intense feeling of freedom, knowing that I was not being watched by foreign eyes."
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He brings out that first person narrative through four black-and-white photographs titled Kite Balloons (2016), which he took from vantage points surrounding the city. In the centre of the photographs and occupying the foreground below, the cityscape of Kabul is discernible, enclosed by undulating layers of mountains which fade into the darkness. Far above, lurks the balloon, day or night, white and shiny, alien in character, like a predatory shark with its eyes always open.
Another intriguing work is Dialectic (2016-2020). It is a two-channel installation which juxtaposes green and grainy military filmed material filtered through night-vision goggles, with found coloured footage that Hazara had been collecting over the years. “The current edition traces the immediate aftermath of three key regime changes – in the early 1990s after the Soviets left, 2000s when the Taliban were ousted and the most recent one in 2021 when they came back to power."
Audio-visually, the cognitive dissonance of the footage is unnerving. One of the early videos shows a Mujaheddin fighter playfully mimicking the sound of a Soviet era weapon as he entertains his companions. Another in a Santa Claus attire is goofing around with a tank, while in a third video, a group of men are boisterously flying kites. The most surreal are the images from after the Americans retreated in 2021. Battle-hardened jihadis dodge and knock against each other in bright bumper cars, while others seem to be enjoying rides on wooden horses in a children’s merry-go-round in Kabul.
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Among the final works, hidden in a corner, is Rehearsal (2020), a short one-minute video featuring two children. The older one props the other on his shoulders while the younger one does a near perfect imitation of shooting from an American assault rifle, which echoes the earlier footage in Dialectic. This work, along with Kite Balloons, reminded me of his earlier work Bow Echo, which was exhibited in the Biennale of Sydney in 2020 and won him the Future Generation Art Prize in 2021. Rehearsal is a metaphor both for a childhood that is entangled in an insidious web of conflict (something Hazra has personally experienced), and his country being treated for generations by the global powers like a child’s plaything to be tossed around and ravaged for the sake of their geopolitical ambitions.
The first room has two works that are core to his practice. For the Carnegie International commission in 2021-22, Hazara had shipped 20 tonnes of garbage from America’s largest military base in Afghanistan back to America to create a work titled A Gift to the American People. In this exhibition, the work-in-progress Untitled, Bagram (2024) derives from this long-term project and is presented as a set of 24 photographs, which spotlights some of that mountain of waste – a large chunk of it being electronic, communication and military equipment left behind.
The second work is Bushka-Bazi (2023), a soundscape presented through bright yellow jerry cans, which have adapted over 50 years of warfare. “They first made their appearance as cooking oil containers, then as camouflage for smuggling American-sponsored weapons, followed by usefulness for NGOs who used them to demonstrate proof of water during material relief initiatives, and finally they were used as carriers of everyday explosives by the Taliban, " he says.
Through playful performative acts and montages of absurdities, juxtaposed with hard evidence of the commerce of war, Hazara weaves a form of subtle, thought-provoking resistance.
‘Muqaddimah’ runs at Experimenter Colaba, Mumbai till 12 October, Tuesday – Saturday, 10.30am–6.30pm.
Anindo Sen is an independent art and culture writer.
