Penang's Gold Lotus

The journey from Kuala Lumpur was long. Penang’s weather was customarily hot, humid and a tad rainy in August. Over the long ‘Merdeka’ (celebration of independence from British rule, rather like the 4th of July or American Independence Day) weekend I was taken, and welcomed, into the Gold Lotus (Chinese vegetarian) restaurant, by Buddhist vegetarians Ben Yeow and Lilian Ong. Their wonderful restaurant is on Lebuh Presgrave (or Presgrave Street, named after Edward William Presgrave, aka 3rd road) in Georgetown, on the island of Penang, Malaysia.

It’s said that Chinese vegetarian cuisine has existed for many centuries. One aspect of vegetarian Chinese cuisine may be traced back to the Western Han Dynasty (206 B.C.–9 A.D), and a Daoist Prince called Liu An (of Huai’nan).

It is claimed (by Li Shizhen’s Compendium of Materia Medica, no less) that Liu An was responsible for the invention of the soya bean curd or ‘dòufǔ’ (later re-named by Japanese as ‘tōfu’), by experimenting with flavouring soybeans with a seaweed called ‘Nagari’. It was thereafter that the production of tofu emerged, around 206 to 220 BC (during the previously mentioned Han Dynasty).

Eleven vegetarian dishes (quite possibly the earliest vegetarian recipes discovered in China) had been revealed in Jia Sixie’s book ‘Qi Min Yao Shu’, from the Chinese Northern Wei Dynasty (533-544 AD). Another ancient Chinese recipe book “Shan Jia Qing Gong”  written 900 years ago (13th century) by Lin Hong zhuan, in the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279) suggests over one hundred different types of vegetarian food materials including flowers, herbs, fruits and soy products in popular recipes. In the Yuan, Ming, and Qing Dynasties, vegetarian dishes were even more popular.

It is known that during the annual Penang/Butterworth (Malaysia) Nine Emperor Gods Festival, Daoist devotees observe a strict vegetarian diet to cleanse their bodies and souls, for nine days. However, Penang Chinese vegetarianism has expanded over the decades. There are now over a score of Penang wholly vegetarian restaurants (many of which are Chinese) catering to burgeoning demand for plant-based alternatives. They are becoming more accessible and affordable, and not just at auspicious and religious times.

Parking in Georgetown, Penang, is difficult. We had to exit my friend’s vehicle some distance from the Gold Lotus restaurant which, as it turned out, was not such a chore, but rather an opportunity to explore some of the small shops in the area. Penang, like the smaller Malaysian cities, has plenty of petite industries run out of ageing shop lots, including the Oh Eng Huat Cake Shop, freshly baking and selling deliciously tiny round biscuits, coated with egg glaze. I was invited in to watch as the large trays came out of the oven, in racks, cooling ready to be packed, then proffered a round, flaky, biscuit which I quickly consumed. Back on those sweltering streets we walked past Chinese medicine shops and traders selling yellow ‘Dragon Fruit’, then thrilled a little when we saw the ‘A board’ sign ‘Gold Lotus’ standing on Lebuh Presgrave’s terracotta pavement. That board invited customers to sample ‘Petai Fried Rice’, ‘Mongolian Herbs Soup’, Tom Yam Fried Bihun’ and a whole host of mouth watering dishes.

Husband and wife team Ben and Lilian sat us down and took our orders. The menu, and the dishes as they came, had little to differentiate them from regular Malaysian Chinese fare. If I hadn’t know better, I could have been persuaded that we had ordered meat dishes, such was the authenticity of the presentation, and taste, of the cuisine at Gold Lotus. For lunch we had chosen an amazing omelette with oyster mushroom, and a spicy side sauce, resting on banana leaf; a mixed ‘oriental’ vegetable medley with a sweet and sour sauce; a light, slightly sour, curry with okra (ladies fingers) tomatoes and a dried slice of the Asam gelugur fruit, to give the sour taste. Then there was the kangkong (water spinach) vegetable with chopped mushrooms and shredded carrot, in its light sauce. Each was presented on substantial blue-glazed earthenware, while each dish was as delicious to the eye as it was to the tastebuds.

Although not a full-time vegetarian, after that meal from Gold Lotus, Penang, I am sorely tempted to further embrace vegetarian meals when I encounter them.

Charlie and Stan - a review

 

British comic actors Charlie (Spencer) Chaplin and Stan Laurel (Arthur Stanley Jefferson) found their fortunes in North America, after initially touring together with fellow British showman Fred Karno (aka Fredrick Westcott). Over time, their work spawned iconic comedic figures such as the French filmmaker Jaques Tati’s ‘Monsieur Hulot’, British comedian Rowan Atkinson’s ‘Mr Bean’ and now the Colchester Mercury Theatre’s showing of the homage comedy ‘Charlie & Stan’, brought to the Colchester stage by the fascinating touring theatre company ‘Told by an idiot’ (founded in 1993 by Hayley Carmichael, Paul Hunter and John Wright).

It had been a while since I saw a production at the Mercury Theatre. That was entirely my own fault for sequestering myself on an island, and being entirely dependent on public transport. Anyway, long story short, friend Pauline was enthusiastic to go and mentioned ‘Charlie & Stan’ to me. I dithered, worrying about buses to get me back home across The Strood. That was until Pauline mentioned the Saturday matinee. Now that I could do. I’d still have a choice of buses after the 80 minute show had concluded in the late afternoon and so, I said “okay, why not”. I’ll not mention that I was spurred on by the thought of a hot chocolate (with mini marshmallows) at Fenwick’s Cafe Nero, after.

On with the show.

In my intermittent trips to Colchester’s Mercury theatre I have yet to be disappointed. This visit was no exception.

‘Charlie and Stan’, the production, is billed as a ‘musical’. I’m not a big fan of musicals. Well, except for some Bollywood films. But, somehow, that notice escaped my attention and I had no expectations as I sat staring at a stage which hinted at something vaguely nautical, with a dangling seagull (not real of course, this was a theatre), waiting for the production to begin. If I had had expectations, they would have been trampled under the stage storm which ensued.

Somewhere between biopic and pantomime (masque), with actual mime and a ‘principle boy’ (Charlie) who was a girl (Danielle Bird), a riotous crew swept we the audience through the swells and calms of a voyage constructed of many voyages in and out of the comedic silent film era. As in ‘panto’, there was audience interaction during which, at one point, I had a woman’s coat thrown over my head. That was a first I have to admit, and one of the hazards of sitting too close to the stage. It was all good fun and the time slipped away until it was, suddenly, the end.

I am at an age where I have had access to much of the filmic material hinted at, or referenced in the show. I idly wonder how those younger than I would have experienced the production, maybe at different levels, perhaps at the purely experiential level, as you would a pantomime with its ‘Oh no I wouldn’t, Oh yes you would’, and ‘Look out he’s behind you’ interactive approach. I was lucky to be able to reminisce, and drag scenes from memory while appreciating the excellence of acting, slapstick and gymnastics before me. It was theatrical escapism done to the Mercury Theatre’s highest standards, once again. Many

congrats

and thank you cast, crew, production, writers et al.

Serrano’s Neo-Surrealist Flora

“Taking your palette, its wing holds a bullet-hole,

you summon the light that revives the olive-tree.

Broad light of Minerva, builder of scaffolding,

with no room for dream and its inexact flower.”

1 Ode to Salvador Dali (extract) by Federico García Lorca 

“Neo-surrealism, perhaps, should not be called a movement per se, simply because the movement usually has a group of like-minded individuals united by common objectives. Some of them even have originators. Neo-surrealism is instead a stream. It has no founder or a philosophical platform. Some artists joined it earlier, others later even without apparent awareness of their affiliation. Although different groups of artists from diverse countries sometimes form collectives.” 

2 George Grie, 2009

In Iberian lands lays richly poetic Spain. Lands where the ‘sur-real’ had once danced hand in hand with the ‘Nouveau’. Parental lands delighting in Aztec chocolate and where family cathedrals have outgrown their meticulous ‘New’ designers. They are serendipitous lands where poetic flowers grow and flamboyant visionary creators weave their visions spontaneously into new realities. 

Ancestral blood of surreally creative España swims in the artist Rafael Serrano‘s poetic veins. His Spanish parents arrived on shores of the ‘New World’ from French/Spanish/African infused Cuba. Since the age of twelve Serrano has lived in the ‘City of Angels’ (El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de Porciúncula, or "The Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels of Porciúncula) aka Los Angeles but, more poignantly, the City of Flowers (Ciudad de las Flores). Los Angeles. Its official flower being the ‘Bird of Paradise’ which is, coincidently, also grown in the parks of Catalonia’s Barcelona.

The poet/artist Serrano is, by his own admission, a neo-surrealist. Neo Surrealism has grown from the shock and awe of the early twentieth century ’Dada’ and its far reaching offspring, Andre Breton’s Surrealism. In his first ‘Manifesto of Surrealism’ (1924) Breton explains

“Surrealism is the "invisible ray" which will one day enable us to win out over our opponents. "You are no longer trembling, carcass." This summer the roses are blue; the wood is of glass. The earth, draped in its verdant cloak, makes as little impression upon me as a ghost. It is living and ceasing to live which are imaginary solutions. Existence is elsewhere.”

3 André Breton Manifesto of Surrealism (1924)

Rafael Serrano’s works perfectly engender that Bretonian Surrealist sense, not of shock but with intrigue. With Serrano, Breton’s “This summer the roses are blue; the wood is of glass” becomes a visual reality.

To quote Breton again

“Modern poetry does not use the unconscious for its own sake. It is a real advance toward self-knowledge and the knowledge of everything within us that differs from the self-image we once felt was justified.” 

4 André Breton Œuvres 421).

Serrano is an individual who has become impassioned to epitomise seemingly organically surreal images. Using a mixture of paint, collage, photography and photographic manipulation he presents his subconscious to an intrigued audience. This can be witnessed in one of his more floral series. These are works including ‘Exile from paradise’ (a graphic portrait of a dark flower, on the right of the image, potentially from the ‘liliaceae’ family, its petals sharp as if drenched in blood). Then there is ’Midnight dance of erotic fantasies’ (the same lily flower, on the left side on the image, dark in tone surrounded with ethereal blooms and organic, surreal, vegetation) and ‘Let Summer wipe our tears’ (with the flower image back on the right, with a predominate air of yellow and blue, as if it were summer, but a dark, David Lynch, murderous, summer.

Serrano mesmerises. He draws his audience into his dream-like alternate reality. He portrays a subconscious ‘City of Flowers’ enwrapped in symbolisms, for he is, after all, a poet, a man of metaphorical symbols as well as an artist. The French philosopher Georges Bataille, an early Surrealist, had mentioned

“…if one says that flowers are beautiful, it is because they seem to conform to what must be, in other words they represent, as flowers, the human ideal.” 

5 Georges Bataille ,Visions of Excess Selected Writings

As a contemporary creator, Serrano proffers vibrantly heady and evocative organically surreal images. His work is lyrically poetic and reminiscent of Spanish modernity, a time which had brewed Grenadian Spanish poet Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca  (Federico García Lorca) epitomising ‘Modernismo’. One glance at Rafael Serrano’s work yields the fantasy which is not fantasy of Joan Miró, the depths of Pablo Picasso, the eroticism of Salvador Dali and minutiae of Anton Gaudi. And, at times, Serrano’s works portray a deliciously Buñuel noir. Having said that, Serrano’s surrealist homage paintings are effectively ‘angeleño’ dreams. They are a product of the artist’s fascination with surrealism, his heritage and the land he has grown in (Los Angeles).

Los Angeles is a land primed by Surrealism. In 1934 Lorser Feitelson and Helen Lundeberg began what became known as ‘Post-Surrealism’. Later we are informed (by Berit Potter Assistant Professor in the Department of Art at Humboldt State University) That

“The first survey exhibition of surrealism shown in the Bay Area, Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism, appeared at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, or SFMOMA (then the San Francisco Museum of Art), in August 1937.”

6  Berit Potter

Three years later, in 1940, Los Angeles gave shelter to the surreal photographer Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky in American Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1890). He moved to Paris (France) in 1921. Like many artists, Ray escaped Nazi occupied Paris and sojourned in Los Angeles from 1940 to 1951. In 2016,  the artist Max Maslansky organised the exhibition ‘Tinseltown in the Rain: The Surrealist Diaspora in Los Angeles 1935–69’,  at the Los Angeles gallery Richard Telles Fine Art, reminding us of the importance of surrealism to Los Angeles and, ultimately, to our subject Rafael Serrano. 

Freudian dreams and their landscapes are frequent subjects in Surrealist works. The projection of interior workings of the mind, its connections to mysticism and magic have continued to interest proponents of Surrealism. André Breton had mentioned that

“We are still living under the reign of logic... Under the pretence of civilisation and progress, we have managed to banish from the mind everything that may rightly or wrongly be termed superstition, or fancy; forbidden is any kind of search for truth which is not in conformance with accepted practices… A part of our mental world has been brought back to light. ... Freud very rightly brought his critical faculties to bear upon the dream.”

7  André Breton Manifesto of Surrealism (1924)

Dream is where we find Serrano’s imagery. His waking dreams hold echoes of the enigmatic Cuban artist Wifredo Óscar de la Concepción Lam y Castilla (aka Wifredo Lam, 1902, - 1978), who, like Serrano, had a Spanish mother and had lived in Cuba. Where Lam fused surrealism with the natural Cuban landscape and disparate ancestral spiritual beliefs, Serrano has created his very own angeleño dreamscapes. He presents his dream entanglements to us, organic based and absorbing, beguiling us, drawing us into his magic-tinged world with creations such as ‘Lagoon of unrepentant memories plus other living things’ (a truly surreal textural admixture of photographed three-dimensional, drawn and painted fantasy shapes which, to this writer, are reminiscent both of Bruno Bozzetto’s. 1976 animation ‘Allegro non troppo, and Joan Miró’s dream-like creations).

When Serrano gives us flowers to pontificate on, his works are not the subtly erotic floral-scapes of Georgia O’Keeffe, or the ‘Vodou spirit’ infused images of a Lam canvas, but other, intriguing, worlds entirely. Serrano’s are worlds like ‘Lagoon of unrepentant memories plus other living things’, ‘The pre-existence of the gods’ and ‘Apotheosis’ which subsume us into curious oceans we must navigate, but also must heed not to collide with semi-solid objectified symbolic images which the artist, challengingly projects towards us. Serrano is a modern day Homer telling tales of his own ‘Odysseus’, or maybe Serrano is in the guise of André (Paul Guillaume) Gide telling stories of ‘Urien’, braving uncharted waters of the mind/soul. 

In his images Rafael Serrano becomes the ‘Sorcerer Supreme’. He conjures, manipulates dream-like subconscious and vividly magical worlds. We, his audience, are invited to delve into his works through a Cocteau-like liquid mirror which whisks us not to Orphée’s ‘Underworld’, but away onto visually metaphysical voyages. In more modern parlance, when confronted with Serrano’s work, we feel as though we are immersed into a peyote induced 1960s Steve Ditko ‘Dr Strange’ comic-book fantasy where, beyond the laws of physics and in alternate dimensions, lives Dormammu et al. Such are the acute mysticisms and ‘magics’ pervading Serrano’s work, floral or otherwise.

Surrealist, Post-Surrealist or Neo-Surrealist; the Los Angeles artist Rafael Serrano delights his audiences with his unique Hispanic Los Angeleno take on the world. He presents worlds in which we willingly suspend disbelief. He is a poetic tale-teller of phantasms and fantasies, but also one who carries forward DNA entrapped in surrealisms of place. That place is a place of the angels, Los Angeles, steeped in surrealism.

1 Federico García Lorca‘Ode to Salvador Dali’ (extract) 

“Al coger tu paleta, con un tiro en un ala,

pides la luz que anima la copa del olivo.

Ancha luz de Minerva, constructora de andamios,

donde no cabe el seuño ni su flora inexacta.”

2 George Grie. May 14, 2009 (Rus) - ‘Манифест Нео-сюрреалиста’ (What is Neo surrealism), http://neosurrealismart.com/archive-works/What-is-Neosurrealism-the-Neo-Surrealist-Manifesto.htm

3 André Breton ‘Manifestoes of Surrealism’ (1924).Trans. Richard Seaver and Helen R.

Lane. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1969. Print

4 André Breton ‘Œuvres complètes’. 4 vols. Paris: Gallimard, 1988–99. Print. Bibliothèque

de la Pléiade.

“La poésie moderne ne pratique pas l’inconscient pour l’inconscient. Elle est une

véritable marche vers la connaissance de soi, à la connaissance de tout ce qui en nous diffère de l’idée que nous nous croyions fondés à entretenir de nous-mêmes […]” 

5 Georges Bataille ,’Visions of Excess Selected Writings, 1927-1939’, Edited and with an Introduction by Allan Stoekl Translated by Allan Stoekl, with Carl R. Lovitt and Donald M. Leslie, Jr.

6 Berit Potter,“Gathered Another Way”: Early Surrealist Exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, in Vol. 14, 2018, Dada and Surrealism: Transatlantic Aliens on American shores 1914 - 1945 (17/26)

7 André Breton ‘Manifesto of Surrealism’ (1924) Op Cit

Preema Donna: Not a Book Review

 

“Every woman has known the torment of getting up to speak. Her heart racing, at times entirely lost for words, ground and language slipping away - that's how daring a feat, how great a transgression it is for a woman to speak - even just open her mouth - in public. A double distress, for even if she transgresses, her words fall almost always upon the deaf male ear, which hears in language only that which speaks in the masculine.”

Hélène Cixous ‘Le Rire de la Méduse’ (The Laugh of the Medusa) 1975. 1

I met with the Bangladesh artist Preema Nazia Andaleeb (aka Nazia Andaleeb Prima) at Liverpool Street rail station, London, in the December of 2022. We walked and talked about life, philosophy and the breadth of her art making. We settled in a venue in Finsbury Square, near to the Liverpool Street rail station, to talk more.

It was there over a luncheon of selective ‘small plates’ (appetisers) that the artist presented me with a copy of her voluminous book titled ‘Preema Donna: an infinite journey’ (Cosmos Books, Dhaka, 2019).

NB a ‘prima donna’ (in Italian) is literally the ‘first lady’, prima - first, donna - lady. The term originates from Italian opera during the sixteenth century and refers to an institution of strong women within opera’s culture. Donna can also mean queen. Preema Donna becomes a play on ‘Prima Donna’, Preema - woman - queen. The use of Italian for the title of her work is not simply a play on words, but an important link back into the Western history of art itself. Back to artists like Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino) and paintings such as‘La Donna Velata’ (‘The woman with the veil’, 1515) That painting is one his most famous portraits, where he demonstrates his abilities in painting textures, using chiaroscuro, presenting us with the notion of the constantly sidelined, or ‘veiled’ woman, her mystery and beauty.

In the preface section ‘Limitless Journey of Possibility’ (p14) of her book ‘Preema Donna’ the artist mentions “Art is a question to me, not an answer. Hence, as an artist I am always alive, like art, travelling from soul to soul.”

For Preema Nazia Andaleeb there is no such notion as Leo Tolstoy’s ‘What is art’ (Russia 1897). All materials, and any material, may be conscripted to her purpose of art-making, including performance art, using her dancing and performance skills. For her, and art’s, purpose is to communicate the essence and urgency of communication, and in whichever way her intrinsic purpose demands. Notions of flatness vs dimensionality, width, height, length, breadth, time, material/medium become utilised in her works for, as Marshall McLuhan 2 and John Berger 3 intimated, often the medium becomes not just the conveyor of the message, but frequently the message itself.

Like many artists Preema Nazia Andaleeb does not limit herself to one singular mode of expression. Instead, she organises photographic elements, paints in oils and acrylics, creates with digital media, performs modern choreographic movements with intimations of the traditional Indian dances (such as the Tamil classical dance Bharatanatyam, she has studied), to illustrate body and gender politics and generally to aid greater knowledge of the plight of women in misogynistic relationships and cultures, utilising a vast array of mediums when and where she deems appropriate.

The Tate Gallery online reminds us that

“The use of mixed media began around 1912 with the cubist collages and constructions of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, and has become widespread as artists developed increasingly open attitudes to the media of art. Essentially art can be made of anything or any combination of things.”4

In Preema Nazia Andaleeb’s use of non-traditional modes of art making, she has commonalities with 20th century Western Modernist avant-garde artists such as the adherents of Cubism, Dada, Surrealism and Fluxus movements. Artists like Salvador Dali, Jean Cocteau and Pablo Picasso, whom she favours (along with the Georgia O’Keeffe, and her ‘performative processes’ photographed by Alfred Stieglitz). Preema Nazia Andaleeb has similar knowledge of great Indian artists, like Jamini Roy (he who had developed a ‘modern’ Indian art by looking towards indigeneity in a ‘folk renaissance’); as well as the expressionistic boldness of the great polymath Rabindranath Tagore.

Within Preema Nazia Andaleeb’s book there are reminders of that indigeneity in Jamini Roy’s work in her paintings such as ‘Women of Abstraction 10’ (2018, p16), ‘Beyond Identity: The Sum of her Parts’ (2018, p27) and an earlier work ‘Haunted Existence’ (2014, p156). It’s the large almond shaped eyes. They are remnants of a Bengali folk tradition coupled with the darkened ferocity of Rabindranath Tagore’s paintings of women. Like Roy and Tagore (in her paintings of women) Preema Nazia Andaleeb situates herself within ‘Modern’ Indian, but more especially Bengali roots, and their modernist re-interpretation of folk art, rather than exhibiting any overt Western intimations.

Prima Donna she may be, but Preema Nazia Andaleeb does not (in the English vernacular) ’act out’. She ‘talks out’. She is a woman who firmly grasps the baton of female suppression and re-creates within the sphere of concepts concerning the subordination of women. In Preema Nazia Andaleeb’s work there are hints of Antonio Gramsci 5 and Gayatri Spivak 6. Notions of the ‘subaltern’. Preema Nazia Andaleeb subverts the traditional muted role of the mythic Radha (beloved of Krishna), from the ancient Hindu Radha/Krishna story of the humble gopi (milkmaid) who became the beloved of the god Krishna. Preema Nazia Andaleeb brings Radha into modernity.

Spivak argues that

“between patriarchy and imperialism, subject-constitution and object-formation, the figure of the woman disappears, not into a pristine nothingness, but into a violent shuttling which is the displaced figuration of the ‘third-world woman’"7

In her series of work, titled ‘Concept of Modern Radha’ (pages 234 to 245 in the book), Preema Nazia Andaleeb de-veils Radha, de-mystifies and dis-entangles her from subaltern entrapment. Radha is seen as woman.

Jessica Frazier suggests that

“In the theological narrative poem the Gitagovinda, Radha is a passionate woman who both becomes divine, and incorporates her divine lover and audience into her divinity. The narrative form of her iconography manifests the emotional reason of an embodied religious agency, and through the affectivity of the poem she is able to share this fluid subjectivity, manifesting a pluralistic form of monism that is only one of Hinduism’s many variations on a supposedly

“pantheistic” model. Patterns of subjection are traded for alternating dynamics of passionate commitment. In Indian culture Radha continues to serve as an exemplary model of female-neutral subjectivity for all persons—an active, non-substantial, shared, strong self that rationally embraces its (religious) passions.” 8

The next book chapter in ‘Preema Donna’ is, fittingly, ‘Cosmopolitan Women’, in which the artist makes good use of a variety of art-making techniques to present the diversity of women within the Asian diaspora, as ‘women of the world’. The painting ‘Cosmopolitan Women’ (p256, 2014) is, poignantly, a mixed media piece used as the front cover of the artist’s book ‘Preema Donna’, and it’s slip cover. We see oblique references to the fashion magazine ‘Cosmopolitan’, its Western style and glamour, with photographic cut-out images. These become contrasted with images of women with hijab (hair covering), and some niqab (a veil that covers the face, but leave the eye area uncovered) while others wear the burqa (a female full body covering), none of which are technically compulsory in Bangladesh.

There is the bleak contrast between what one woman might wear irrespective of religious affiliations, and the raiments available to some choosing to wear for religious reasons, willingly or unwillingly.

Unspoken are the words ‘slave to fashion’ and the anomaly of being free and yet a slave to fashion trends. However, the very real enslavement continues in Bangladesh’s sweatshops, where workers are paid a pittance to produce garments for brand named companies, to sell to followers of fashion. As East Bengal, the link to Western fashion and the dye colour indigo runs deeper into issues of Colonialism, the Raj, and indigo farmers’ riots (Neel Bidroho, 1859).

While there differences of opinion as to whether ‘Performance Art’ is Art, Preema Nazia Andaleeb has continued to engage in aspects of ‘performance, since young. The Tate Modern reminds us that

“…Jonah Westerman remarked ‘performance is not (and never was) a medium, not something that an artwork can be but rather a set of questions and concerns about how art relates to people and the wider social world”.10

Looking back into the history of Western Art, performance (in the visual arts) is often retrospectively connected to avant-garde affiliations such as the Italian ‘Futurist’ productions and various manifestations of ‘Dada’ cabarets of the 1910s. Later (1929) in the second Surrealist Manifesto, Andre Breton was, controversially, to write “The simplest surrealist act consists of dashing down the street, pistol in hand, and firing blindly, as fast as you can pull the trigger, into the crowd.” 11

Preema Nazia Andaleeb, while provocative in her presentations and performances, shocks in ways that do not require the phallic presence of a gun. She uses presence of mind and the female body as seen from page 272 through to page 361 in her book, Preema Donna. There, she reveals that ‘woman’ does not now need to counter the “language only that which speaks in the masculine” to overcome notions of transgression and the fears of Hélène Cixous, and Gayatri Spivak’s concerns. Instead, she (Woman) becomes free.

References

1. Cixous, Hélène’Le Rire de la Méduse’ (The Laugh of the Medusa) 1975
2. McLuhan, Marshall, The Medium is the Message, 1964
3. Berger, John, Ways of Seeing, 1972
4. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/m/mixed-media
5. Mondal, Disha, The Forgotten Bengali Cubist Artist: Gaganendranath, Quest Journals Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Science Volume 9 ~ Issue 3 (2021)pp: ISSN37 (Online):23219467
6. Gramsci, Antonio, Notes on Italian History in Prison Notebooks 1929 -1935
7. (Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1988. 271-313).
8. ibid
9. Frazier, Jessica. (2010). Becoming the Goddess: Female Subjectivity and the Passion of the Goddess Radha. 10.1007/978-1-4020-6833-1_13.
10. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/p/performance-art.
11. Breton, Andre, Second Manifesto of Surrealism in Manifestoes of Surrealism, Ann Arbor Paperbacks, The University of Michigan Press, 1969, p125