According to the two artists, they are more Asian than British. Their family belongs to the migrant group called ‘twice (in contrast to direct) migrants’, i.e. Punjabis who migrated first to northeast Africa and later from Africa to England. This paper is an attempt at understanding the semiotics of the art of the twin sisters in the specific context of their multiple identities as Asian-Indian-Punjabi-Sikh migrant community in England, as artists, as women, and, last but not least, their peculiar doubleness.
Nyrmla’s Wedding II[4], 1985/6
(50.8 x 76.2 cm, 20 x 30 in)
Artist: Amrit K.D. Kaur Singh
This tableau could pass off as a medieval miniature painting if one did not look closely. One of the twin sisters, (both are in identical turquoise Punjabi suits) is lovingly applying Mehndi (henna) on the hands of their sister Nyrmla decked in bridal finery with her demure face veiled, and the other is taking photos. It appears as if the three sisters, the three sitters on the floor, are holding each other gently with round and colorful oriental cushions providing support to the girls. Children, dressed traditionally, are in a festive mood. The boy on the bright red carpet is playing the dholak (traditional drum) and the little girl with long pleats in parandis (traditional ribbons) is merrily dancing to its beats although a tape recorder is also there with two cassettes. The black family cat is tugging at the girl’s scarf. Latest plastic toys like the batman, a stuffed toy and a Barbie doll are scattered around. Moving up the narrative, there is a photograph of the rather aristocratic looking father, adoring one of the yellow walls. On the top right is a Sikh gentleman with a huge video camera recording the celebrations. A woman in red sari is carrying a tray laden with fruit, a traditional signifier of fertility and plenty. Superadded on the top left is a blue room showing the sacred space where the wedding is being solemnized according to traditional Sikh rites. The different sections in the composition maintain their identity but also lose themselves into each other.
The artists’ palette comprises of brilliant reds, blues, and yellows, the three pure and basic hues, blue and yellow being complementary hues. The colors add meanings to the objects; they are culturally significant and also sacred in the Sikh tradition. After all culture, like language, has its grammer or logic. Blue is the color of water and sky. Yellow is the color of colza flowers that cover whole fields in the Punjab countryside. It is the color of the golden wheat and also the color of the glorious sun, so it conveys happiness and harmony; the combination of the two hues represents water, earth and sky, i.e. creation.[5] To explain the artists’ celebration of saffron, blue and yellow simply as a matter of aesthetic choice would overlook how taste and choices are intricately linked with the larger issues of cultural identity.
Carefree childhood, threshold of marriage and middle age are in vertical order. The border, pure white with another external thin ornamental line is typical of Indian miniatures. In the right hand corner, McDonald with its mascot is peeping inside through the glass window, but it is clearly kept outside the cozy close-knit family structure. Outside of the family, the space seems to be deserted and desolate signifying a cultural desert of the Other. In the correlation of objects and figures, there is no tension between tradition and modernity but globalization stands rejected. However tradition marked by religious activity, clearly has an upper hand.
The family scene is like a cultural bubble which excludes the cultural Other and its way of life apart for the electronic gadgets and toys. It is as if the compact family structure of this small minority community in UK were insulated against the dominant culture of the majority. But for how long, is the question?
The Last Supper, 1994/5
44.7 x 62.2 cm
This delightful painting bears the characteristic oriental opulence with a blaze of colors, especially the cardinal red, the color of passion and celebration. The work is detailed and the narrative space is extremely crowded; in fact every bit of space is occupied. It does not take long for the viewer to realize that the miniature does not really belong to the past. The hybridized life of the Punjabi-Sikh diaspora in UK is too conspicuous to miss. The title of the painting, obviously borrowed from da Vinci, depicts a microcosm of the Sikh diaspora family at the dining table enjoying the last big meal of the year, a traditional Christmas dinner but with a distinct Asian flavor. Candles, holly, trifle, cake, turkey and tangerines are jostling for space with Indian sweetmeats and soft drinks (no wine bottles!) on the dining table. One gentleman has spilled a bottle of coke on the rich oriental carpet and the other is distributing Christmas crackers. The mood is relaxed and festive and the artists add a dash of humor and irony to it.
Let us see how the artists have organized the pictoral space. The view is vertical from top to bottom. Outside the windows with red curtains is a snowman dressed up as a turbaned prince with a black beard and metonymically related to it is Ravana dancing on one leg, suggesting a fusing of Christmas and Diwali. Expensive Kashmiri carpets adore the floor in the warm rectangular living room. The room is cluttered with artifacts, predominantly religious icons but also from the world of art put together at random ─ a painting of the tenth Sikh Guru, Guru Gobind Singh, huge statues of Buddha, Ganesh and Madonna, Mattisse’s La Desserte and Mucha’s Daybreak, so there are, so to say, paintings within the painting. In-between are three Indian elephant show-pieces and a globe. Further deep in the room are books and video cassettes, a marble Taj Mahal and a huge ivory elephant, and many potted plants. There is a Christmas tree decorated with fairy lights, bells, etc. Gifts like dolls, a Jurassic park school bag and Christmas greeting cards are also displayed. Anything goes with anything even if it resembles an overcrowded Mall or the Cottage emporium in Delhi. These crowded and motley signifiers have one signification, loud and clear, of ‘plenty’. It is the diaspora bourgeoisie showing off its fortunes acquired in the adopted country. At the same time it also displays the multiple and colorful influences from the East and the West on the family. Adopted are many diverse cultural images like Christmas itself.
In the semiotic framework there are 13 grownups out of which four are couples and one double i.e. the twins, then the head of the family, the father recognizable by the white beard eagerly taking a slice of a turkey, a single man who stands out because he is clean-shaven and is leaning back with a carefree look on his face and a teenage boy. Three children, a boy and two girls, are sitting on the carpet, playing with each other and the black family cat is also part of the composition. All the women are wearing traditional Punjabi suits with long untrimmed hair in pleats. There is a TV on the table. One of the twins is standing apart, recording the family gathering on the video. The painting is autobiographical, for it is the family of the artists repeated in other paintings as well.
Unlike the previous painting, this painting shows a distinct mixing of various elements from the Western and also the Eastern traditions. The room seems to be full of memories and also shows the traditional as well as the convent upbringing of the artists.
All Hands on Deck[6], 1997
52 x 74.5 cm (20.25 x 28.25 in)
Artist: Rabindra
The painting depicts the SAME idyllic, self-sufficient family with beaming faces, doing things together, only the children are older and the women including the twins have put on weight. Preparations for a wedding feast are in progress on a sunny English summer day. This time the site of activity is the backyard. Peeling and chopping of vegetables and coriander, sifting of rice, washing and sweeping of floors etc are in full swing. Jars are being filled with food to be kept in deep freeze. Sacks of potato and rice are visible. A gentleman is kneading dough for chapatis, a definite sign of emancipation in a patriarchal society. The father, as always in a tie, is also helping in preparing the curry in the electric tandoor like structure; he is stirring it with a ladle. Some food items are being roasted in the other tandoor, a reminder of the rural life in Punjab. Rural and agrarian food habits overlap with modern chopping boards. Two red cooking cylinders are visible. The women are traditionally attired and represent the sitters in the painting. The twins are again present in identical dresses. The third generation of children is engrossed in playing, but they are also being familiarized with the culture and trained unconsciously. The pet black cat is part of the composition. Again the preparations are being recorded in a camera. The composition has a thick dark yellow or saffron background which imparts a sacred or metaphysical significance to the wedding preparations. Even the covers of the jars are saffron.
The composition is conspicuous for its lack of any white person or even a representative of another Asian or Indian community, say a Gujarati or a Bengali. A box with the Union Jack on the sides has been thrown symbolically in the dustbin. Group consciousness and the cohesion of the closely knit family and community are highlighted with this exclusion.
Our Father[7], 1995
54.6 x 80 cm
It shows the family portrait of the twins with their father. The father, as usual, is in western suit and tie. His hands are in the trouser pockets and a yellow halo surrounds his head. He is the pivotal figure in all family paintings and he stands out strongly. The light orange of the sisters’ Mughal style dresses glows against the turquoise background. The dress is juxtaposed with fashionable stillettoes. The sisters are holding the father possessively on either arm. Their hands show identical mudras or gestures. In fact they are mirror images of each other. Their body language portrays them as proud and assertive. The painting could be classified as a self-portrait. The doubleness is the central motive in the painting.
Nineteen Eighty-Four[8], 1998
(75.5 x 101 cm)
The title is in English as well as Punjabi. The tableau records the siege and the storming of the Golden Temple in Amritsar by the Indian troops in 1984. Indira Gandhi, the architect of the Blue Star Operation is shown as a demon with four heads, her own and those of Thatcher, Churchill and Clinton. She is firing from a tank at the crowds, comprising mainly of pilgrims who are being hit by bullets from all sides. There is panic and chaos all around. Indira Gandhi’s left palm is raised, the election symbol of her party which is ironically the Abhaya Mudra (gesture of blessing, peace and benevolence) in Buddhist iconography. She pushes aside disdainfully the severed heads of Bhagat Singh and Guru Teg Bahadur, two iconic figures of martyrdom, one martyred for the freedom of India from the British and the other, further down in history martyred defending the Hindu faith. The ex-PM is clearly the villain in the painting. The painting has the aura of the Jalliawala Bagh Massacre. In the background the tall Jalliawala Bagh Memorial is visible. There is blood in the sacred pool. Dark ominous clouds hang all over the sky. The press stands blindfolded. One miniature figure is the figure of Baba Dip Singh, a warrior who fought a loosing battle against the mighty Mughals for liberation of the Golden Temple in 1757 where he and his men were hopelessly outnumbered. Folklore has it that even when he was beheaded, he continued advancing and fighting with the sword in his right hand and with his severed head in the palm of his hand, wearing an expression of calm and serenity. Today he is a symbol of courage and martyrdom in Sikh history as well as folklore and ironically the Indian troops entered from the very gate where his painting adores the boundary wall. In this manner the past and the present, the personal and the political are juxtaposed. A key motif in the painting is the tradition of martyrdom. Those who were killed in the operation are not considered victims but martyrs in the long tradition of martyrdom. Blue and yellow also turn into colors of martyrdom.
This time the Other in this painting is not the alien Britain but the home state. 1984 reflects the anguish and outrage felt worldwide by the community which perceived the attack as an atrocity and a desecration whereas the Government of India as well as the main-stream media and the masses considered it an act of liberation of the Temple premises. The painting conveys the diaspora’s deep emotional attachment to its roots, however not national but local. From the point of view of the artists, memory must forever speak in order to eventually heal, a kind of Aristotelian catharsis or what Freud refers to as durcharbeiten (literally, working-through) so as to come to terms with the past.[9] They obviously do not see eye to eye with critics who consider the act of remembering as useless breast-beating and forgetting as liberation from the demons of the past.
This painting could also have been called Auschwitz.
The Finishing Touch[10], 1997
Artist: Rabindra
The lady of the house is arranging the peacock feather on the boy’s head who is dressed as the child Krishna for a fancy dress party. The proud father is capturing the scene on the camera. The frames of Buddha, Madonna and Sikh Guru are building one unit, the sacred and the profane happily co-existing side-by-side. Outside the threshold of the house a boy is waiting, dressed as the Superman, the threshold symbolically separating the two cultures.
The Funky Weekend (Absent Lover)[11], 2003
23 x 33 cm (9 x 13 in)
Artist: Amrit K.D. Kaur Singh
Many 17th century Indian ragamala (garland of music) miniatures depict the motif of Birha or the painful separation from the lover or husband. The young woman on the terrace would often be gazing sadly at the moon or the distant horizon, pining for her lover and maybe her women companions would be trying to comfort her. Amrit’s painting reinterprets this motif in the context of a modern relationship. The architectonics of the painting is interesting. It has a blue lining in green backdrop. The house gives the impression of floating in the air, as if it were straight out of a fairy tale. The composition is divided vertically into two situations and it is read from top to bottom; in the top one the woman is with the husband, in the other she is alone.
In the top half of the tableau the woman literally pushes her companion out of the house to his office. In the lower half, the aggressive wife is transformed into a relaxed being. She is enjoying the peace and tranquility in the house. The husband’s absence appears to have given her a welcome relief from the ‘storm and stress’ of married life. She relaxes on the sofa (somewhat like a reclining nude), in a soft pink nightgown and watches television. Cooking and longing for the male company are definitely ‘out’. Chocolates, pizza, red wine, magazines and TV are ‘in’. The 21st century woman is independent and happy in her own company, of course with all the comforts of her home. The painting, which has a humorous quality about it, turns the natural social order upside down. The roles of sexes are reversed, for she is active and he passive.
Interestingly, the woman in the painting is a blond, definitely not a representative of the artists’ community. The blond is the typical western stereotype of the blond bombshell, the sexy, dolly bird who is both flighty and frivolous and who likes the material comforts of life. The ragmala miniatures depict on the other hand, traditional Asian women, devoted and dutiful. The painting uses recognized cultural stereotypes to contrast the traditional values depicted in the ragamala paintings with the changing values in the modern society and the focus is on the western womanhood. Does the modern Asian woman desire or reject a similar set of values? Is the painting a subtle critic of the western morals? These questions are perhaps answered in other paintings where the Asian woman is always shown in relation to her family.
Structure and Content
Miniature art form (on paper, textiles, ivory, wood, ceramics, leather, marble) flourished in the Indian subcontinent in the medieval period under the royal patronage.[12] A peculiar feature of miniatures is that every detail is miniaturized so that only with magnification can one fully appreciate the whole work. Miniatures are today accepted as an art form of the past even in the contemporary art circles within India and one finds, at the most, shoddy mass imitations for tourists. The two British-Asian artists, Amrit and Rabindra, however, felt ‘a natural inclination’ for this ‘outdated’ Asian art form, and they adopted its techniques and colors, at the same time introducing several new elements and configurations which explain the continuity with and the break from the past. For example, the court scenes and hunting scenes of the past are replaced by contemporary anthropological signs and symbols, images and icons to make political and existential statements about the identities and experiences of the artists. The limited space of the canvas encompasses a whole world of cultural signifiers and the correlating fields of signified. The same is true of the colors.
Thus the artists constitute a discourse which represents a revival as well as a reinvention of miniatures. There is selection and rearrangement of elements which gives the paintings a new look. The traditional lyricism is toned down with a dash of wit and irony. The artists draw on the rich imagination of the medieval world and administer transformations on conventional motifs in order to evolve a new poetics of presentation which is an admixture of the traditional and the modern or post-modern, and hence the paintings bear the apt title PAST MODERN. According to Geoff Quilley,
[the] Twins’ art may be seen as quintessentially Postmodern. (…) their adoption of Indian miniature techniques could be treated as a form of pastiche and a collapsing of a past art form onto the present; their art is postulated upon hybridity, indeed celebrates such cultural cross-fertilization; it champions regional, communal and ethnic identities; and in its highly sophisticated use of multi-perspectival, multi-narrative compositions, it is surely an art that is highly discursive and self-reflective.[13]
In many ways it is a marriage of contradictions: Eastern with Western sensibilities, rural with urban, medieval miniature art with elements of calander art and kitch, and tradition with technology or modernity. The paintings of the Singh Twins could be classified in the new genre of ‘diaspora narratives’ where the immigrants dig into their cultural resources. This would also include cross-cultural cinema like Bend it like Beckham and Bhangra Pop music like that of Bally Sagoo or Dr Zeus. Bhangra music hit the UK scene in the 1980s. Earlier these folk songs and dances, intrinsic to the peasant way of life in the rural Punjab, were only part of marriage or Baisakhi celebrations. The second generation of British born Punjabi youth who had nothing to do with the soil and its tilling reclaimed this folk art as its ‘own’ and also transformed it. 16th century Punjabi Sufi lyrics are blended with English pop and Black music, dhol sounds are mixed with drum beats and the alchemy results in funky fusion music. The latest DJ techniques and slick videos have taken this evolution a step forward.
These cultural texts provide interesting anthropological insights into the diaspora mindset. The paintings represent a microcosm of the Punjabi-Sikh diaspora in England at the end of the 20th and beginning of 21st centuries. First a few remarks about the choice of miniature style. The miniature style is first and foremost a way of remembering because it conveys a pride in the cultural heritage and, secondly, an insistence of the artists to be accepted on their terms. On the one hand, the sisters pay a tribute to their inherited tradition and aesthetics, the artists who preceded them; at the same time they reject contemporary modern art in Europe and India, which they claim has lost its soul.[14] In that sense their art can be classified as committed, for it consciously strives to make political and social statements and seeks to change the prevailing status-quo of racial prejudices. Many of the paintings of the sisters revel in robust family life emphasizing the vitality of community-living as if the artists want to glorify Eastern collectivity vis-à-vis the individualism of the West. In fact the twins question the ethos of individuality in an age of fashion and peer pressure. (ibid) So they collaborate in paintings and exhibitions and also sign the paintings as The Twins, a conscious rejection of Western individualism. They also deliberately wear identical Punjabi suits, shoes and other accessories, in real life as well as in self-portraits as if the intention were to reinforce the idea of oneness or single non-Western identity despite dual or multiple influences. Thus the Western notion of the solitary artist is deliberately undone. It is clear that the twins want to distance themselves from the West. In fact, the artists have emphasized in various interviews that they attempt to construct positive images of the culture they have inherited in order to counter negative media images of arranged and forced marriages, abusive husbands and dominating fathers. They try to counter what they consider as stereotypical depictions of Asians as backward communities.[15] From their point of view, assimilation is an act of bad faith whereas adherence to tradition is good faith. Thus art becomes a political statement for the two British-Asian artists committed to their Asian background. Their art is a defense of their cultural identity vis-à-vis the stronger Other. It is another matter that in the process, the politics and intrigues of extended families and also the hardships, the pain and the scars associated with the uprooting are ignored and thus they end up constructing another kind of stereotype of happy joint families. It is hard to accept in today’s age that family empowers the self. Also there are so many social problems within the diaspora itself like the scams of fake marriages with locals as well as brides deserted in India which makes it hard to accept that the Asian family is only about love and affection.
The conservative response seems to arise from an underlying anxiety of the diaspora to hold on to the cultural roots that are in danger of slipping away without gaining a firm footage in the British or the European society. The diaspora avoids assimilation, often equated with betrayal, through continued identification with its homeland and the use of a socio-religious and cultural system different from that of the host society. Family gatherings thus become occasions for expression and affirmation of identities, not so much national but local or regional and religious identities. Group consciousness of ‘The Little Punjab’ (There are 500,000 Sikhs in the UK) is proudly announced and celebrated in the paintings by the Singh twins. Religious affiliations are important for immigrants who often go through difficult times and feel lost in the alien culture. For this very reason religion is also observed more rigidly and stringently in the UK than if the same people were in India. Religious and linguistic affiliations offer on the one hand cohesion but they can also becomes regressive as is clear from violent protests by Sikh groups against a play Behzti (Dishonour) in Birmingham, Dec 2004 forcing the theatre to withdraw it and a similar cancellation of MF Hussain’s painting exhibition in London, May 2006 under pressure from Hindu groups. In 2002 Hindu groups, dominated by Gujaratis, did not allow a film on Gujarat riots to be screened. This display of intolerance by the minorities gives a chance to the conservatives in the British mainstream to condemn these groups as ghettoised cultures representing ‘pocket-nations’.
But therein lies the curious paradox! Material success in the adopted country goes hand in hand with the minority community’s anxieties and sensitivities about growing up as Asians with a different skin color and a different set of values. The skin color becomes a social marker. The fear of losing one’s cultural baggage and dissolving into the mainstream or worse, being neither here nor there, is a big existential dilemma for the first generation of migrants firmly entrenched in its culture. A cosmopolitan city like London may represent ‘shared space’[16] in the street or at the place of work but the family space becomes a safeguard against the dominant culture and that is where migrant communities affirm to themselves the coherence of their particular pattern of culture, thought and social organization as an orderly whole and try to nurture and transmit that pattern from generation to generation. Family becomes a kind of emotional retreat. It is sad that there is no white face in any of the paintings depicting family festivities, which shows the isolation and segregation of the minorities. Some art critics have tried to present the paintings of the sisters as representations of a thriving multi-culturalism in England but this is not true. Most of the paintings do not depict any ‘sharing’ of cultures; they are more or less mono-cultural. Britain is officially a multicultural state and multiculturalism or cultural pluralism is a commonly used term but the fact of the matter is that a working or functional multiculturalism ideally implies a reciprocity and exchange of cultures, which can exist only when the various cultures are on an equal footing. In a society like the England or Canada with a distinct mainstream and the margin, it is the indigenous whites who set the cultural standards and the question of being equal players in the society does not arise. At the most they live alongside each other, in amity or enmity, each pursuing its own way of life. Because of the lack of interaction, each perceives the other as a cultural oddity.
However it is important to mention that the situation is not simply of non-whites pitted against the whites. The colored immigrants of African and South-Asian descent (Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Kashmiris and more recently Afghans with further subgroups of Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs and various linguistic affiliations) jostle for space and also bear hostilities against each other. There have been instances of rioting between the various migrant communities. Unlike the Chinese or the Arabs, the Indian diaspora is bound neither by a common language nor by a common religion. At the most, it is bound by a common liking for the Bombay films which is not enough. The whites similarly are also divided into British, Irish, Scot and Welch, and the middle classes and working classes, the latter feeling let down in the post-industrial phase. More recent is the ‘white’ immigration from east European countries like the ‘Polish plumbers’ who have virtually taken over the plumbing industry. This category of immigrants may be economically weak but in terms of skin color, looks, religion and way of life it is closer to the English. The Poles or the Slovaks are after all European, so they may not face the same existential problems. But what unites all the immigrants is there willingness to work hard for lesser wages whereas the locals are choosy and somewhat complacent.
Conclusion
Migration is painful, the sense of loss pricks all the time. An indifferent or a hostile environment, a silent apartheid further reinforces the desire to close ranks. Multiculturalism, once considered trendy in England (after the Holocaust the guilt-ridden European society accepted multiculturalism as a politically correct position), is now increasingly being considered a liability. The first generation of immigrants was meek and worked hard in order to establish itself, with a ‘don’t rock the boat’ attitude. They were wary of a direct violent confrontation and rightly so. But the second and the third generations are more confident. They are not worried about things like stay permits and citizenship and also not aware of the poverty they have escaped in their country of origin and hence they do not care if the boat rocks. Resistance and rebellion through remembering define the second generation of settlers. As the immigrants come out of the shadows and become more visible in political, social and economic life, the mood is gradually changing from victim mentality to assertion of their right to a respectable space in the general European life, a life of honor and dignity. Also it has the advantage of a certain distance, physical and psychological, from its roots. The Muslim diaspora may be more socially alienated than other sections of the diaspora, particularly with the recent ‘war on terror’. This paper has focused on the Sikh diaspora, which after years of militancy is now using art as a way of responding to the ‘racial exclusion’, ‘discrimination and disadvantage’[17] existing in UK. The twins’ art stands for cultural resistance, exploration and establishment of alternatives. At the same time there is also celebration of success and cultural heritage. The quest for identity or rather identities is clearly evident whether it is through painting, cinema, music or literature. However in the process, the artists have made the paintings so ethnic and exotic that they have ended up orientalising the Self.
The tensions in the civil society cannot be resolved within the framework of the majority and the minority, the mainstream and the margin and the centre and the periphery. They can only be resolved through interaction, mutual respect and co-operation. The process of negotiating differences is difficult but it can be a valuable experience, can also make one stronger and a richer being. This applies to all who consider themselves first as citizens and members of a civil society and then as members of their respective communities.
[1] In Germany similar sentiments are expressed by the term ‘Leitkultur’, referring to a ‘leading’ or a ‘guiding’ dominant, mainstream culture of the country to which all immigrants are supposed to adapt. This term was coined by the general secretary of the conservative German party, CDU, Friedrich Merz, in a paper on immigration, Nov 7, 2000 and it has generated much discussion and debate in the media.
[2] Steyn, M., ‘A Victory for Multiculti over Common Sense’ The Daily Telegraph, 19 July 2005.
[3] Dairymple, T., City Journal, Summer 2004.
[5] In the Western tradition, blue symbolizes melancholy. Picasso’s blue period and the blue flower in the German romantic tradition signify the same. In Japan, yellow signifies friendship. Yellow was Van Gogh’s favourite colour.
[7] Our Father retrieved 10 June, 2006 from http://www.sikh-heritage.co.uk/arts/amritRabindra/amritRabindra.htm
[9] Freud, S., ‘Erinnern, Wiederholen und Durcharbeiten’, in: Gesammelte Werke, ed. Anna Freud et al, Frankfurt am Main, 1999, X, pp 126-36.
Freud’s three-fold model of ‚Erinnern-Wiederholen-Durcharbeiten’ (remembering-repetition-working through) highlights the role of remembering the unpleasant, traumatic past which has been repressed by memory in order to work-through a reconciliation with the past. Freud calls it Versöehnung mit dem Verdrängten.
[10] The Finishing Touch retrieved 10 June, 2006 from http://www.sikh-heritage.co.uk/arts/amritRabindra/amritRabindra.htm
[12] Indian miniatures were favorite collectors’ items in 17th-century Holland. In the latter half of the 1650s Rembrandt made dozens of copies after Indian miniatures. These drawings could perhaps be seen as part of Rembrandt’s passion for collecting, particularly recording the exotic peoples. To some extent, Rembrandt westernized the portraits in terms of toning down the oriental opulence and giving the miniatures a sense of space and volume. There are around 40 Rembrandt copies of Indian miniatures, many of which are displayed in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
[13] In Singh, Amrit and Rabindra K.D. Kaur, Past Modern. Paintings by the Singh Twins, National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, 2002, p 12.
[14] “Fundamentally, modern art today has lost its soul. It does not communicate with the audience at all. It is all about self-indulgence of the artists themselves. We feel very strongly that art should not just be aesthetically appealing to the audience but should make some sort of social comment, beyond the essence of the artist, highlighting wider social-political concern.” (Radio BBC Interview with the artists, 18 July 2002)
[15] Kala Kahani:: The Singh Twins retrieved 26 January, 2007 from http://www.kalakahani.co.uk/12874.html?CPID=ab2c6e138784bf6aa78cebfbe6d7031f
[16] Hall, S., Divided City: The Crisis of London, Oxford: University Press, 2004.
[17] Ballard, R., ‘New Clothes for the Emperor? The conceptual nakedness of Britain’s race relations industry’ in: New Community, 1992, Vol. 18, pp. 481-492.
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This article was published in South Asian Ensemble A Canadian Quarterly of Arts, Literature and Culture, Vol. 2, Number 3, Summer 2010
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