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November 20, 2007 12:14 pm
Shezad Dawood mashes and mixes references in his sculptures, installations, and paintings, all the while parsing the ingredients that create cultural identities. Born and based in London, the half-Indian and half-Pakistani graduate of the Royal College of Art has restaged scenes from “Blowup” and “Taxi Driver” as Bollywood films; he once occupied a five-story landmarked building in London as a home and studio, then sold the house as an installation through a real estate agent who was inadvertently acting as an art dealer. Now, in his first major London solo show, at Paradise Row Gallery, Dawood combines neon signs incorporating the Koran’s concept of the “99 Names of God” with tumbleweeds, a symbol of the American Wild West. We sat him down and asked why.
Why did you reference “Blowup”?
I was interested in the fact that an Italian director was attempting to recreate swinging London after the fact. This perverse desire for authenticity, yet always in translation, is at the core of my work. Ideologies, cultures—I tend to see the artifice in all of it; they’re all constructs in a way. Which leads me back to Antonioni, who notably painted all the grass green in the famous park scene in “Blowup.”
Is that hyperreal look what attracted you to using neon in your new show?
I’ve always been attracted to neon. As a kid, when I would go home to Pakistan, there’d be neon signs everywhere with Arabic script, which always gave it a kind of spiritual aura—something I try and take into the new neon works on a very formalist level.
In the show, you’re contrasting the neon signage with symbols referencing the mythology of the American Wild West. Do you think Westerns are still relevant representations of American cultural values?
They are American cultural values—and perhaps they embody myth or epic drama in a peculiarly modern way. That becomes universal, as we live without doubt in an American age.
Is there one film that you think best articulates America’s core cultural identity?
“The Searchers,” with its troubled and fractured identity. It has John Wayne as Ethan and another white actor playing a renegade Indian named Scar—who performs as Wayne’s psychic doppelgänger. For me, this is the quintessentially revealing American Western.
Is there one city or community that you uphold as a multicultural model?
London—that’s why I live here. I always think of leaving because of the expense or the weather, but anywhere else feels relatively like a monoculture. So no matter how many CCTV cameras are put up, on another level it provides a freedom I have yet to encounter anywhere else.
What do you think is the most significant piece of political art?
Waking up in the morning, and carrying on.
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