Tong Gallery+Projects is proud to present "Rubber People", the second solo exhibition of British artist Mark Nader with the gallery, which will showcase his latest works of painting and sculptures. The exhibition will last from September 21st to November 3rd, 2018.
Mark Nader: Rubber People
Text / Kirsten Cooke
On entering Mark Nader’s exhibition Rubber People you find yourself in a market hall populated with familiar, yet unusual artefacts. You have been transported into an alternative present, one in which the two great dynasties of the Olmec and the Shang were established global partners, you observe the hybrid artefacts produced by this pseudo-historical relationship and try to decipher their distinct cultural elements.
In his recent series of works, Nader’s artistic persona is reconfigured as a creative anthropologist, antiques hunter and coder of past histories that present potential alternative futures. Nader’s practice sustains an interest in the similarities between societies and is playful in its inquisitive interrogation of the academic tendency to locate difference. Nader’s concern with the areas in which societies intersect is timely, when we are witnessing a global trend in isolationism, and he seeks to produce artworks that celebrate transnationalism. Nader presents the audience with objects that are cultural mixtures, drawn from biographical references (Nader is half Mexican) and the local artefacts of the host nation.
Nader exploits the plasticity specific to the medium of painting, an approach which is suggested in the exhibition’s title, to propose a future inhabited by cross-pollinated iconographies. He works with surface and seriality to produce transitive and transcultural image forms that question the context of shared knowledge and the status of objects in an information age. Nader’s material interest ranges from the tangible to the intangible, as he researches the traditional glazes used in Chinese ceramics, visits and experiences the buildings he depicts, samples the tactility of the artefacts he references and searches the Internet for digital image fragments. Rubber People posits an alternative archaeological methodology, which challenges the traditional classification of objects by demonstrating similarities in form from different cultural backgrounds. As a result, Nader’s paintings immerse us in a parallel society whose institutions focus on what we share in common.
INTERVIEW
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KC: Kirsten Cooke
MN: Mark Nader
Mark Nader：I find it interesting that there is this current wave of cultural isolationism occurring in various different nations across the globe. However, the heritage of my family has given me an upbringing that rejects the possibility of a severed or pure culture.
KC: Your work tends to map a series of historical and fictional cultural intersections, from speculating on historical trade routes to hybridising indigenous masks. In your latest body of work, you have brought a new global character ‘food’ into your painted landscapes, what was the decision behind including this new element?
MN: The starting point of this project is two historic global dynasties, the Olmec and the Shang, and the inclusion of food is a progression towards a more contemporary global frame. We trade and share cultures through a complex range of transactions and these are depicted in the paintings through dough based products, as every country has a type of dumpling, bread or pastry.
The Mexican breads depicted are particularly interesting because they were brought in by the French, as well as having been influenced by lots of other older cultures due to the different colonial powers that have occupied the country. The breads depicted in the paintings share similarities with not only the French but the Portuguese and Spanish, so bread is a site of cultural hybridity.
There are also twinges of nostalgia intertwined with our relationship to bread, epitomised by childhood memories of home spun smells that suggest your mother culture’s bread is superior. For example, a friend used to get his baguettes from a specific small bakery in the French countryside when he was young because his family deemed them to be by far the best and he always reminisces about this cultural association. Breads are, therefore, these contemporary pots of contemporary and historical culture.
KC: Your examination of local cultures (which is exemplified through your concerns with nostalgia and the deployment of specific cultural icons) and global cultural transactions (depicted in the inclusion of trading or meeting places that act as backgrounds for the characters and artefacts which populate your canvases), also occurs within the selection of rugs you depict in your paintings, as they seem to weave together a ‘glocal’ (global and local mixture) history.
MN: This series of works draws on the research undertaken in the paper Did Ancient China Influence Olmec Mexico? by David Kaufman, which discusses the similarities between the Olmec and Shang dynasties.
The paper theorises whether the similarities are a result of analogy or homology and it considers two main strands: the first strand examines the elements on the basis that they are a coincidence (a genetic predisposition to certain shapes, forms and interests) and the second, considers the possibility that there was a genuine trading partnership between the two dynasties (that these two cultures did physically meet in the past). These dynasties are from the Bronze Age, so the paper also had to consider whether there is evidence for the type of trading path proposed in the second theory. There are further complications in the mapping of migration, as there are a lot of different speculations on how people began inhabiting the Americas. One possible migration route pictures people travelling from Mongolia, up to Russia then onto Alaska and back down to Mesoamerica.
This migration route would explain why the two dynasties share commonalties in language and iconography because they could have actually traded with each other. There are places in current day Mexico where the language does not sound Spanish and, of course, you have to consider that actually Spanish is a very recent language to be introduced to South America (C15th – C16th). In Mexico, some of these other languages sound more Russian or Chinese. This recent series of work starts from the point of imaging what if these two great dynasties did mix and trade? The resultant works become a historical-fictional account, which could be read as a conspiracy theory, pseudo-science or historical fact. I think this is interesting, in terms of whether we trust these speculations about the two dynasties. There is no proof and it is unlikely that there will ever be any proof because the dynasties occurred within the Bronze Age, so if there were boats, they would have been made out of wood and would not have survived.
However, even if the crossovers between these two cultures are a coincidence, I think that it is equally remarkable that there is a cultural double occurring at two distinct points across the globe. This produces further questions, which are embedded in the paintings; why are humans drawn to specific shapes and forms? What is it about human nature that holds so much resonance across national and cultural borders?
KC: Your examination of local cultures (which is exemplified through your concerns with nostalgia and the deployment of specific cultural icons) and global cultural transactions (depicted in the inclusion of trading or meeting places that act as backgrounds for the characters and artefacts which populate your canvases), also occurs within the selection of rugs you depict in your paintings, as they seem to weave together a ‘glocal’ (global and local mixture) history.
MN: This series of works draws on the research undertaken in the paper Did Ancient China Influence Olmec Mexico? by David Kaufman, which discusses the similarities between the Olmec and Shang dynasties.
The paper theorises whether the similarities are a result of analogy or homology and it considers two main strands: the first strand examines the elements on the basis that they are a coincidence (a genetic predisposition to certain shapes, forms and interests) and the second, considers the possibility that there was a genuine trading partnership between the two dynasties (that these two cultures did physically meet in the past). These dynasties are from the Bronze Age, so the paper also had to consider whether there is evidence for the type of trading path proposed in the second theory. There are further complications in the mapping of migration, as there are a lot of different speculations on how people began inhabiting the Americas. One possible migration route pictures people travelling from Mongolia, up to Russia then onto Alaska and back down to Mesoamerica.
This migration route would explain why the two dynasties share commonalties in language and iconography because they could have actually traded with each other. There are places in current day Mexico where the language does not sound Spanish and, of course, you have to consider that actually Spanish is a very recent language to be introduced to South America (C15th – C16th). In Mexico, some of these other languages sound more Russian or Chinese. This recent series of work starts from the point of imaging what if these two great dynasties did mix and trade? The resultant works become a historical-fictional account, which could be read as a conspiracy theory, pseudo-science or historical fact. I think this is interesting, in terms of whether we trust these speculations about the two dynasties. There is no proof and it is unlikely that there will ever be any proof because the dynasties occurred within the Bronze Age, so if there were boats, they would have been made out of wood and would not have survived.
However, even if the crossovers between these two cultures are a coincidence, I think that it is equally remarkable that there is a cultural double occurring at two distinct points across the globe. This produces further questions, which are embedded in the paintings; why are humans drawn to specific shapes and forms? What is it about human nature that holds so much resonance across national and cultural borders?
KC: It appears that you are constructing or imagining alternative pasts which simultaneously suggest an alternate future (or present), so there is a historical Sci-fi element to the paintings. Are you constructing a narrative through your speculations on these two cultures, suggesting that if they did merge in this way (or if this was accelerated in the past) then current day society could look very different?
MN: I can perhaps answer this by talking about the site in which the series of works will be shown. Tong Gallery+Projects space is a commercial space and, therefore, a trading place. I wanted to heighten this context by constructing an exhibition that emulates a contemporary museum or souvenir shop, which houses the artefacts I have been constructing from a pseudo-historical past. I have been producing a series of sculptural ceramic heads, which are Olmec heads that are treated with traditional Chinese glazes. I have researched and deployed traditional glazes used in Chinese pottery and then applied them to Mexican iconography; the result is very much a literal mixture of these two cultures.
There are six of these heads and they are relics of this Sci-fi history we have been discussing. When you enter the gallery space as a viewer, you become both a voyeur of this Chinese-Mesoamerican speculative past and an actor in its parallel present. You, the audience, have been pictured as coming to view the artefacts from this alternate history, which now by implication is your own past.
KC: As a result, your work appears to be coding an alternative global culture or aesthetics; are there any political motivations behind this methodology?
MN: I find it interesting that there is this current wave of cultural isolationism occurring in various different nations across the globe. However, the heritage of my family has given me an upbringing that rejects the possibility of a severed or pure culture. With roots that span from Mexico, Lebanon and the UK the identity that resonates more, is one that is global.
There is also a concern within my family that the current climate is becoming more hostile to immigrants. So it is interesting to look at these past global cyphers, which present shared interests in iconography and aesthetics that were traded. This cultural trading points to similar interests and shared qualities across cultures, which points to more similarities than there are differences across nations.
Kirsten Cooke： Every aspect of your work appears to be performing a global hybridisation in a time of isolationism, which could be seen as challenging the erroneous nostalgia for an autonomous nation state.
KC: Your paintings often depict trade on a variety of levels, through picturing various market places, drawing out the interconnections across cultural artefacts and through the paintings themselves (as objects of transaction they are sold in a market place and are disseminated across the globe). Every aspect of your work appears to be performing a global hybridisation in a time of isolationism, which could be seen as challenging the erroneous nostalgia for an autonomous nation state.
MN: I include historical architectures within my paintings that were often market places or sites of cultural exchange (through either the design of the buildings or their purpose, such as including palaces that were sites of politics) in my paintings. Of course, this is also tied up with colonialism, so I am not presenting the past as a utopian or egalitarian period with democratic transactions between cultures but neither are the paintings suggesting that it is possible to return to an original or pure nation state, as this has never existed.
My paintings disrupt this smooth rendering of a plausible isolationist culture without proposing a simple solution, so I aim to render the complexity of transnationalism within the series of works I produce and their relation to cultural hybridity.
KC: This ties in with the developments in your own practice, as your earlier paintings juxtaposed cultures so that they remained distinct and now they appear to be increasingly merged so cultural distinction becomes harder to read.
MN: The work is becoming more blurred because I am purposefully playing with the tendency to determine cultural difference through classification models deployed in museums (which can be incorrectly researched) but actually perhaps there are more similarities. For example, there are masks everywhere but they take on different forms depending on their environments, such as indigenous animals that are specific to the location of that culture.
However, the similarity here is the choice to depict animals and to perform a different role in relation to your environment. This is why Mexican wrestling masks and Chinese operatic masks can look so similar because they both deploy comparable mechanisms; to hide identity and play a character. I think deploying this hybridity encourages the audience to decode for longer and to even question the process of decoding. Posing questions, such as; are there original cultural codes? Is this plausible or even desirable?
KC: Yes, and in this sense you are a coder because you are encouraging people to decode an aesthetic language held in common. This is also prevalent in the material you collate, which can come from the internet, specific sites you have visited and sketched on location, to researching cultural artefacts. Of course, within this the internet is another global interface that is coded by the many as opposed to the few (although of course there is still censorship and larger systems of organisation).
MN: Well this is what is interesting because the information published on the internet is not necessarily produced by ‘experts’ so the cultural accuracy of this information can often be incorrect. This is what is particularly fascinating about Pinterest because people are seemingly oblivious to cultural specificity. The public can often post images of masks and proclaim them as coming from certain cultures but it is false information.
KC: So, is Pinterest like a contemporary ‘Cabinet of Curiosities’ a place to present your cultural capital but without too much reverence to the cultures that you are appropriating works from? And is this problematic, as the ‘Cabinet of Curiosities’ model (built by wealthy aristocrats who travelled and collected objects from across the globe) set up a colonial paradigm by constructing the notion of the Orient and Orientalism (as a blanket depiction of a wide range of nuanced cultures and societies) and enabled the colonisation of these countries, precisely because of the lack of specificity provided for the works and cultures. Is your practice at risk of reiterating this model?
MN: Yes, it’s a difficult tightrope that I am trying to construct here because although I don’t support a colonial treatment of artefacts, I also think that cultural ownership is problematic and leads to issues of originality. The latter of course defines a culture through its specificity and difference, so its ability to isolate itself from the globe and also, historically artefacts have been attributed to the wrong cultures by experts. Therefore, I know it is contentious but I do not think that it is an issue if people make mistakes in citing the origins of artefacts because there are a lot of similarities between cultures and I am interested in what we share in common.
KC: Your practice appears to cross several spheres, from being a studio based practice, to a site-specific practice in the construction of the exhibition environment, but also a practice of dissemination that then releases the distinct objects that make up the install off and around the globe.
MN: Well, it’s a market place, so I am repurposing the site to exaggerate this cultural crossover and dissemination. My intention isn’t to construct a theatrical platform for the work, by draping rugs over the table for example, but I am aiming to produce a paired down aesthetic that suggests a market. Of course this could change when I get into the space and try these different approaches out. I primarily work with paint because it is a useful material with which to present these cultural crossovers. I have been previously asked why I don’t use the found material or photographs that I sometimes work from and my response is that the digital image loses some of the material attraction that you get with painting.
You’re partly engaged with my work because it is a painting practice and the historical narrative is there – the canon is embedded in the medium. I am beginning from an 18th domestic painting stance and this is familiar to a lot of people and so you’re lured into this traditional frame. It again poses questions of authenticity and tradition, engaging people through a familiar medium but encouraging them to question its authenticity.
Again, painting occurs across most historic cultures and if the work was presented digitally then you wouldn’t get across the idea of it being an alternative historical culture (through the notion of processual time at least). Also, with painting it is clear that the author is already implicit in the manipulation of material; it already nods to the ability to conjure or fiction scenes and environments. As a painter, I am seduced by the transformation that occurs each time you repurpose or repaint an image.
I’m also interested in the research into materials that the three-dimensional objects have initiated within my practice. For example, the Greeks brought over new casting and sculpting technologies to China and, as a result, you get these Greco-Chinese sculptures. I am exploring these hybrid processes through some of the figurines I am producing for the show.
KC: In terms of your methodology of working within series, do you have several series that you are working on for this exhibition and if so, what are the defining characteristics of each series and how do they relate to each other (or not)?
MN: I have a series that imagines the trading locations which could have housed the cultural transactions between the Olmec and Shang dynasties. These include the architectural backdrops, market stools, iconography and the goods that might have been sold. I then extrapolate elements from these scenes to focus on through different series.
For example, food becomes a focus for a series and one specific element is expanded on, in this instance bread, and I begin to explore the colonial histories of bread within the respective dynasties. Another series focuses on the artefacts that are being exchanged and sold out of what look like vitrines. So I started to research and build the sculptural figurines, which again are the amalgamations of the two dynasties. I am exploring how we classify the cultural artefacts depicted; experimenting with the audiences encounter and whether we attempt to decode these objects as coming from distinct cultures.
KC: Referring back to my second question that mentioned the rugs as a device for mapping the local and global, why do you deploy rugs specifically and how do you choose the different patterns?
MN: Well, the rugs started off as more generic and are now becoming more specific to Mexico and China in their design and patterns. I have always used rugs in my paintings because they depict the ‘silk road’ and the influence of rug design in forging trade routes, as well as communicating local geographies and cultures.
In Mexican rug patterns, for example, they are using geometric forms to represent key figures in the local environment; large triangles stand in for mountains, corn is depicted through more detailed congregation of triangles and squares suggest the ocean. Again it is familiar and unfamiliar, there are shared iconographies so we have different descriptors but they start to merge because they are trying to communicate a similar narrative.
KC: Finally, what is the title of the exhibition?
MN: The title of the exhibition is Rubber People and this reflects a concern with the process of translation, which is embedded in the process of decoding required to interpret the hybrid forms in my work. Olmec is translated to mean rubber people in Nahuatl, which was the language of the Olmecs. The Nahuatl language is pictorial and could be argued to share similar symbols to Shang dynasty’s early forms of the Chinese language.
This proliferation of multiple meanings, as a result of an array of possible translations, appeals to me in the repurposing of the word. This echoes the fusion of artefacts present in my artworks, which would also disintegrate without the cross-cultural translatability of the images. Rubber People also emphasises the plastic approach I have to cultural artefacts and the plasticity in the medium of painting, which enables me to play with the coding and decoding of transcultural iconography.
