Rummana Hussain (1952–1999) was an Indian conceptual, visual, and performance artist best known for her multi-media and installation-based work exploring "female subjectivity trapped in discourses of family, religion, nationalism, and welfare."
Hussain's work has been displayed in museums, and galleries worldwide, including Tate Modern (London), National Gallery of Modern Art (Mumbai), Smart Museum, (Chicago), Barbican Centre (London), Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (Mumbai), Fowler Museum (Los Angeles), Museum Abteiberg (Germany), Ackland Art Museum (North Carolina), Gallery of Mississauga (Canada), Asia Society (New York), Museum of Contemporary Art (Mexico), Tamayo Museum (Mexico), Queens Museum (New York), Vancouver Art Gallery (Canada), Rose Art Museum, (Massachusetts), Institute of Arab and Islamic Art (New York) and Talwar Gallery (New York) which represents the estate of the artist. Her work is part of the Queensland Art Gallery's permanent collection.
Biography Hussain was born in Bengaluru, India to a prominent Muslim family with aristocratic ancestry. Her paternal family, the Habibullahs, were taluqdars (also known as landed gentry) from Awadh's Barabanki district. Her father, Major General Enaith Bahadur Habibullah, was the first commandant of the National Defence Academy (Khadakwasla, Pune) and her mother, Hamida Habibullah, was a politician and social worker. She had two siblings: Wajahat Habibullah, a former Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer and politician, and Nazli Siddiqui, a medical professional.
From 1972 to 1974, Hussain studied fine arts at the Ravensbourne College of Art and Design, United Kingdom.
1980–1990: Introduction to the contemporary Indian art scene and explorations in figuration After completing her graduation, Hussain returned to India and married Ishaat Hussain, an Indian businessman and former interim chairman of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). Between 1983 and 1985, she lived in Kolkata, and worked with Paritosh Sen at his studio.
In the early 1985, after her husband was transferred to Bihar for work, Hussain moved to Delhi and joined Garhi Studios, a multi-disciplinary art space supported by the state-run Lalit Kala Akademi. During her four years at Garhi, she connected with other contemporary Indian artists, including painter Manjit Bawa, sculptor and textile artist Mrinalini Mukherjee, and mixed-media artist Navjot Altaf. At the time, contemporary Indian art scene veered towards the overarching trend of figuration that was principally ushered in by the "Baroda school" of painters, many of whom, including Gulam Mohammed Sheikh, Sudhir Patwardhan and Bhupen Khakhar, were affiliated with the Faculty of Fine Arts at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, but traveled to or lived in Mumbai. Inspired by the scene, Hussain began developing her own figurative painterly practice in alignment with her social and aesthetic concerns.
Owing to The Emergency, a 21-month period between 1975 and 1977 when civil liberations were suspended by Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Hussain, like many of her fellow artists, felt necessary to use figuration as a medium to "convey and interrogate issues central to the human condition, namely violence, corruption, ritualism and exploitation." She also believed that a "semi-sculptural, figurative form" would ensure that the art was accessible to all classes, and consequently achieve greater "receptiveness."
Mukherjee and Altaf offered critiques on Hussain's neoexpressionist figurations, with the former apparently openly reprimanding her for her "bad paintings." Hussain's preoccupation with German playwright Bertolt Brecht and Dutch-Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel directly manifested in her practice, and in her painting When Evil Doing Comes Like Falling Rain, Nobody Calls Out Stop (c.1989–90) that portrays hell and human suffering through a "fiery mountain of human heads and figures with bat-like wings flying over a congested, chaotic landscape."
Similar to the works of fellow painters Nalini Malani, Nilima Sheikh and Arpita Singh, her use of "myth, metaphor and allegory contrasted with stark modern-day reality to convey social messages." However, unlike these artists, she struggled to find the "exact visual language" to best express her concerns. In Big Fish Eat Little Fish-1 (1989), meant to be a "glaringly obvious criticism of Indian capitalist and caste structures," she painted two obscure figures rowing a small boat trying to cross "a murky, treacherous sea" while a "gargantuan fish consumes its smaller brethren." Similar preoccupations are observed in The Angel and Colaba (1990) that depicts a "shadowy, aquatic landscape" mirroring the fishing docks in Colaba, Mumbai, packed with "fishermen hauling carts of produce" as domestic animals and "gaunt, scantily clad figures" occupy the neighbouring street. Across the skies and "seemingly away from the grim situation below," a "bronzed angel with glowing, fuchsia wings" is seen carrying a "darkened figure of a woman."
Early 1990s: Transition to installation-based work and activism with SAHMAT After the 1989 murder of activist, poet and playwright Safdar Hashmi in Sahibabad, Uttar Pradesh, a group of more than sixty artists, curators, and writers, including Hussain, Manjit Bawa, Atul Dodiya, Subodh Gupta, Zarina Hashmi, Ram Rahman, Geeta Kapur, M. K. Raina, Vivan Sundaram, Bharti Kher, Pushpamala N., Nalini Malani, Nilima Sheikh, and Bhisham Sahni, formed the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust (SAHMAT) to promote "secularism and pluralism" in India through the arts. They staged "activist exhibitions," and mobilized "protest performances" across the country; their most notable campaigns included Artists Against Communalism (1991), a series of artist-led performances held in several cities, under which, SEHMAT mounted a touring exhibition Images and words: Artists Against Communalism (1992) comprising paintings, photographs, poems and statements from eminent artists. Hussain, who was living in Mumbai at the time, became one of SAHMAT's key local coordinators.
The late 1980s and early 1990s were marked by widespread communal violence and social unrest in India, culminating in the demolition of the 16th-century Babri Masjid in Ayodhya by Vishva Hindu Parishad and allied organisations. According to Rahman: "It was the most shocking thing that had happened at a national level in our lives. It really shattered our idea of ourselves, as a modern nation and a culture. And as artists who had a stake in that culture, it attacked every cultural mooring that we had." The demolition followed months-long communal riots across several cities leading to the deaths of 2,000–3,000 people; Mumbai was among the "worst affected" cities recording an estimated 900 deaths over six weeks. As the riots reached Mumbai, Hussain, fearing for her life and the safety of her family, removed the nameplate from outside her home, and sought refuge in a nearby hotel with her husband and young daughter. "It shocked her," Rahman recalled, "It was an invasion into her protected, personal space. Suddenly she felt as if her Muslim identity was being thrust upon her."
A few weeks later, in January 1993, Hussain participated in an interdisciplinary, seventeen-hour performance organized by SAHMAT, featuring Sufi-Bhakti music that originated during the eighth- and twelfth- century reform movements to promote "tolerance, spirituality and harmony between religions." The title of the Delhi-based event, "Anhad Garje (transl: the silence reverberates)" was inspired by the medieval poetry of Sufi saint Kabir. The following month, writing for The Independent, Hussain said: "It's necessary to emerge from our insular shells, to come together and try and develop symbols of secularism...a coming together of artists and viewers is a form of public participation, one that emphasizes the commonality of all." During the event, Hussain, accompanied by Sundaram and Altaf, created "a cosmic river in the sky" on the roof of the tented venue, and inscribed poetry and calligraphy on the walls.
Fragments/Multiples (1994) After returning from Anhad Garje, Hussain began working with terracotta pots to create "sensuous new installations" for Fragments/Multiples (1994), her first solo exhibition at Mumbai's Chemould Prescott Road, which memorialized the Babri Masjid, and "traced the ripple effects set off by its destruction across other sectors of human interaction than the politics of the Stale." In Dissected Projection (c.1993), six broken fragments from a terracotta pot, meant to represent the "shards" from the Babri Masjid, were placed on a mirror-topped rectangular box. Looming over the box was a "black, bisected pot" that "protrudes like a pregnant belly from the wall." A beam of light projected on this wall showed the "distorted shadows of the two domes, halved and shattered," serving as "ephemeral yet material reminders of the violent anti-Muslim pogroms, in particular, the riots in Bombay (December 1992–January 1993)." A transparent box sat at the foot of the installation, containing loose rubble to represent "the whole being splintered and abstracted," forcing the viewer to reckon with the destruction of Babri Masjid, and the subsequent "disintegration of the collective imagination of India." Many of her canvas- and paper-based pieces from the exhibition also incorporated the recurrent motif of the Masjid's dome. In Behind a Thin Film (1993), Hussain used indigo and earth pigment, as well as layered Xerox prints, to juxtapose the Tower of Babel with the "Hindu mob standing atop the Babri Masjid."
Hussain's other installations for the exhibition, including Conflux, Resonance, and Fragment from Splitting (all c.1993), also used everyday materials, such as broken terracotta pots, wood, mirrors, gheru (a red-ochre clay pigment), and neel (an indigo pigment used as a clothes-whitener), as recurring motifs of oppression. The "sombre palette" of "earth-red, cobalt blue, and indigo coalesce", according to Bharati Chaturvedi of The Indian Express, further "drives home the understanding between the woman and nature as a feminine force, as well as the politics of housekeeping." In an installation featuring indigo-pigmented fabric-pieces hung on a clothesline, Hussain drew a parallel between the manifestations of oppression in the colonial past (British exploitation of Indian indigo-growers) and the "free" present (unpaid housework being traditionally performed by women and girls) to showcase that "labour is always physical and violence first hurts the most vulnerable."
The iconography of the vagina occupies a specific centrality in Hussain's exhibited work; she uses it repeatedly, "as fissure, as source, as wound." In Tunnel Echoes (1994), she groups together five different versions of the vaginal form: "a pencil drawing; an ink drawing on paper, an etching; the zinc plate from which the etching was pulled; and a gypsum board bearing the solid image." Love over Reason and Yoni (both c.1993) combine "evocations of the female body" with "visions of scarred landscapes," using charcoal, neel, terracotta, and gherua on paper, to mirror "the violent intrusion of history into the realm of the personal, the intimate, and the sexual."