Oreet Ashery is a London based artist. Her work encompasses live art, video, sound and photography and has shown internationally in various contexts. Oreet is interested in the slippage between art and life and further mutations of current art practices. Her work uses politics of the body in relation to culture and location. She works across a range of media including digital video and image manipulation as well as live art, writing and Internet-based projects. Ashery's work deals with identity, and more specifically, the relationship between personal politics and social politics where the two merge, contradict and intersect.
The 6 weeks residency included 7 artists; 4 of us from China. Brazil and Scotland/NY and myself from Jerusalem/UK. We all lived together in a guesthouse that was comfortable and in a great area. We made our way to Khoj studios and office on a daily basis using auto rickshaw, the sense of travelling through the city was an experience in itself, of which we spoke and documented.
The other three artists were from India and I personally got a great deal from the exchange with them and feel very privileged to have met with them. Same goes for the people who work in Khoj and the Delhi based artist Anita Dube who is on the board and whom we met with on a regular basis. Meeting these people gave me a great opening into Current Indian culture, local concerns, thought processes, insight into the art world in Delhi and the issues that are currently relevant to it. I also got insight into the very complex history and the religious make up of India through many passionate conversations.
Apart from the meetings we held as a group in Khoj with or without other participants, there were also other activities as part of Khoj programming including talks, presentations and film screenings. Khoj felt like a very vibrant place at this point, as an alternative space to a more commercialised art spaces, where people from Delhi and abroad seem to gather up on a regular basis. Some of the discussions I took part in were the most passionate I have encountered in any of the countries I visited in the past or London where I live and work. I enjoyed the level of involvement people feel regarding art and performance.
At some point during my stay I went to a conference at the Goethe institute on counter culture where I met with Shuddha from Raqs media-collective, I ask him about Jews in India for some reason, and he gave me a quick and well informed over view, including the mentioning of Sarmad the Saint. I followed this lead and found out bit by bit about this 17th century saint. According to a small book in Hindi that I found he was born to a Jewish Rabbinical family in Palestine (although in another source says it was Persia) he came to India as a merchant, gradually became a Muslim but mainly a Sufi, he believed in direct contact with the divinity rather than any form of official religion. He fell in love with a young Hindu man Habichand and even though the authority and Habichand's parents tried to separate them, their love was stronger and eventual they were allowed to live together. Sarmad taught Habichand everything he knew about religion, poetry and translation. Sarmad became a known poet and a saint, a spiritual master. He used to walk naked, but people did not bother about his body- they listen to his wisdom. In 1660 he was beheaded by the last Mughal ruler Aurangzeb and was buried in Jama Masjid. I found his Tomb with the help of Hemant the residency coordinator who took me to a fascinating place in Old Delhi, one of the last letter press publishing house were the owner is researching and preserving the history of old Delhi and Jama Masjid.
The Sarmad's tomb is still visited by many worshipers. I really appreciated spending many hours with Sushil and Anusha and Rahul, the writer in residency at Khoj, translating and discussing the story and its cultural implications. I am very much hoping to get a proper translation of the Hindi book into English.
Since arriving back I got a book in English about Sarmad called Sarmad Jewish Saint of India, which has a slightly different approach to the subject. This is what I find interesting about the story, that it is so much based on myth and interpretation.
I had based my performance in Khoj on this story. The performance is an adaptation of the story told in eight letters written by Sarmad to his imaginary sister. In the performance I lie in the middle of the space on a box and "embody" the story through drawing, clothes and other props, whilst 8 people from the audience are sat around me and read the 8 letters.
In the open night I did the performance twice and felt there was interest and focus in the room and that it went very well. This story and the performance open up an avenue to whole new project I want to develop around Sarmad. For which I am very much hoping to come back to India and continue the great connections with the people I met. I would like to make the adaptation into a film. I am thrilled that the performance I did in Khoj was already invited to be shown in APT gallery in London, the Freud Museum In London and the Gay museum in Berlin. I am happy that the work I made and this initial research had a further life outside the residency where further discourse can take place.
With what degree of transversing would one be satisfied?
"Dressed as a conservative.... slightly shabby nearly middle-aged Jewish lower middle classmate. Oreet was out being tourist in Delhi. The act of gender crossing had shielded Oreet from the male gaze...'letting her be' for a while. Oreet had her portrait sketched...one could see that the portrait artist assumed Oreet was male...a sharply depicted angular jaw line sealed this observation. People dropped in to see what was going on...drawn in by the odd looking Jewish man and the cameras. A while later she returned to the artist, only this time with a Palestinian scarf over her/his head... This time s/he attracted much more attention. The catchy red and white pattern.... and the scarf gave her gender identity an interesting twist. Some of the onlookers could actually sense that it was a difficult portrait to sketch...and soon a small crowd gathered around the artist to watch him render the portrait. It was apparent that the artist was by now completely confused about Oreet's gender identity....perhaps even a little disturbed. This infact went on to affect the quality of his work.... at the end we got a confused sketch...." Rahul Bhattacharya
During the residency I also went to Dilli Haat, where I asked a street portrait drawer to draw me whilst I was dressed as Jewish Man and than to draw me as I was dressed with a Palestinian or Arabic Kafia. This is part of my interest in the cultural cross over between Judaism and Islam.
The visit as a whole was of tremendous importance to me. My work deals generally with cultural identity and cultural anxiety, visiting India give me a first hand experience into a non-western perspective, something I only experienced before in my birth place at the Middle East.
Now In England, where Asian artists form a very important part of the cultural diverse art scene and where I am currently mentoring a second generation artist from Punjab for Fierce performance festival, this experience seems fundamental to my development as an artist with interest in cultural diversity.
I an hoping to come back and develop the relationship further by trying to talk to the Live Art Development Agency and the Surry Institute, where I am a visiting lecturer, about the potential for some exchange programme, or a programme of Indian performance work visiting the UK.
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