Bayjoo and Vandy
Shiraz Bayjoo and L.R. Vandy’s new exhibition, Bayjoo and Vandy, brings together these two UK-based visual artists for the first time. Featuring new work from recent projects, the exhibition will highlight their shared interests and themes as well as including new site-specific work produced to mark the occasion of this first collaboration.
The act of reclaiming is significant in this exhibition, and resonates heavily in both Bayjoo and Vandy’s work. Found objects and furniture are incorporated into much of the work - munitions boxes, old aircraft parts, dolls, maps, a chest of drawers, a table and more. These objects offer the haunting presence of another time, an aura of unfinished business or unattested histories. But the theme of reclaiming moves beyond the surface of the materials, shaping much of the conceptual underpinning of the show.
In Bayjoo’s work we find archival images of Mauritius’s colonial past emerging from the crackled paintwork of old desks and the wooden veneer of reclaimed chests. In a set of drawers, archival maps of Mauritius swell like a set of lungs exposed as territory to be conquered for resources. Elsewhere we find bows of ships looming towards us in their quest for trade while in other works we see Ghandi touring Mauritius in a military Jeep. Recent film works (sketches for a longer film that the artist will be producing in 2015) reveal the legacy of the colonial lifestyle in the decaying wealth of the buildings and architecture. Accompanying us through the film, is a mysterious figure, carefully guiding our attention toward details, or evidence perhaps, of the colonial presence reasserting its claims on the historic identity of this small island.
Bayjoo’s practice often engages in questions surrounding the reclaiming of rights, sovereignty and territory and this body of work is no different. In 2013, in a world supposedly released from the shackles of imperialism, Navinchandra Ramgoolam, the prime minister of Mauritius, re-entered negotiations with his British counterpart David Cameron about returning to Mauritius the sovereignty of the 54 islands of the Chagos Archipelago. This spectre of empire hovers menacingly in the background of Bayjoo’s project.
The anthropological gaze is reclaimed in LR Vandy’s work and returned to us with playful aplomb. By placing specific cultural artifacts, notably caricaturish representations of Black people, in custom-made display cases, Vandy references the violent history and legacy of anthropology and makes this violence the object of her work.
A small naked doll bulges out of a frame fashioned from an aeroplane window, its face magnified by a large convex lens. In moving towards the work, the doll veers about within the lens as if mocking your gaze. Another character, ‘Dapper’ peers through a slit in a rusty case, his fixed smiling expression taunting his viewer and challenging them to come closer. In another work a robot with a grass skirt stands defiantly in a box that appears to have been attacked with spears; and in a tall munitions case, a single brown eye stares provocatively through a crowd of steel nails.
In highlighting the anthropological gaze and its history of categorizing and objectifying people, Vandy performs a retaliatory reclaiming act of objectification. This reclaiming act playfully toys with the absurdity of traditional anthropology’s vision of the world, raising questions about its impact on identity and culture today.
In this collaborative exhibition, Bayjoo and Vandy have created a series of works that change reclaimed objects into acts of reclaiming history.
The exhibition space becomes a space of strange historical re-enactment where the main players are objects challenging a scene from a differing perspective, defining themselves as new narrators of historical vision.