In ‘red curtains opening’, Nihaal Faizal simulates the language of a search bar

Marking a porous boundary in the art exhibition titled red curtains opening at the gallery Chatterjee & Lal in Mumbai, on display is a row of eponymous dummy cameras that enact the closed circuit security imaging in creating the impression of surveillance, yet these are mere props in the action of securitising. Nihaal Faizal, an Indian artist, speaks of the present as his material for investigation as he looks into contemporary technologies and their resultant artefacts. The forms and scenarios that the technologies create are perhaps the aftermath or a series of gestures towards a sensorium to be read and unravelled by the viewer, as Faizal picks image-objects that behave as a stand-in.

The ‘stand-in’, as described by Faizal over the course of conversations across years and his oeuvre, is a potent device that he brings to life through the consideration of image technologies. CCTV or closed circuit television is perhaps the most ubiquitous imaging technology, ahead of mobile phones, and appearing as an authorless cluster of endless images as they take place through the hours and days, that are only to be read by machinic vision. The claim of the technology acts as a stand-in for an image of being safeguarded.

Speaking with STIR about his practice, Faizal says, “I find it often the case that my thinking is shaped and directed by the documents around me, that the things I come across lead to thoughts and ideas, as opposed to a thinking that then collects the documents suited to its navigation.”

In the exhibition, we are met with familiar images, belonging to the era of personal computing that which Windows XP brought, an operating system launched by the tech giant Microsoft in 2001 and eventually discontinued in 2014. Often re-witnessed through nostalgic imagery across the internet emulating the gloss of early multimedia explorations by users, Faizal instead explores the iconic default wallpaper images as de-authored landscape photographs on which he asserts his own authorship through the modality of rephotographing the images’ printed replicas. Through an elaborate set of processes, Faizal made the work originally in 2014, a month before the discontinuation of the operating system, by extracting the in-built original wallpapers, reframing the images to the contemporary 16:9 aspect ratio and photographing them with a flash camera. He mentions to STIR that due to his handling of the photo prints, his fingerprints along with the reflected light from the flash appear in the reshot images, which are shown in this exhibition. In this seemingly mechanical action, one can witness the gaze of the artist.

Faizal notes, “In the case of ‘Landscape Photographs’, I realised that the 'author' had been evacuated from these images, and a corporation had taken that place. By 2014 (the year I made these works), I had already spent a considerable amount of time trying to be a ‘photographer’, trying to assert authorship over this medium, and I had repeatedly failed at making an image that would function much differently than anything else on Flickr or Instagram. It was a double evacuation of the author that led me to making these images with the Windows XP desktop backgrounds.”

In exploring the iconicity of the images, the recurrently preloaded desktop screen that was viewed by millions, it’s also important to note that the original photograph eventually lost its author (Bliss, the most iconic image of the series was photographed by Charles O’Rear in California, 1996) once it was reconstituted as a symbol of the corporation Microsoft. What is emulated through Faizal’s images is the journey of a set of photographs, from lens to image, and back to the lens, and later, print. The iconicity of the images is also preceded by the proposition made by Windows, staying true to its name, as presenting an endless horizon that personal computing promised to be.

Faizal says, Landscape Photographs is an important work for me, because preceding it, for many years I was attempting to ‘master’ photography. I learnt darkroom techniques and Photoshop, worked with analog and digital cameras, and had already gone through many years of training myself to be a ‘better’ photographer (aided of course, by similarly titled magazines). It was out of great frustration that I made this work, but as soon as I took these pictures, I felt really free. I realised that I no longer had to make images that surpassed all the rest, and I no longer had anything to prove. Instead, I found great joy in looking closely at these images that already existed, and it was with Landscape Photographs that I began working with found images as a more focused practice.”

In reframing found images, Faizal finds his grounding, where he considers CGI and stock photos as stand-ins to what the image template supposedly promises. Thinking past the proposal of the meme, Faizal empties the signifiers–– the stage, the red curtain, and the screen–– of all forms. We are left to view the framing devices that are produced ad infinitum in the age of content, as with Four sexy girls hold a green screen at the beach, which in its own name imitates the templatisation of a search bar, scanning across thousands of stock photo websites. Seeing the ‘sexy girls’ in action in Faizal’s video work, we are able to reclaim a sense of realism in examining the visual within the investigative lens of an exhibition, where they each point at intervals upon cue towards the central green screen which they hold.