Rummana Hussain

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. 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." Hussain, who was living in Mumbai at the time, became one of SAHMAT's key local coordinators. 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. 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." 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."

Besides Chemould, Fragments/Multiples was also showcased at the Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai and later travelled to the Little Theatre Group (LTG) Gallery, New Delhi. Altaf praised the "conceptual and symbolic elements" of the exhibition, which, according to her, "borrowed from feminist concerns regarding the language that a work of art produces." Soon after, Hussain (Rummana) travelled to Ayodhya with photographer Ram Rahman to document the "residues of violence and the architectural remains" of the Babri Masjid. In her next exhibition Home/Nation (1996) at Chemould, she combined "various features and media in an assemblage of semitheatrical elements" to explore the "overlaps of femininity and community, and domestic and public spaces, and to the kindred repetitiveness of Sufi chants and kitchen chores." The seminal installation, creating a partially immersive environment, conflated the two terms–home and nation–to "indicate the growing contradiction buried in the promise of belonging." The installation "wonderfully and effortlessly evokes the principles of gestalt psychology" to resurrect the regent of Awadh (1857–1858), a Joan of Arc-type figure, who participated in the Indian Rebellion of 1857-58 against the East India Company after her husband Nawab of Awadh Wajid Ali Shah was 'defeated' and exiled by the British to Kolkata. She briefly regained control of Lucknow during the period of resistance, before the British captured both Lucknow and Awadh, forcing her to retreat and seek asylum in Nepal. The backdrop of Hussain's eponymous installation is set against the Urdu narration of the life of the "forgotten" Indian revolutionary, detailing "the estrangement from her husband, her defense of the Hindus and Muslims of Lucknow and her eventual flight from her home." A monochrome archival imagery of "palaces, swords and paintings" is juxtaposed with Hussain's performance, where she positions Hazrat Mahal as her fictional ancestor and mirrors the gestures from the frequently-reproduced drawing of the regent. Indian art historian Geeta Kapur said that "with this playful fiction," Hussain aimed to "cross the threshold of the female as potential insurgent into an outright feminist." Commenting on the other elements of the exhibition, Kapur said that Hussain "replaced the feminine in the field of the fetish" to create a room-size mausoleum for the Begum. What appears to be calligraphic text on the walls of the exhibition is revealed to be a "poetic arrangement" of found iron tools and implements," arranged with "extraordinary ingenuity and precision to offer, what would be, a hard won prayer—of the wounded; a prayer that is more real for being inscribed in a mock alphabet." Layers of dark drapes hang from the ceiling on one end of the room, "bound together at the base to form overlapping triangles," with the other end displaying sculptures of "halved, whitened papayas" lying on a "bed of bleached, raw rice." These "fertility metaphors" are accompanied by "tokens, secret wishes, and mannat (prayer)" in the form of taveez (a religious amulet believed to provide protection and grace to the wearer) and other "unclassified votive objects." Surrounding the perimeter are blackened, rusted iron tools disguised in Arab-Persian calligraphy, and gold and vermillion paint. A "deep humming sound" resonated throughout the installation, "possibly tantamount to the eternal sound of the universe." Her art was also shown as part of a group exhibition, The Imaginary Institution of India at The Barbican in 2024.

Symbolism According to art curator and scholar Swapnaa Tamhane, Hussain made a distinctive shift from allegorical and figurative paintings to multi-media works in an urgent response to the politics of the day. Being a secular Muslim from a cosmopolitan family with deep political influence, she suddenly found herself being isolated by a discriminating society. Despite her association with conceptual art, however, Hussain's work remains grounded in the physical using, rather than ignoring, the "sensuousness" of the various materials that make up her installations. Critics often reference this emphasis on materiality in the discussion of the social, specifically feminist, concerns of much of Hussain's oeuvre which acknowledges female corporeality as its starting point. Several of her video and performance-based pieces, for example, center on her own body–a tactic that positions her work at a unique juncture between the political and personal, the public and private. Art historian Geeta Kapur said that Hussain "makes [female and religious identity] matter in a conscious and dialectical way […] she not only pitches her identity for display, she [also] constructs a public space for debate." Her work both establishes an effective relationship with the viewer, and challenges him or her to act.

Around 1993–1994, Hussain began to question her use of materials like paint and canvas, and intentionally gravitated towards "domestic" materials found in the home used by the "unaccounted for, unrepresented labour force of domestic [women] servants," such as washing detergents, chopping knives, cloth, or food. Her performances, Living on the Margins (1995), Textured Terrain (1997), Is it what you think? (1998), and In Between (1998), all contain materials that continue from one performance into the other. Hussain's repetition or imagery and recycling of materials presented in non-hierarchical modes of display became part of a language she used to articulate the process of understanding her own identity and position.

Personal life Hussain was married to Ishaat Hussain, an Indian businessman and former interim chairman of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). They had a daughter, Shazmeen, who was married to Indian filmmaker Shaad Ali in 2006; the couple divorced in 2011. Hussain has one grandchild from Shazmeen's second marriage to Rustom Lawyer.

In 1995, at the age 43, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, following which she underwent a mastectomy in Mumbai, and flew back-and-forth to the United States to receive further treatment.