 Those
‘individuals’ who have the same designs tattooed on their bodies as those to be found on the skins of ‘tribes of low civilisation,’ do so divested of
the original socio-religious meanings and contexts. This game of reality and image is further reflected in the juxtaposition of the ‘real’ tattoo (which
is really only a representation, a facsimile) with the one on the T-shirt (which really exists but only as a skin to be worn as occasion demands). In
any case, both of them are only skin-deep representations on the surface of the photographic paper.
“He sat, in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam-Zammah on her brick platform opposite the old Ajaib-Gher - the
Wonder House, as the natives call the Lahore Museum.” These are the first lines of Kim by Rudyard
Kipling. It is the story of an orphaned, poor, white boy in India who became the protégé of a certain Colonel Creighton of the Ethnological
Survey. The colonel encourages his talent for spying and recruits him for the British Secret Service.
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Ponger’s From the Wonderhouse, however, contains not only this reference to the museum in India but resonates with more than
a hint of the wunderkammer, the cabinet of curiosities of the Baroque era which formed the basis of our institutional museums of today. Formally
the work also alludes to the same period, specifically to four works by Jan
van Kessel - Asia,
Europe, Africa and America which he painted in the years 1664-66. Each has a central panel and is surrounded by sixteen smaller satellite works
framed so as to produce a single unit. Each picture bears a title. With Africa, the centre panel is called The Temple of the Idols. Those surrounding
titles such as Canaries, Tunis, Mozambique, Tripoli etc. The majority of them show animals in various (believable and unbelievable)
activities but the painter was not averse to including a few mermaids (Cape St. Augustine) to liven up the proceedings. Ponger borrows the structure
and, by replacing the satellite pictures with film stills, encircles the centre with  21st
century chimera - reflected stereotypes, light-animated, imaginary figures and wish-fulfilling
dreams.
The film stills - from such feature films and documentaries as King Kong (1933); Die blonde Frau des Maharadscha (1962); Teufel
im Fleisch (1963) or The Disembodied (1957) - shift the work onto a different level of reality, destabilising the apparent documentary
character of the mise en scène central motif and at the same time indicating a way in which it might be read, as a confrontation with cultural
and gender stereotypes. |
