The Art of Collaboration

One of Donald Fels’s primary artistic strategies is to ask provocative and difficult
questions. Rather than seek a single answer, Fels prefers to allow people to come to their
own conclusions and relishes the myriad creative responses his questions generate. What
Is a Trade? provides virtually unlimited possibilities for raising questions about the
West’s interaction with India.

As a Westerner inserting himself into South Indian culture, Fels expected and found great
cultural differences that significantly impacted his ability to orchestrate the collaborative
project that became What Is a Trade? He believes that his first art form is performance,
by way of bringing people together to generate interpersonal exchanges—and that the
paintings are the documentation of these efforts. The cultural differences that Fels
navigated throughout the process included race, religion, language, class, and the
lingering effects of colonialism.

Fels’s experience working with Indian collaborators follows in a centuries-long history of

interaction between the West and India. Dr. Samuel Parker, Associate Professor of
Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at University of Washington Tacoma, aptly points out
in his catalogue essay for What Is a Trade? that the history of trade between India and the
West is complex and began centuries before Vasco da Gama’s 1498 voyage. Key
historical moments include Alexander the Great’s military excursions into India in 326
BCE, Hannibal’s crossing of the Alps on Asian elephants in 218 BCE, and the extensive
spice trade between Imperial Rome and India more than 15 centuries before Vasco’s
voyage. The West maintained limited contact with India through the Middle Ages, mainly
through the spice trade that was closely controlled by Arab and Persian middlemen.

What Is a Trade? is deliberately paired with Oasis: Western Dreams of the Ottoman
Empire from the Dahesh Museum of Art. Both exhibitions address Western conceptions
and representations of the East. Both raise questions about how these views affected and
continue to affect relationships and cultural exchange between the West and the East.