What Is A Trade? Donald Fels and Signboard Painters of South India

What Is a Trade? presents sixteen large-scale paintings that explore trade and globalization in India.

Fels’ conceptual starting point was Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama’s 1498 voyage to Malabar, India, in search of a direct route for the spice trade. This exhibition examines the legacy of that expedition more than 500 years later. Fels and his collaborators created the enamel on aluminum paintings in the style of hand-painted billboards (signboards) and Bollywood advertising. Most of the painters had formerly worked as sign painters. Until recently, all billboards in India were hand-painted, but digital technology has rapidly replaced this trade. The bright color palette and strong graphic narratives make visually arresting statements, capturing the Indian painters’ responses to the effects of trade and globalization.

What Is a Trade? is paired with the exhibition 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.