Eating El Dorado
2021
IVS – Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture
Amin envisioned Eating El Dorado as an epilogue to This Is Not Your El Dorado. He worked on the two simultaneously. He performed the latter in the courtyard of the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture four days after his return from Paris for a group show curated by Emaan Mahmud. The work included elements from his collaborative performance at the Cité Internationale des arts, including his Minotaur helmet, bird masks and elongated nails. Eggs—70 in all—were central to Eating El Doardo. While in the earlier work Amin and Lamyne M had inhabited the beaked and long-lashed masks to perform a solemn and sensuous ritual commemorating eggs, here Amin communed with the horned helmet to greedily devour them. In Eating El Dorado, Dostain Balach and Alina Sadaf Marri, their faces, arms and long curls dusted in gold, descended a flight of stairs. Wearing the aerial visors, the waif-like pair faced one another across two steel trays of eggs, making a series of harmonious gestures akin to a traditional Baloch dance. Amin, in the helmet and talons, pursued them down the steps, making guttural noises amplified by a mic. The two took turns feeding him raw eggs, which he hungrily took into his mouth, then spat out. Growling, he gathered more eggs in his nailed hands and broke them over his head. The yolks and whites ran slimily over his helmet and down the front of his black coat. Unsatisfied by their offering, he angrily smashed the remaining few before charging into the audience. The twin performances seemed to address our times. This Is Not Your El Dorado took place on the 20th anniversary of September 11, an event that brought loss, trauma and upheaval not only to America, but to the region where the artist lives. Eating El Dorado occurred in the midst of COVID-19, a pandemic that saw economic disparity yawn the world over.
