artviews

Interview - Saba Hasan

2012-02-08T20:56:00.000+05:30

What vision do nails, words, fabric, leaves, plaster, memories and glue meshed together paint? Gopika Nath interviews abstract artist Saba Hasan, revealing the persona and politics enmeshed in her process.

GOPIKA NATH: A rapid change in India’s economic development has altered the physical and cultural landscape of our cities, but you choose not to dwell on these facets.

SABA HASAN: I am certainly aware of conflict. It doesn’t matter if it’s specific to any place. My interest is the mind, the heart - factors which are there irrespective of the location.

GN: The mind and the heart are located within physical and cultural dimensions, they always have a context.

SH: My material indicates cultural elements. I use everyday materials like jute, rope, plaster, nails or even the Urdu text. When I use a nail as opposed to a colour I am calling your attention to an alternate utterance, carrying the voice of the material itself. The experience of a nail could suggest pain, violence or construction. I love abstraction because I have the freedom to give the viewer the space to interpret my work in their own way.

GN: Who among the abstract painters have inspired you?

SH: Somnath Hore, Mark Rothko and perhaps J. Swaminathan. All three are restrained, they never over-state.

I love Rothko’s obsession with death. When I first saw his work I got goose-bumps. I felt that passage you make from our world into the other mysterious but magnetic world.

Somenath Hore, says so much with so little; reaches such depth with great simplicity and this is something I feel I have achieved.

Swaminathan brings in ordinary elements, using material that is not that different from what I use. It makes his work very powerful.

GN: Your canvasses have a heavy impasto quality using unusual materials. Can you elaborate on this and your choice of materials?

SH: I was painting monuments. The idea was not to paint walls but construct a space for reflection. I began with burning, then using plaster. The logistics of working with plaster led me to cement. I could create cracks. I wanted to bring tension onto the surface. I found some rusty nails – they seemed to have a voice. The different materials are like alphabets. It’s also about how I use them, whether I hammer the nail in or I put one beside the other as if it’s a path taking you somewhere – like when you die you go from one world to another

GN: Could you elaborate on the violence in your gestures as you work?

SH: Initially perhaps there was burning and then slashing of the canvas and then the hammering of nails. But every slash gets stitched - everything gets healed. There is an attempt to heal and find a certain resolution. This is important for me.

I really don’t believe in violence or destructive acts but in the universal Sufi thought sulh-i-kul [peace with all].

It begins with burning, then there is resolution – there is calm – may be its abstractionist– but that does not mean it is art for arts sake. I want to take a position.

GN: Is the process cathartic?

SH: Yes,

GN: Do the elements of violence and protest arise from your being a Muslim and the way the world views this today?

SH: As one of the elements, yes. I am not a believer of any formal religion and I have a split relationship with Islam.

You look at the painting and you think there is a protest, there is conflict, resistance. There are wrongs in this world, I do protest. There is also survival and a sense of calm.

People look at the work and confront deep tragedies or fears and yet they feel the work also lifts them out of that abyss.

GN: How do you deal with a process that is fragmented? [Working on multiple canvasses simultaneously]

SH: Its not as if you have one thought and another – art is my whole life and experience – not that today I am thinking that the wall is crumbling and on the next canvas I think how beautiful the flowers are; because I think about them simultaneously. One canvas has a thousand thoughts and feelings. I distil my entire life’s experiences in my work.

GN: How much time does each canvas take to complete?

SH: 6 months to 2 yrs and a life-time.

GN: Can you explain what you undergo in the process?

SH: I experience complete exhaustion – sometimes I can’t move for days after. I put my entire being into it and get drained. While I’m working my mind is not cluttered with any thoughts – certainly not about a socio-political, objective reality. I do not bother about all that; it’s my heart that’s at work. I only let emotions affect the way I work.

My expression is visceral. It could be a reaction to my mother not being well, a tragedy or some minor disturbance. It’s not that I think about these things, I just let my heart do the work. It’s more about the emotion than the cerebral

GN: The inclusion of Urdu text, you’ve said is “your personal resistance to the global wave which builds upon the cultural image of a backward, narrow minded Muslim jumping into action while wielding weapons of terror”. Are you speaking here as a Muslim?

SH: Urdu is my mother tongue; what I heard as a child and learnt the sound of. I use it for its visual beauty, rich linguistic fibre, nuanced and complex poetry and because it is an Indian language. I use words of contemporary writers, poets, family and friends as reflections of the world as we live it. I provide glimpses from our daily life, concerns of people in Kashmir, Delhi, Bangalore, tribes of Madhya Pradesh, extracts from real conversations, interviews and my letters; all collated to reflect the shared Indian experience, our basic philosophical oneness.

GN: You have said “that Art and life are for me simultaneously about the personal as well as about cultural contact, about experiencing the other.” You are married into a Hindu family, how has your art has been informed by this experience?

SH: My husband and I are not religious people. We don’t practice either of our faiths. We rebelled against tradition long before we got married. Socially however, it is interesting, because during partition, my parents chose to stay in India. They were active participants in the freedom movement. They did not believe in another nation based on religion.

Amit’s father and grandparents were from the North-west frontier. They had to forcibly leave and take refuge in Delhi; they witnessed the real trauma of partition.

When we got married, our families found healing way beyond political divides. This reaffirmed my faith in humanity and the power of love.

GN: In letters from Baton Rouge [2006] you said – “My generation has been long grappling with issues of ego, identity and heterogeneity of cultures” How do you express such issues visually?

SH: I am currently working on a project revolving around the burqa ban in Europe which just deals with the symbol of oppression, not the actual oppression; infringing upon a woman’s right to choose. I find it particularly offensive that for centuries women were coerced to hide behind the veil and today they are being coerced not to wear one. Neither the fundamentalist nor the democratic mind has learned to respect individual choice.

I have however, been most troubled by death, natural or as a result of wars. I am always confronting that point in my work. I wonder if suicide is the ultimate art performance and a grave the ultimate installation.

GN: At the end of your day, after many hours working through a rather intense and rigorous process, what do you feel?

SH: Physically I feel completely exhausted; mentally however, I am usually on a high. I am quite obsessive. The mind can’t stop ticking even after long hours in the studio.

GN: Do you have greater clarity about issues, you started out with?

SH: Clarity comes only when I immerse myself in the work. I don’t believe in thinking the entire project through, but leave room for discoveries while at work.

In addition to the studio hours, I read a lot, discuss ideas, jot my thoughts down, or just play with materials - be it plaster, paper, leaves or even sound.

Living next to the Notre Dame in Paris, I recorded the bells ringing every half hour. I’ve also recorded the ocean waves near my house in Goa and sounds in a grave yard.

GN: You have said that “Ultimately it is only we who can infuse our lives or art with new meaning”. What does art mean to you? What new meaning have you in particular tried to imbue your art with, and how and why?

SH: Art is my experience; a visceral, emotive response to the world in a somewhat dream-state with a sense of timelessness.

Each work is a complex thought construct residing in a universe beyond the palpable. This happens if I immerse myself so deeply, that my art is like meditation. At this point I feel I have successfully communicated the intended.

I depend a lot on accidents and keep an open mind to the outcome. Abstraction is best suited for this freedom and open mindedness. It allows me to deal with the complexity of my intention and frees me to develop my own signs of communication. My viewer too is a participant, in that he is free to interpret this vision with his own twist of experience.

Art is as powerful as the knowledge and instincts of the artist and the mind of the viewer.

The Sorrows of the City of Joy - Leena Kejriwal [review]

2011-09-29T17:40:00.000+05:30

Leena Kejriwal’s installation of photographs, Entropic Sites, curated by Shaheen Merali at Shrine Empire Gallery, New Delhi, from the 21st of January to the 21st February, 2011, presented an intriguing study of the city of Kolkata. Superimposed photographs were hung from the floor to the ceiling. Speaking voices from a documentary on human trafficking jarred with their American accents. Hung light bulbs in the centre of the room evoked an atmosphere rather than illuminate the works on the walls packed with images of Subhash Chandra Bose.

The coloured photographs were re-worked to create caricatures or ghostly ‘absent presences’ of people. An empty cubbyhole added to this, while the disembodied voices created a sense of displacement. Babu on the Terrace augmented this sense of dislocation, where a Babu was seen on a Victorian terrace overlooking a crowded, middle-class residential complex. Dressed in dhoti and kurta, wearing a supercilious expression, he seemed to look into the horizon. The sky above was covered with menacing predatory birds. Kejriwal probably intended to depict the arrogant Babu preying upon a disputable inheritance and through the solarized images she probably intended to comment on the carelessness of the upper class Bengali gentry.

However, the inclusion of a documentary on prostitution in the show confused both the intent and content. Its pertinence was lost thanks to the overloaded commentary. If Kejriwal intended to evoke guilt, she failed, revealing instead, that such complex situations require greater objectivity and sensitivity in selection and presentation.

An Inscrutable Legacy - Tyeb Mehta [Review] Vadehra Art Gallery

2011-03-28T22:11:00.000+05:30

On a cold January evening, at the Vadehra Art Gallery in Defence Colony I was engulfed by large canvasses in warm hues of orange, reds and brown contrasted with white or off-white. In ‘Triumph of Vision’, an exhibition of works by Tyeb Mehta curated by Yashodhara Dalmia, his famous Mahishasura’s were well represented and of particular interest were the early drawings. In’ Trussed Bull on Richshaw’, 1994 [152.5 x 122 cms] Mehta’s almost ascetic approach to painting was striking with its almost imperceptible modelling of colour and stylistic rendition of the bull. The rest of the canvas was painted flat in colours of maroon and bottle green as deep umber surrounded an almost stark white bull, lying on the rickshaw, as if tied. There was nothing that seemed to tie him down except for the sheer agony that pervaded the entire contorted form. Intrigued by imagery that was so restrained in expression despite portraying a heartfelt angst, presented through the plight of a mute animal, I studied this canvas for a long time. The poster-like design and stark composition was inscrutable and the equally inscrutable catalogue essay did not reveal much either.

A retrospective exhibition presenting the work of one of India’s foremost painters, with a social, political and emotional perspective, far removed from the present, should have been presented as more than just an ordinary exhibition. The drawings did provide some context, but his early works, though printed in the catalogue were not on display. Besides this, there has to be much more archival material available that could communicate the significance of Mehta’s work, beyond its mere visual appeal.

On an adjacent wall, was a ‘Mahishasura’ painted in 2001 using acrylic on canvas[183 x 153 cms] in vibrant tones or carmine and vermillion with shades of beige, black and a rusted maroon. Continuing my silent dialogue with the canvasses, I wondered how the artist had painted with such minimal fuss. Admiring the sparing marks I looked for references for evolution of his rather distinctive iconography. The catalogue text informed that Mehta renounced the family business to join Sir JJ School of Art, in Mumbai in 1947. This was also the year of India’s independence: a freedom hard won that paradoxically lamented the severing of the nation into two parts, where brothers once, now killed each other, believing they had a different God. I shuddered to think that not much had changed. It is January 2011 and similar battles ensue. Although these paintings are relatively recent; the drawings ‘Trussed Bull’ [1955] and ‘Bull’ [1955] indicate that the trussed-up bull as a metaphor evolved somewhere in the 1950’s. The forms then, were not angular but the economy of line that would become synonymous with Mehta is evident.

Contemporary Indian art is lush with opinion and expression. Artists have turned social commentators and performers. The diversity of ideas around us is chaotic, making the minimal marks of Tyeb Mehta appealing yet confounding. This is after all a part of our cultural and visual inheritance, so how did such ascetic expression, one that evolved at a hugely traumatic time for the nation, give way to such cacophonic confusion in the present time? There was clearly something to be learned as also something almost unreal about the work. Was it cold indifference and not emotional restraint? But the angst was also evident. I looked deeper. Was there more? ‘The Fall’ painted in 1974 [150 x 125 cms] seemed to be a turning point in Mehta’s oeuvre and thereafter the marks and expression were fine-tuned with an almost obsessive deliberation and unwavering discipline. On the surface it appeared that the artist had not explored anything beyond this phase. One wondered why.

Many have grown up in a time that did not see the traumas of partition and the agony of this has also been little spoken of by those who lived through that age. As a nation the collective pain was such that everyone seemed to have just put their energies into getting on with the business of building a nation, without looking back. Did they do us an injustice in not sharing in a personal capacity, what they saw and experienced? Were they right to shut out their pain? Could they have done it differently? Questions such as these that emerged as one looked at Tyeb Mehta’s works. I could not relate to them emotionally but when seen through the eyes of his time; through ‘Kali-I’, 1988 [150 x 125 cms] painted in a posture that seemed pregnant with abuse, realization dawned of what may have compelled him turn ascetic. Is it then, almost as a reaction to this that we are perhaps so verbose today?

The painter is significant for more than the paintings he did. This exhibition raised many questions and presentation of this body of work should have taken into consideration the value of Tyeb Mehta, not just in his capacity as a painter, but as an integral part of every contemporary Indian’s artistic inheritance. For appreciation by generations that come after the iconic times he and his contemporaries painted and lived in, this body of work needed to be presented in a manner that was accessible, de-mystifying the marks for cognition of their relevance in the larger context of Indian art as well as his own individual oeuvre.

A Lingering Fragrance - Ranjani Shettar [Review] Talwar Art Gallery

2011-02-28T21:32:00.000+05:30

Walking off the dusty, noisy streets of Delhi into ‘Present Continuous’ an exhibition of recent works by Ranjani Shettar at Talwar Art Gallery [19th January to 3rd April 2011] one meandered through a bubble-like structure called ‘Scent of a Sound’ [224” x 190” x 30”] suspended from the ceiling. Its stainless steel armature was covered in the softness of muslin, layered stiff with turmeric and tamarind, enveloping you in its shadows of serenity. Walking through its wispy curves, escaping the mechanical cacophony of a city enraged, senses imbibed the aroma of its unutterable song. Nudging with its yellowed whiteness and ‘spacious’ crowding of form, her installation left a deep impression. It represented nothing I knew, but was familiar in its lightness of being. It was the most captivating piece on display and while the other works did provide a contrasting backdrop that enhanced its viewing, they lacked its elegance and engagement.

On another level of the gallery, ‘Aureole’ [2010] had similar lines. Cast in bronze [size variable], butterfly-like wings cast their delicate shadows quite predictably across the full length of the gallery wall. Missing the intimacy of fingers that wound and layered muslin around the metal, this ‘Aureole’ did not invoke the presence of divinity. It was not nearly as evocative as ‘Scent of Sound ’to which one returned again and again. Wanting to get close and inhale a little of its peace; un-wrapping the clinging layers of muslin, coated in a burnt sienna tanginess and warm stains of yellow, with envious eyes.

Contrasted with these works was ‘Stretch’ [2010] a sensuous but solid rosewood sculpture [9” x 61” x 16”]. The natural wood was highly polished to bring out each line of its grain, which looked like marks of a tiger skin. The shape was ambiguous, morphing from a spoon to pipe or could even have been a boat yet un-carved or something else. You had to use your imagination as the artist while alluding to form did not define it. In addition to this were three wrought-iron and teak-wood artefacts of varying sizes, called ‘Kinetics [2009]. Each was independently displayed throughout the gallery. Their forms were drawn from the lives and tools of folk living in rural India. The inspiration could have shears or cutters or just the wind. ‘Kinetics’ had a strong rustic quality that was brought out subtly through the use of rusted looking iron and wood, even as the relatively robust forms seemed to whistle in the wind with iron that twisted and curled.

Each work had been carefully displayed, there was no sense of crowding or rush as you walked through, returning again and again to imbibe their qualities. Relishing this reprieve from the pressures of urban dilemmas, one questioned whether their quietude could be a sustainable reality or merely a moment away to deliberate. The cutting edges of three twisted knife-like structures [Kinetics] hung on a wall: a sharp reminder of the paradox of a simpler life where the chaos of being, may not be as externalized as life in a throbbing metropolis, but in the relative quietude, could cut like a knife within.

‘Lagoon’ [2011] was an installation [72” x 72” x 98”h] using lacquered wooden beads, glass beads and fishing line. It lacked the wistfulness of ‘Scent of Sound’ and minimalism of ‘Kinetics’, evoking an altogether different rural characteristic, but one that jarred for its comparative lack of depth and finesse in exploration and execution. Shettar has used these beads more effectively in earlier works such as ‘In Bloom’ [2004]. In trying to create the environment of a lagoon, the beads were painted in shades of blue and hung from the ceiling of the basement gallery rather gawkily. It was disappointing to see this awkward sculpture/installation after the judicious forms and delicate lines of other work on display.

The artist worked across media, using highly industrial material such as stainless steel and also brought in the crafting skills of Karnataka via a rosewood sculpture. Therefore it was conceivable for her to have enhanced the environment of a lagoon by using digital media, especially lighting projections, to re-create the feeling of being inside the waters of a lagoon; looking at some coral or underwater, naturally sculpted forms. The piece as displayed was uninspired and hung heavy and dull.

However, as one walked out of the gallery ‘Scent of Sound’ came into view again. The artist’s engagement was evident as it drew you into its form which was ethereal despite the use of heavy industrial material. I’m a butterfly she whispered as you turned to the wall: See my wings, trace the lines of nature’s design. It just depends on where you choose to shed the light and how deeply you’re interested in my shadows. Then the white-washed walls met the raw grey of a cemented floor. Their shadows spoke to each other in differing tones of a gravity belied by the glistening waves that hovered above: shining under the electric light, somewhere orange, somewhere white; sometimes just disappearing under its gaze, its fragrance lingering.

The Dark Side of Devotion - [Review -Mona Rai [Verk], Nature Morte

2010-12-20T17:22:00.000+05:30

Emphatic tones of red, black, orange and metallic foil confronted you as you walked through Mona Rai’s exhibition Verk at Gallery Nature Morte, New Delhi, from the 30th of October to the 24th of November. The abstract canvases, despite their apparent vibrancy, were dark in mood and texture. Some of them were burned, slashed and roughly stitched up and/or painted over with patches of fabric and foil. Created with a degree of honesty and exuding a sense of candour, these canvases had an immediate appeal.
Painted in silver with a few black patches in between, the central panel of the triptych Kaal had holes burned into the canvas from which black strings dangled, forming a loose web of sorts. Circular mirrors, similar to those used in Kutchhi embroidery, stood out against the black panel on the left whereas the panel on the right comprised red, gold and silver textile. The lush materiality was seductive but seemed to go no further than merely referring to velvety darkness.

The black, silver and white tones of Chandra & Prabha predictably represented a moonlit sky. Small golden patches on uniformly cut black fabric emitted a warm glow akin to that of electric bulbs seen from tall buildings on a dark night. Bageecha evoked nothing more than an aerial view of a massive flower garden, despite being built up using many pieces of multi-coloured jacquard fabric, pigment dots of various hues, and gold and silver rectangles with mirrors. Malaysian temple-kitsch inspired the two-panelled Shraddha. In the panel on the right, Rai created a geometric mihrab-like space using protruding black screws against a vibrant gold fabric-patched background. The rectangular arch-form was echoed in the panel on the left. Thread and fabric strips in red and gold dangled from both areas like rolls of sacred Mauli thread. There was something decidedly macabre about this depiction – was this Rai’s way of referring to the darker side of devotion?

As an exhibition, Verk hoped to explore the textures of life. Inspite of the largeness of scale, an extravagant use of material that called for tactile improvisation and all the glitter in works like the five-panelled Niyati or the eight-panelled Swarna Prabha, the show fell short of providing telling insights into issues of faith or fate.

Abstract ideas cannot only be presented through the mix of colour and texture. Installation and performance art have investigated complex themes like trust, threat and memory within and without gallery spaces. Rai did manage to create a strong visual and textural quality through her use of unusual materials, but the works remained largely decorative and failed to explore profound ideas effectively.

Shilpa Gupta edited by Nancy Adajania [Book Review]

2010-12-03T21:07:00.000+05:30

Book Title: Shilpa Gupta

Edited by: Nancy Adajania

Published by: Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi and

Prestel Verlag, Munich, Berlin, London and New York, 2009
Paperback
248 pages
Full Colour
Size: 9 x 11.25 inches
ISBN 978-3-7913-5017-2
Price: Not Mentioned

Shilpa Gupta’s art is provocative and theatrical. Employing video, performance, hand-crafting, photography, installation and more, she raises bold questions and invites the viewer to participate in making, and interact with her exhibited art-works. Representing the artist as investigator, using the anthropologist’s tools of research, her art confronts conventional practices and social taboos. She addresses a gamut of issues from terror, menstruation, religious beliefs, and social and intellectual repression. She has exhibited widely and engaged with luminaries across the world including academicians and psychologists. In her mid thirties, she is young and her art practice which is barely a decade old has been documented in the recently launched publication ‘Shilpa Gupta.’

This is available as a paper back edition, in a well designed format with ample colour visuals. It also includes scribbles and jottings by the artist as well as some feedback-forms from viewers of select exhibitions. I was especially drawn to Gupta’s own writings “….Take gun/Press the trigger/Eat eat eat/ Pull pull pull…” [Hands in the Air, 2008-09] And more such intense, repetitive sentences that were transcripts of her installations. Since most of her work has been exhibited abroad, I have not interacted much with Shilpa Gupta’s art. What I have seen has been engaging but not always convincing.

The book includes essays by Quddus Mirza, an artist, teacher and critic from Lahore, Nancy Adajania, a cultural theorist and curator based in Mumbai and Shanay Jhaveri a young writer who is currently a research candidate at the Royal College of Art in London. In addition, there is an email interview of Shilpa Gupta by Peter Weibel, an Austrian artist, curator and theoretician. However, I was disappointed to find that all the writers were so pre-disposed towards Gupta’s practice that the relevance of this and whether it fulfils the criteria of the issues she raises and confronts were not adequately debated.

Adajania is very eloquent and has followed Gupta’s practice from her college days at JJ School of Art in Mumbai. She tells us that Gupta’s “real medium” is “audience perception”, and that her work functions “more as props for her disclosures.” More often that not, I would be seduced by what Adajania wrote, then feel let down because the work discussed did not convey the depth of commitment and profundity that the writing implied. It is challenging to write about art that employs sound, movement and people participation as important dimensions of its expression so I wondered why the very technology that Gupta employs was not used to give us a better sense of the way her art works. A DVD or VCD documenting the ‘transient’ and interactive nature of her art could have been a valuable resource for the reader

Gupta combines a unique element of the theatrical with the empathetic in presenting her ideas but their relevance and efficacy in being more than mere commentary comes into question. The issues are pertinent and pressing for the most part, but is art equipped to handle them? And if not, then the very procedure is disturbing for it engages with people across various strata of society, often disturbing their way of life in an attempt to uplift. Is this merely an exercise for artistic expression? By exposing people to new ideas are they then left to return to their obviously inadequate devices/practices which she sought to change/question in the first place? A host of such questions arise which have not been addressed in the book. For instance, she casts her own breast in cement, [Khoj Modinagar, 1999] placing it with its “inconveniently sprouting hair” on the wall of a disused toilet, which the artist had re-constructed for local women grass cutters, risking the wrath of the estate managers. What happened thereafter? Has it changed their perception of hygiene and do they use the toilet or prefer the open fields? How was the ‘breast-cast’ viewed or relevant to the problem of either hygiene or dignity to defecate? Or later, in the work ‘Untitled’, [2001] where Gupta uses cloth stained with menstrual blood, inviting women to participate with an instruction manual of how to send her the stained fabric. What was the profile of the women who participated, and what exactly, is the taboo? None of this is mentioned.

In 2002 for an exhibition of contemporary South Asian Art in Manchester, Gupta commissioned a group of women to make 1,500 crochet boxes that were then blessed and used as part of an installation that questioned the notions dividing art and craft as also religious beliefs and their new-age consumerist manifestations. All of these are not just innovative ideas, they touch upon pertinent issues. I want to know what happens to the people she has engaged with and the impact on their lives thereafter but I am not informed. We have a couple of sentences to say that few women looked at menstruation afresh and some boys ran out of the gallery in disgust, but what happened to the crochet makers? Her art is not confined to the gallery and even when it is, it challenges the norm by provoking the audience to think or to turn away in disgust [Altered Altar, 1998 and Untitled 2001]. When Adajania says that Gupta “financially empowered this group of women” by paying for their crotched effort, I am curious about the extent of this ‘empowerment’? Can these issues remain just at the level of discussion confined to an art gallery or within the context of an art historical discourse? Surely the whole point of Shilpa Gupta’s art practice is to take it beyond?

She has challenged the premise that art has functioned within and upon. She has introduced innovative ideas and speaks a language that is upfront, candid and demands your attention. This practice, to my mind, brings into play much larger questions than the social taboos she confronts, for it redefines the jurisdiction of art, but none of the writers really tackle this. It is simplistic to say that by paying for their labour Gupta empowers the women financially. If it were that simple to bring about financial emancipation to the crafts sector then weavers would not be committing suicide nor government agencies subsidizing a languishing tradition that does not enjoy the same value, voice or dignity that fine art practitioners like Shilpa Gupta do. These issues need to be addressed with greater responsibility. While the artist’s practice goes beyond the confines of the traditional gallery, if the discussions around it remain within the same discursive space, they belie the relevance of what she endeavours to say and do.

The essays however are informative and almost all of her work is discussed by Adjania in “Darkness Is What Light Will Never Be: Shilpa Gupta’s Experiments with Truth. She brings in elaborate references drawing on the works of various scholars and artists from Wittgenstein to Joseph Kosuth, Jung and the Yogacharya school of Buddhist thought. While all of this is useful, none of the writers tells us anything about the artist. What is her specific background which lends impetus to this kind of thought and work? She appears to be a singularly independent thinker within the context of her peers and also artists before her, so I would have liked information about the person and experiences that have defined her thinking and therefore choice of issues and material.

The interview format though well suited to draw forth informal, personal revelations did not attempt this. Pieter Weibel didn’t appear familiar with Shilpa Gupta, either on the personal level nor in an in-depth manner with the gamut of her art explorations, to be able to provide such insights. This email interview at the very beginning of the book, specifically addressed questions that arose more out of Weibel’s preoccupations rather than Gupta’s own, taking the dialogue onto an altogether different level of engagement regarding the Synaesthetic experience. The idea was introduced as possibly belonging to Gupta’s practice, also mentioned later by Adajania, but neither were able to explain how this rare perceptual capacity, which cannot be cultivated, except perhaps by extensive meditation, was relevant to or prevalent in Gupta’s experiments.

The most comprehensible essay was ‘To See Again and Again’, by Jhaveri. He makes her art and its ideas infinitely accessible, allowing an easy grasp of what are otherwise rather abstract ideas, presented obliquely through material objects. But he makes sense of them in a logical way. He looks at the work for what it says, objectively, without imposing ideas he wanted to explore. Quddus Mirza speaks candidly about how violence has become something to relieve the tedium of everyday living. He is insightful in his observations. He says that the artist per se is not relevant in the mind of the ordinary citizen where television news takes precedence and that Gupta seeks to address this by making her work interactive. He writes of his personal experience with ‘Aar Par’ [facilitated by Gupta in 2002] and how Gupta’s father had to deal with the Mumbai police because of an artwork sent from Pakistan, showing two guns and roses which made the artist’s [Mirza’s] intent suspect. When he speaks of terror and violence and what it has done to the human psyche he is very passionate and un-put-down-able, but when he puts Gupta on a pedestal for not succumbing to the requirement of foreign curators, as other artist’s allegedly do, he is not convincing.

Shilpa Gupta has been prolific and many of her ideas have been discussed in the book. Though her art has evolved from immature investigations to more finessed presentations, her work is neither pleasing nor reassuring. It disturbs. And the book creates its own sense of discomfort. The very nature of Gupta’s practice and immediacy of this publication to her art-making necessitate various in-depth references and discussions including the Indian art historical context, or why this was not deemed relevant. Contrarian views as well as those of the anthropologist were also missing. They assume relevance in order to contextualize and debate an artist’s work that uses methodology which extends the discourse of art making, and a practice that has not yet been tested by time. Their omission left the context incomplete and unconvincing. Consequently the writing ‘looking’ at her art appeared not to be investigative enough or entirely objective.

A Curious Inheritance - Gautam Kansara [Review]

2010-10-20T16:26:00.000+05:30

Don't Hurry, Don't Worry [multi-frame]

Kansara seems obsessed with his family. He records and re-records conversations around the dining table; his grand-parents sleeping and moaning and reminiscing, projecting videos previously recorded, onto wall spaces and then re-recording them. The juxtaposed frames are disturbing and evoke a sense of ghostliness. In ‘Don’t Hurry, Don’t Worry’, the woman with the rolling pin appears to be semi-transparent where cupboards and chopping boards seem to pass through her. She is also disjointed through vertical lines formed by the juxtaposed frames; again creating a sense that she is not really there. But her voice is clear and unlike the visuals, the audio is not blurred. The woman rambles; the sentences seem to make no real sense and yet when you connect this, through other videos, the “Jhansi ki Rani” who fought the British is brought into context with the fact that her own father fought the British too.

Gautam Kansara thus suggests that memories are hazy and manipulated to suit the one reminiscing. In this case it is the artist himself re-constructing a past. With few spoken or physical insertions his identity is sketched through the memories he presents. Kansara guides the lens of technology into personal spaces, investigating the nature of the Indian family and its generational experiences impacted by migration. His persistent preoccupation with the same group of people and their story which is repeated with a kind of senility is as curious as it is revealing. He edits tightly, but the conversations appear un-edited as he takes us into his grandparents’ flat in London where people meet and engage, watched by the video camera, sometimes aware and sometimes it seems not.

Rangpur, video still

In Health, Wealth, Name and Fame [Rangpur] Gautam takes us through his journey to the remote village of Rangpur in India, where his grandfather was born. He traces his antecedents to a humble farm and tells us his grandfather made good by virtue of an education. The soundtrack is an amalgam of conversations recorded over 6 years, digitally pieced together, where his grandfather is dreaming of going back, recounting details of his childhood. In Health, Wealth, Name and Fame [Maheshwari Udyaan 1&2,] he unravels history that is buried in the past with his grandmother’s recollection of her father and his role in the Quit India movement and that he has two parks named after him. The fact that they left the very land that his maternal great-grandfather fought for, to migrate to U.K. - the land of the colonizer that was ostensibly being ousted, is rather ironical This becomes all the more powerful when we are informed of how proud he was, that he did not attend his daughters wedding because he was not allowed out of jail on his own recognizance and refused to go with a warden in tow. He went to jail nine times, was a staunch supporter of Mahatma Gandhi and educated his daughter who then spurned rich suitors “for a graduate girl must have a graduate husband” and both grandparents speak of this with pride.

Health, Wealth, Name and Fame [multi-frame]

The recordings are candid but curiously censored, revealing nothing that could compromise the family, nor say much about Gautam or his parents, or who is the vocal, self proclaimed new-age Californian spiritualist etc. I felt as if I was invited to visit and then told to stand on the side-lines while he decides which frame I can see. So while he reveals aspects of the inner sanctum he is not entirely uninhibited about it; projecting selected memories.

Stills from 'I'm Leaving' [ multi-frame]

He plays with them, overlaying the context; de-contextualizes it and little details make-up a complex collage of the socio-cultural moorings of the Kansara family without a deliberate probing for identity. However, one remains unclear about what exactly he is looking for or trying to say within this, for even though selective, there is too much multi-layered material to grasp which makes for tedious viewing. His attempt to present how inseparable we become from the spaces we inhabit doesn’t seem engaging or clear enough. I found the irony of a freedom fighter’s daughter migrating from India to UK before independence was officially declared, to be a curious inheritance for the artist four times removed from the generation of freedom fighters, now living and working in New York; of significant interest at many levels, but this was not investigated enough and one remains uniformed of the impact it had on the father-daughter relationship and more as a consequence of.

Dal, Bhat, Roti. Shak [ 12 prints]

Kansara, through his family’s recollection is able to present a rather unique widow into our post-colonial cultural make-up. The videos are engaging at certain levels, and I was drawn to his involvement with an idea that has taken many years, been re-visited and re-recorded and technically manipulated to explore seemingly mundane footage, but he does not make any specific point either sentimental or historic. He is exploring facets of identity and history and through this something that is seemingly relevant to him, but basically he just rambles on without leading anywhere that makes me re-think this information which I already know at an objective/ historic/social level. What he has is interesting archival material and if he can get beyond the sentimental or go deeper into it, perhaps something of significance will emerge.

nilima Sheikh and Shilpa gupta

2010-09-01T19:42:00.000+05:30

Yesterday, I went to see Nilima Sheikh’s exhibition at LKA ‘Each Night Put Kashmir in Your Dreams’. Regrettably it wasn’t the ideal viewing experience as there were lots of people fussing around, taking photographs, so the lights were switched on and off and tables and ladders brought in and out of the space where the nine scrolls hung. However, I did not leave because having glimpsed the imagery and read some of the words, I had to linger, look and ponder. The colours were jewel-like, the imagery almost romantic even as the words reminded me they came from a deep sense of pain.

In the recent weeks I have been studying the art of Shilpa Gupta, through the book published by Vadehra, which seems completely at odds with these exquisite scrolls painted by Nilima Sheikh [and her team of assistants] and so a comparison was inevitable.

I like Shilpa Gupta’s in your face commentary, which brings forth a new media and new imagery that is intellectually exciting even though I am not exactly comforted by it. On the other hand here were Nilima Sheikh’s beautiful, painstakingly executed images and colours so soothing to the eye and heart. The pain was ever so subtly etched in colour and form with words of historians and poets printed at the back, telling you about the brutality behind it. The contrasting imagery of two artists simultaneously addressing similar issues, compelled me question Sheikh’s stance.

There is a very subtle depiction of pain. The words made it an experience I could feel but while the visual didn't contradict this, it also didn't represent the angst of a mother who said “My son never asked me, Ammaji, can I go to Pakistan and become a militant? He simply left. I wept.” What I saw was a deeply romanticized view of pain and destruction of a paradise that resides in memory. In a bid to preserve what little is left of the beauty there once was, Sheikh delicately presented this as fractured and disintegrating through the precise but scattered placement of fragile stencil prints of varying patterns and divides the panels vertically or otherwise. The grieving figures did not howl but gently wept even as they clung to trees in distress or clasped knuckles in prayer to a God whose existence it is imperative they believe in. Her grieving was not a public lament but a personal one that encompasses the collective.

Shilpa Gupta’s military camouflage, life-like and life-sized figures, performances, videos and bottles of blame do not allow for any romanticization. She is an artist of today, of the generation that has the guts to say it like it is. We have had plenty of skirting of issues and hiding behind the garb of spirituality, not coming out in the open with our views, but festering within, creating more harm than good. Sheikh however isn’t ignoring the issue nor is she engaging with it as all there is to see or say. Her Kashmir is filled with the beauty of carved lattices that sometimes depict the sky, sometimes the earth, the prayer rug and sometimes the space in between them. She reminds us of the tall shady Chinar trees, the jewel colours of lotus pinks, lake aquamarines and innumerable shades of green; of nature blooming in her resplendent glory, unhindered by human greed.

She made me long for the Kashmir I visited during summer holidays as a child. In 2003and later in 2004 I was invited by the Government to conduct workshops for crafts persons in Sringar and I remember being appalled and very disturbed by the armed military personnel that surrounded the Dal Lake or the road to Gulmarg. The shikara ride was just not the same, nor the walk around the Lake, nothing was. Her memories take me back to a time of happiness; they are what we can lean upon, to prevent further damage to this paradise on earth. Her Kashmir celebrates its splendour so that we may not forget. Even as she mourns the ravages; with splatters of red, vaguely resembling blood-stained foot-prints or inserting emotionally charged reds and purples in a soft pastel field; she does not focus so much on the destruction but gives us hope. Each scroll quietly asks you why should we only remember the pain and if we forget the beauty then what will sustain our endeavour to recoup.

If the scrolls had not been hung vertically but placed on the floor, they could have been prayer rugs, each a heartfelt wish of one who still believes. She wove a subtle thread of pain and memory or beauty, or anger, lament and hope. She spoke the language not of the fragile youth that have not seen better, who clamour for change without knowing what is to be changed or how; wrestling with the present without the capacity to envision a future. She spoke the language of humanity in all its humility, of one that has seen beauty, experienced it and also pain. So while pained by the present predicament, she cannot and does not give up hope.

In allowing us to revel in the beauty, she permits us take ownership. We may turn away from terror and blame, because we feel inadequate to address this extreme situation or take responsibility for, but when there’s beauty behind it, we are more willing. Sheikh knows that Kashmir, like everything else in life is not something that exists in isolation and that by omission or commission each one of us is responsible for the way things are today. Every single moment we experience today is a consequence of what we ignored yesterday, or took for granted. And when you assume ownership, then there is no question of pointing fingers, By re-creating the paradise we have nearly destroyed and are steadfastly ravaging to nothingness, she didn't just tells us what was wrong but showed us what we can re-claim.

This is the inherent difference that I saw between the youthfulness of Shilpa Gupta’s art and the wisdom of Nilima Sheikh as she urges us ‘Each night put Kashmir in your dreams.’ However, sometimes I did think that given the kind of communication over-load that we do deal with today, Sheikh’s message is a little too subtle, and that while Shilpa Gupta and her contemporaries could learn a great deal from the deeply finessed art of Nilima Sheikh, we do need some straight talking too.

An Ambitious Quest - Seema Kohli, video film Review

2010-08-27T20:14:00.000+05:30

Dabbling in philosophy does not lead to Self Realization; here honesty is the best policy. Seema Kohli is primarily a painter who works on canvas, creating a filigree of forms mythical and imagined. Her decade-old preoccupation with Hindu philosophy is currently explored via film where she attempts “painting intangible aspects of time, energy and creation” through a video installation in two parts, projected simultaneously on adjacent walls. The film ‘Swayam Siddha - The Self Realized’ has been shown in Delhi, Spain, New Jersey and Singapore and received among others, the Gold award at the Florence Biennale, 2009.

At best, Self Realization is an ambitious quest for accomplished yogis and to portray this via video-art is a challenge. The subject is rooted in the physical dimension of living not divorced from it, but Seema has chosen a quasi-abstract route which makes the films virtually incomprehensible. Sanskrti shlokas are chanted soulfully by Vidya Rao and the young dancer Himani Khurana, in a contemporary black dress is graceful as she presents movement of time and energy. Attired in black trousers and T shirt, Seema too participates in the performance. Words are transposed onto crowded visuals of performers walking and dancing through fabric lengths with canvasses placed against walls and on the floor. Images from Kohli’s paintings are projected over their bodies and juxtaposed on the entire clip, creating a visual overload. Watching 6-7 minutes of two such videos simultaneously is tedious and the sub-text appears more like jargon than insights.

Seema uses symbols from traditional sources, where an earthen pot symbolizes the golden womb or ‘Hiranyagarbha’ and red foot-prints on the floor are reminiscent of the first steps a Hindu bride takes into her matrimonial home. Corrugated paper and bubble wrap are some contemporary elements she infuses into this film, but the concepts are clichéd. Time or ‘Kaal’ is presented literally through the colour black; or wrapping the body in corrugated paper symbolizes birth, then unravelling and re-wrapping in bubble-wrap it becomes re-birth. Some visual effects are quite dramatic and Seema’s serene countenance is sincere but for most frames she is covered with or dripping water or red and yellow paint, spilling onto the floor, evocative of blood and excreta. Unlike yogic lore, this isn’t an inspiring journey and as art, leaves wide open the question of art and what we present under its guise.

Art can raise questions and also our awareness of issues - political, religious, profane and spiritual. It can express the artist’s point of view, and angst within specified contexts. It can be an aspiration, provoke and also heal. It does all or any of this through a cultivated, individual vocabulary, but a pre-requisite is that the message be understood. The spiritual experience is essentially intangible and Seema’s task is challenging but having said that, if I am watching a work of art that is intended to present ‘The Self Realized’ then I am not interested in being entertained by a beautiful dancer or sonorous chants. The dance and music have to convey some insight and /or experience of some dimension that is referred to as ‘The Self Realized’.

A complex subject of much interest globally at this point in time, where material obsession and a sense of lack, as opposed to abundance has created violence and terror of great proportions, disrupting daily life, taking us deeper into ourselves; one anticipates some measure of insight that can shed light on the ancient wisdom of the Vedas to inspire hope towards peace and harmony in frenetic contemporary living. What comes across here is that Seema is caught up in the written word without reflecting upon her own experience of living enough, to present a clear perspective of her peculiar journey/experience or aspiration in this context.

The Self Realized is he or she who has achieved liberation. They are not bound by or within the drama of the world but fully conscious of mind, body and spirit and their connection to the super-conscious. They live in the bliss of awareness that the world is nothing but an illusion created through their own imagined mind. They have complete mastery over thought, for they have mastered fear. Masters have control because they have clarity of thought, because they have clarity of feeling and therefore of intent. This is Self Realization, a knowing that most of us are seeking.

Those who have evolved enough to understand the meaning of Self Realization, recognise the merit of deep reflection and internal reference of each and every experience and thought or feeling therein, towards mastering their minds. You do not have to retire to the Himalayas, but you do have to retreat within yourself more and more till such time as desires diminish and with it the pangs of the world and its illusionary drama. Self realization may well be an ‘aspiration’ for the artist, but for the master it is but a ‘process’, evolving through living, something you will acquire if you live with utmost honesty to yourself. Neither this, nor quietude or clarity, all of which are a pre-requisite of the self-realized, is even glimpsed in this film. What we see instead is a confused, meandering mind, not a master of it.

Staple Fare - Pooja Iranna [review]

2010-08-16T16:35:00.000+05:30

In an exhibition, titled, Of Human Endeavor: The Super Exposed City and the New Possibilities of Space, held at The Guild, Mumbai, from the 6th to the 22nd of August, 2009, Pooja Iranna presented drawings, digital photographs and sculptures that dealt with the theme of construction in the city. Over the past two decades, her work has evolved from fussy cardboard folds with thread to the meticulously ordered sculptures presented here, such as the series Converging/Segregating and Confluence, made with staple pins of the kind used in office stationery.

Iranna says that the haphazard construction projects around the city echo her “inner chaos”. However, this was not reflected in the show – what one saw here was a representation of symmetry and order. Digital photographs of scaffoldings and buildings under construction such as Untitled – II and III (2009) were virtually devoid of human beings. Despite the fact that such sites are invariably messy and disordered, Iranna’s carefully configured, clean, near-perfect photos ignored the chaotic nature of the urbanscape. Other photographs, like Reflective Energies – II (2008), showed glass and steel edifices elegantly converging in the sky. There was no acknowledgment of the debris and poverty-ridden streets that would have been below them. The acrylic-wax-pastel drawings Apex/Base I and II (2008) seemed to depict extreme close-ups of giant towers; the tiny bits of russet and deep grey in their crevices could have been rust. These black, white and grey works suggested the presence of corruption, but the point was too subtle to make an impact.

In her exploration of the city’s development, Iranna only focussed on externals. The fact that her ‘staple structures’ were devoid of people made them look particularly unreal. Gluing together stacks of staples – they fit together compactly to form rectangular pipes with which she created miniature steel edifices. Converging/Segregating – I (2008) was a 25 inches tall pyramid that would have been too perfect without the controlled striations and gentle unevenness of its surfaces. In Converging/Segregating – IV (2009), staple pins were organized to form box-like cells, evocative of both large multi-storey complexes and beehives.

Iranna’s choice of material for her sculptures was interesting because it suggested fragility, a quality we don’t associate with the building of gigantic edifices. The staple-works appeared delicate; adding to the appeal of what might otherwise have been representations of ghostly, abandoned structures. What was so unusual was that Iranna’s sculptures were made without altering her medium of choice – the staple pins looked like staple pins, yet they also looked like buildings.

For Iranna, using stacks of staples as building blocks was a meditative experience. Although she found their steely presence soothing, to viewers they appeared excessively sanitized. While her sculptures allude subtly to chaos – for instance, in the uneven surfaces of Converging/Segregating I and IV and the odd angles used to depict building blocks in Converging/Segregating – V – they did not capture the murderous world we live in. If art is meant to represent life, then Iranna’s show neither held up a mirror to it, nor offered a solution to its problems – it was too far removed from the realities of urban existence. Her artworks made for attractive conversation pieces but did not make a convincing artistic statement.

A Mythical Universe, the Art of Jayashree Burman [Book Review]

2010-02-05T21:17:00.000+05:30

Title: A Mythical Universe

Publisher: Art Alive Gallery, New Delhi
Year of Publication: 2010
Essays by: Ina Puri, Ashok Vajpayee and others
Price: Not mentioned
ISBN: 978-9\81-906463-0-7

Is the contemporary Indian woman really freed from the rituals and traditional values that are deeply etched in our psyche? Does she even want to be, is the question Jayshree’s water colours present.

To visually locate Burman’s lush but carelessly decorated watercolours in a milieu that is preoccupied with material things, concept art, installations and digital media, is virtually impossible for it has no recognizable icons that can. The randomly painted watercolour base and restless scratching of the ‘Rotring’ pen on a vibrantly coloured surface are indicative of the influence of the frenzy that has gripped the contemporary temperament but her art-making seems to afford a comfortable escape into another universe; where the artist does not have to acknowledge the chaos of today, but inhabits a world of memories.

The book that accompanied her exhibition at Lalit Kala Academy, ‘A Mythical Universe’, published by Art Alive Gallery has essays by Partha Mitter, Ina Puri, Ashok Vajpayi and Pritish Nandy. It is a lush publication with numerous images of Burman’s artistic oeuvre from the 1980’s to present and lends an opportunity to see her evolution as an artist. Contrary to what we encounter in her present work which draws heavily from a nostalgic world of traditional lore and icons of Hindu Gods and Goddesses, her earlier work is rooted in a modern, almost abstract idiom, where she works rather loosely with form. The present ideas started making their mark around 1997-98 and from 2002 they have formed the definitive style that is easily associated with Jayashree Burman.

Jayashree Burman’s lushly decorative imagery of Gods and goddesses do not really explore the contemporary physical world enough and therefore her painted visages appear as distant realities. She does acknowledge this environment but rather perfunctorily. Burman thus appears to be out of sync with the aesthetics that govern our everyday living, positioning her work as nostalgic exotica; holding onto a past that has long gone, virtually ignoring the fact that the tapestry of our world and its culture has changed and that she could examine these nuances more than she does.

The various writers have tried to eulogize and justify the traditional rooting without really contextualizing it in the present day context, which is disappointing. Ina Puri has presented Jayashree Burman, the woman behind the artist as a rather endearing picture of a Bengali woman evoking perhaps the much loved Banalata Sen, who has been immortalized through verse and Burman too has painted her in lush tones of green. Puri’s engagement with Burman the ‘Bengali bhadralok’ and the woman as mother, wife and divorcee, bring out personal details that help us engage with the subtler dialogue underlying the visual panorama. This is perhaps the richest essay in this large volume. Professor Partha Mitter has traced the beginnings of her “naïve decorative style” with that of the assertion of pioneering nationalist painters to protest the “naturalist academic”style disseminated by colonial art schools, citing her as a worthy successor to Abanindranath Tagore. Pritish Nandy on the other hand rather simplistically states that what makes Jayashree Burman’s art so special is that “she occupies a space she has created and patented as her own” which he defines as “her narration of popular mythologies in a secular idiom that’s achingly beautiful”. He reminds us that her art is not just about our past, our traditions, our mythologies, but also about today. However he does not explain this facet which is the core of Burman’s dialogue with herself - an attempt to reconcile the diverse worlds that frame her life today.

Embracing The Unavoidable - A Profile of Ruby Chishti

2009-10-26T15:47:00.000+05:30

Looking at the stitched, doll-like figures crafted by Ruby Chisthi, you may imagine as I did, that she would be as ample-bodied as her textile sculptures. Consider then my surprise, when she emails her photograph and I find myself glancing at this slightly built, almost waif-like woman.

In our subsequent email correspondence and conversations, she emerges from within the slits and folds of her sculpted forms, as expressive and candid. Born and educated in Pakistan, Ruby migrated to the U.S. seven years ago where she now lives in Brooklyn, New York. This physical location is not of much consequence to her and therefore her art practice, through which she expresses primarily the trials and trauma of being a woman and life in Pakistan. Her displacement evokes a sense of loss and also liberation for she feels that once you’ve left your ‘home’ then the whole world is yours and there is such freedom, for “no-body knows, no-body watches” and you do not have to live up to social and cultural expectations. To be free; unfettered by constraints to discover, express and be; is what she relishes.

Born as the fourth daughter to Safia Begum and Khushi Mohammed, in the Jhung district of Multan in Punjab, in 1963; her paternal grandmother once told the young Ruby that they were expecting a second son and cried in disappointment when she was born. This created a tremendous impact and each year thereafter “on the blessed night of Ramadan” she “prayed to become a boy”. In ‘My birth will take place a thousand times no matter how you celebrate it’, she seats five women in a circle, their arms hugging their heads, dropped in despair onto their ample laps.

She makes a statement about the grief of being born a woman and the attitude faced in giving birth to one, without expressing resentment and violence for her own predicament as a consequence of this prejudice. By presenting women who lament the birth of a girl child, she brings out the irrational domination of perception that distorts a woman’s view towards her own gender, re-enforcing the paradoxical nature of the circumstance, where a woman decries her own birth.

The choice of materials and how she crafts the figure highlights the plight of these women. The use of stitch, recycled fabric carelessly stuffed with straw, coupled with an indifference towards the survival of the created artefacts, are powerful in evoking the predicament that compels them to decry the birth of a girl child, even as she states that ‘she’ will be born a thousand times. Through the gesture of needle piercing the fabric she enunciates the process of repeated wounds, where the fabric becomes ‘skin’ ; and through the act of joining fragments she links the experiences of subjugation and rejection, expressed as despairing forms, crafted fragile yet resilient .

Presenting herself as well worn, soft and supple; tired and exhausted but still capable of being moulded again and again at will, through the nature of textiles whose warps are well known to endure the rigours of time, is evocative. The rounded form she uses is culturally associated with feminine passivity and accommodation and the figures are dependant on anatomical resemblances, not analogies; evoking rural rather than urban influences. Her father, a civil engineer employed with the government of Pakistan worked on developing highways, which involved a lot of travel for the family, with spartan living in villages Travelling frequently, Ruby remembers the charpai, as the only constant loaded onto trucks each time they left a particular destination. The ephemeral nature of a life lived in transit from these early years is reflected in the artist’s selection of material.

This is further emphasized in her installations such as ‘Altar’ and ‘Sketch’, where she collects twigs from the location of the gallery or site of exhibition and attempts to incinerate the memories, burning the installations at the end of each showing. The wood turns to ash but she admits that the memories remain in her consciousness. Burning may be deemed an act of violence in itself, but Ruby does not burn effigies of hate, she sets alight her pain and in the case of ‘Sketch’, a sculpture created of her deceased mother.

Ruby has lived close to death; witnessing the debilitation of disease and early demise of her brother aged 27 and father who was 47 yrs old. Both died of cancer. She then spent 11 years nursing an invalid mother when she was unable to make art. She also recounts living in perpetual fear of death by bomb blasts and murder in the dictatorship regimes of Pakistan. Listening to Ruby Chisthi speak is a touching encounter. She draws you into the ambit of her experience for the simplicity with which she speaks of prejudices and practices that underlie the thread of life in the sub-continent. These come alive not as ‘issues’ but as a very personal story, compelling you see it as such. She communicates without hesitation, welcomes any question and answers spontaneously without rancour. In recounting her memories of the days after Bhutto was hung, she says that newspapers were heavily censored; each column had patches of white, often after every two to three words, eliminating whatever was deemed offensive. She speaks of how a ‘hatoda’ gang was invented, spreading news of their exploits in the daily papers to put fear into the populace, so that the government was unhindered in their plans. She says it was impossible to sleep at night, as this gang supposedly inserted a pipe through the window, gassed entire families and then bashed their brains out with a hatoda.

The picture is gruesome, but Ruby Chishti’s work is generous in spirit despite the angst and her attempt to burn memories. We are informed of the pain where the artist in her rebels, but she also embraces it as unavoidable without hatred and repugnance; a wisdom that few of us have the capacity to adopt. Life has put her through unimaginable rigour. As an artist, she prizes the liberty to express and believes that what she has experienced as her life is what she brings to this world and what she wants to share with us. Her work inspires. We live in troubled times, everyone feels persecuted for something or other; leading to the burgeoning terror situation which is a constant threat across the globe. Many artists of the subcontinent are obsessed with violence and terror, but Ruby invokes this element not merely as a means to “comment upon the changing world in our surroundings, it is also a way to deal with her own situation – of a de-situated citizen.” What you cannot escape is what you must reconcile with; is her message, where life as a series of circumstance defines who we become. Chisthti accepts this, rather than rejecting herself as a consequence of experiences that have left an indelible mark. She transcends through her art.

Graduating with a BFA from the National College of Arts in Lahore, Pakistan in 1988, Ruby was drawn to sculpture, but allergic to the materials she graduated instead with a thesis in painting. Her current practice employs material that is non-permanent such as straw and twigs and also used fabric, collected over the years. As a child she made dolls with cloth and later sewed her own clothes but discovered cloth as a medium for her sculpture only in 1999 when she found a connection between the “exhausted cast-offs and the frail body of an inert mother.” In the tradition of the sub-continent she stitches them, not as quilts or decorative assemblages, but to make dolls, neither miniature nor life-sized, employing a diminutive scale; she aptly reflects the status women have been accorded in her cultural environment.

Chisthi’s work has been exhibited in U.K., U.S.A, Hong Kong, Canada, Australia Pakistan and India. She has been awarded a fellowship from Vermont and has attended numerous residencies and workshops across the world. Her work is well received and the common denominator is the response that everyone wants to hug the women she creates. What I find inspiring and admirable is that she expresses uninhibitedly despite the social constraints she grew up with, but with a certain humbleness that evokes empathy and sympathy rather than making the viewer recoil in horror; for she accords the view a place as it surely has, while stating her own emotively, but not as an emotionally distraught and defensively violent statement.

Her rendition of the buffalo conveys her sentiment well. “A symbol of abundance, sustenance and earth energy” Ruby identifies with them as she says “I feel very close to this creature called buffalo. As woman, mother, Mother Nature always giving, struggle has been planted into her deeply that it has penetrated her bone marrow. She has been betrayed and defeated so many times by injustice that defeat has no meaning to her, after each hardship she gathers more energy and make herself stand on her feet so that she can walk again even without the promise of gods” Stuffing them with straw, she felt she was filling their empty stomachs but despite this, they were fashioned as tired, lost, drained of energy, almost of their own volition. Thereby Ruby speaks for both the predicament of the buffalo and herself too, recounting her early days in the U.S where she worked as a mail sorter in a corporate mail centre for 12 hours a day; lifting heavy trays weighing 30lbs to 50lbs. As part of an assembly line, she felt that anybody could take her place anytime, that she was no more than a replaceable spare part – a ‘purza’’.

Life has immeasurable value for anyone who has lost so many loved ones, who has witnessed brutal killings, and so Ruby creates ‘Armour’ expressing the belief held by women in Pakistan that giving birth to a child secures them from threats of survival they may otherwise face. Using cast sanitary napkins and thread, she fashions a sleeping baby suspended from the ceiling like a ghost or ethereal being. Chishti herself does not subscribe to this view. She and her husband have consciously opted not to have children and they are constantly subjected to scrutiny by well-meaning compatriots. Here ‘’Armour’ then takes on another meaning, where the sanitary napkin denoting menstruation and therefore the non-creation of the foetus could be considered ‘armour’ for those who choose not to bring a child into this world, where life is not cherished and nurtured as they would like it to be.

This material is unusual but appropriate for Chishti who does not follow any rules. She confesses not knowing many sewing techniques, often hindered by this, but determined to sew: if she imagines something, it will be made. Cloth here then becomes emblematic. It speaks of wounds, of memories, violence and politics. It is both a challenge and a triumph for the artist. She uses it in an effacing way to serve as a figure or code or concept, wherein the fabric itself becomes nothing and yet it is also everything - the fulcrum of Ruby Chisthi’s emotive narrative.

Innovative...But is it Art?

2009-07-31T20:13:00.000+05:30

Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration

- Thomas Alva Edison

At is today an experience that goes beyond painted canvases, sculpture and etchings; to include video, installation, ceramics and more. Artists are not confined to a single media. We see painters and potters working with steel and printmakers extending their repertoire to include fabric. In addition, intellectual boundaries that separated art from design are diminishing. However, this wide spectrum is also aiding confusion and frequently the question arises, is this art?

Since art mirrors life, it will reflect the confusion that is part and parcel of contemporary living, but is that good enough? Is a chaotic existence reason to produce confused art? The role of the artist has changed with each decade and we are continually re-defining its criteria. Art as the manifestation of a creative human response to the environment is predominantly emerging as a comment on society, rather than a preoccupation with the self. In fact, much art that I have seen seems to preclude the self in its commentary, implying a deficient honesty in researching ideas which are therefore presented with lack of clarity.

Baptist Coelho

Baptist Coelho, recipient of the Art India, Promising artist of the year award 2009 presented some video works and installation at India Habitat Centre, where he reflected his position vis a vis the armed forces and within it the role of the soldier, which he mentioned in conversation, was to his mind “a really stupid thing.” His video entitled: ‘I was not born for the Three Point Contact’ focuses on the evolution of man from ape to Homo erectus. With each stage he wears an additional garment until he is clad for weathering snowy, mountainous terrain. This clothing is without markings that identify race or nationality. The man carries a pick-axe which Coelho informed is the most valuable tool for mountain climbers and soldiers patrolling the Siachen glacier.

He may be forgiven his naive comment about a soldier, being “a really stupid thing”; for battle as an essential element of life, from the personal level to that of nations is perhaps something we understand through the process of living, where the Bhagavad Gita has been accorded sanctity, precisely because it reflects the truth of confrontation as inevitable when power is abused. However, the video in question did not reveal anything more than a visual presentation of how man may have evolved. The layers could signify a veneer man hides behind; representing emotional protection adopted in the course of daily living, but the army reference was singularly absent.

Seema Kohli

Technology permits us present a point of view without the rigour of first having to master the craft of drawing and painting; tackling perspective and presentations of a verifiable, physical reality. With the digital camera and video, ‘reality’ can be recorded and presented with ease. However, what makes this ‘Art’ is how the artist locates himself, emotionally and intellectually, within the context; distilling personal angst to reflect an objective view, resonating with the truth of this predicament - universal to the human condition. If Coelho had focussed on finding himself in his idea, he may have found it more appropriate to appreciate the rigour, both physical and emotional that soldiers endure to protect our safety, allowing us the luxury of making art; rather than position it as irrelevant. The sentiment against warfare and the arduous situation of the soldier is well taken, but the video fails to evoke the idea as intended.

Remen Chopra

The gallery has seemingly transformed from a space of formal presentations to one of experimental ideas. Jindal Steel has been actively promoting the use of steel in art, inviting artists and designers to participate. In ‘Ashtanayika’, curated by Dr.Alka Pande we saw Manisha Bhattacharya and Trupti Patel meld steel with ceramics; Kanchan Chander re-create her trade-mark torsos in steel, and others attempt a dialogue with the medium. The delicacy of Manisha’s porcelain, steel-stemmed flowers was regrettably lost in a space that was too brightly lit to accommodate large-sized doors, books and lotus seats. Remen Chopra had been working with steel for about a year prior to this invitation and her deeper engagement and understanding of the medium is reflected in the resultant art-work, where she displayed sensitivity in handling the material that was largely absent elsewhere.

Pankaj and Nidhi

From painting canvases with delicate filigree work, Seema Kohli is open to exploring the cold hardness of steel, but neither the lavish-scaled book with water flowing through it, representing the Yajur Veda or the voluptuous contours of an ill-conceived lotus seat; bring out facets of a philosophy that has occupied Kohli for over a decade, nor render a fresh perspective on steel. While it is laudable that artists are willing to experiment and ‘The Stainless’ has become representative of such endeavour, experiments such as these, when presented as art, do not succeed.

Design and Art have long been separated by the notion that design is for the masses and art is unique and precious. Mekhala Bahl still holds this view, even though she works with textiles, which are integral to our daily living and its design vocabulary. Bahl is a sensitive artist who is however not making any overt social statements, she speaks of an inner state with clarity of its confusion and it is this honesty that endears. For her, working with textiles commenced as a convenience, allowing her to make large-scale prints and she tentatively explores its further potential in ‘The Geometry of Error’ [Gallery Espace]. Based in a studio atop a textile fabrication unit in Gurgaon, Mekhala is well placed to do this, but to understand the medium, I think it would be instructive to work with one’s own hands. This proximity with the medium, lends an intimacy which allows the fabric to reveals itself to you in ways that cannot be comprehended with the industrial distance of delegating in a factory environment. The work on paper is far more sensitive in its portrayal of her ideas than the mechanically quilted fabric.

Archana Hande

Mumbai based Archana Hande is also a print maker who has worked on Textiles [Nature Morte Annex – ‘All is fair in Magic White’]. Here she exhibits rebus like pictures made with the traditional method of block-printing on fabric. Hande attempts a satirical account of a dirty, over-populated Mumbai aspiring to become a global mega polis of the future, The works revolve around a story of three friends who initiate a ‘Clean Mumbai’ campaign, abandon it upon seeing a report on Dharavi to “help the government of India turn Mumbai into Shanghai one day” but end up launching a product which “makes the skin white.” Her commentary lacks authenticity, for Hande appears to disassociate herself from the women, when by virtue of her physical and cultural location; she is also part of the psyche that moulded them. In distancing rather than immersing herself in the complexity of the post-colonial predicament, she is unable to present an insightful view. The textile block prints are accompanied by a digital film. It is interesting to see this diversification in media but the Hande does not exhibit an affinity with textiles nor does the medium add a relevant dimension to her presentation.

In Vistaar II curated by Peter Nagy; Manisha Parekh, N. Pushpmala, Reena Kallat and others, create products where ‘art’ is invited to engage with ‘design’. Ideally design will emerge as an essence of the experience tabulated through art. Pushpmala however, does not allow scope for this but imprints/transfers a selection of photographs by printing them directly onto dinner plates, rather than extracting the essential aesthetic of her photographed experience and applying this as a design for fine dining. Reena Kallat’s table in two parts is arresting but her inability to exercise discretion with regard to the quantum and variety of its legs diminishes the calibre of the product designed. There are also too many lines etched upon the surface, detracting from its contour which is the most creative element.

Pankaj and Nidhi

To see a good marriage of art and design, one should look at the work of fashion designers show-cased at India fashion weeks. These designers are veterans of the commercial world that will not entertain such careless lapses. The artist in them is indulged, but the product is ruthlessly edited and the final result is a true engagement of art and design where the experience is examined with depth and its essence portrayed with finesse.

Gunjun Gupta’s concept of using the bicycle to create a chair is innovative. She began work on this with a design company in Amsterdam, where cycles are integral to contemporary urban life. Her design/product evolves from a very gawky, one-cycle-seat apparition to this rather sophisticated base, using multiple seats. She further incorporates the idea that cycles in parts of India are used to ferry masses of stuff, way beyond the norms of decency. She presents it too literally, making a statement that conforms to the present trend of incorporating concepts used in small town/rural India, which is getting a lot of attention abroad; but the disconnect between the aesthetics that govern the design of the base and that of the back-rest, make the chairs look visually awkward.

Gunjan Gupta

Manisha Parekh’s attempt at making bean bags was disappointing. The numerous bags with faux leather ribbons and other similar lines and fronds extending randomly from a basically traditional bean bag, seemed an irrelevant endeavour. Parekh is an artist who has so far not taken part in the theatrics that surround the art-making world. Her earlier work has evolved forms using jute wrappings that would have been well suited to making unusual bean bags, but she says her product-partner was unable to give the requisite production support. This highlights issues that are ignored when such exhibitions are planned where it seems to be more about innovation at a peripheral level, rather than a considered project where all facilities are well thought out and provided for. The bringing together of art and design is not a new idea. It is indeed relevant towards forging a new and authentic vocabulary of Indian design, and needs to be carefully considered.

Chirrovanu Mazumdar

Material abundance and our dependence upon ‘things’ has possibly created an environment where we have more relationships with the things around us than people and therefore the objectification presented in ‘Re-claim/Re-cite/Re-cycle’, curated by Bhavna Kakar was pertinent. Prajjwal Choudhury generates interest with printed match boxes; simmering in a cauldron or passing inanely through a mechanical assembly line to represent the way we re-cycle icons and ideas. The irony and humour in Manujnath Kamath’s digital print of ‘Paneer Pizza’ was noted; but it was Chittrovanu Mazumdar’s ‘Ice-cream factory, Chill tubes and a Love Song’ that drew all ears. The idea of re-cycling refrigerator pipes to re-create them as a complex trumpet-like instrument was novel indeed, but the instrument was mute and sound played through massive speakers behind the ‘Chill tubes’, defeating the purpose of such an exercise. In this age of advanced technology it would require a simple engineering solution to get the re-constructed ‘Chill tubes’ to sing. Lacking that one extra degree of perspiration the potential for excellence remained at the level of mediocre.

This attitude sums up much of what is being shown as art, where it is inspired but lacks the commitment; where the distinction between art and design is not diminishing but the integrity of creative representation is being replaced by the novelty of innovative ideas. Is this then a re-definition of Art - the change we’re in the process of initiating?

A Journey Into Personal Engagement - Samar Jodha Review [Phaneng]

2009-03-06T20:38:00.000+05:30

Savouring the adventure of travelling on the hitherto closed road from China into India in 2004; Samar Singh Jodha encountered a hamlet in the remote eastern reaches of Upper Assam, nestled between the Patkai rain forests and the Terap River near Ledo, which inexplicably drew him to undertake a journey of another kind. “Stunned by the natural beauty of Phaneng and mesmerized by the unique culture of its people” he could not remain a mere spectator to the plight of this diminishing community, so decided to use his “skills” to try and bring about change to “improve the chances of survival of the Tai Phakes of Phaneng.”

As you enter the darkened space of the ‘Religare art i gallery’, designed to evoke an atmosphere of coal and the ghostliness of a diminishing tribe; the near total lack of light perturbs but the scale of portraits is nonetheless compelling. Realistically captured on 72” x 60” canvas of photographic fine art prints, the facial details appear skilfully presented but viewing these portraits requires more than such obvious observation and the habitual city-dwellers glance, of moving hurriedly from one image to the next. It needs an engagement which is easily missed because the location, the language and culture are barely visible. Although curious about this facet, my initial reaction was that they resembled portraits of Tibetans drawn on silk which I recollect seeing on the Mall Road in Shimla in the 1970’s, so what was the point? However, the images haunted in a strange sort of way so I returned and through my conversation with Samar discovered nuances many others may have missed as well.

Today we are swamped by imagery that provokes and it’s become onerous upon the artist to grab your attention. Samar Singh Jodha desists for he is unable to make an emphatic statement. His engagement is filled with dilemmas and creates an air of simplicity which is deceptive. There are some artists whose work is meant to be looked at while some are meant to be felt and submitted to. The purity of an isolated emotion, its starkness, can be dramatic enough to evoke feeling in an objective viewer. However, when you speak of a people embroiled in the politics of coal, which you seek to help them with and return to the city where you consume the electricity that fuels the very politics you want to address, how does any honest human being even pretend to isolate the conflicting emotions?

The portraits have no titles. It’s almost as if unable to find a unilateral involvement, Jodha distances himself and us, implicit with a sense of guilt and unworthiness to know them personally. Using lighting techniques, Samar Jodha deliberately eliminates all details from the frame except for the facial features which are then dramatically highlighted. He asks you thus to make your own acquaintance with them. It is complex ideas such as these which engage, drawing us into those beady eyes that speak of enduring so much that nothing matters anymore. Each experience is etched in the sinews around the penetrating lens looking out at you and the marks on the forehead that ripple like a turbulent river. He looks straight at you without challenging you to change the world. He is not afraid and there is no sense of blame. It is the forthright acceptance of knowing that the world is a complex place of conflicting interests and that peace lies in reconciling the inevitable paradoxes. He indulges the photographer; enjoys the attention but without desire or rancour. He is an enlightened soul.

A photographer of international repute, Samar’s experience in the field of visual communication includes education and apprenticeship with renowned schools and studios as well as editorial and social communication projects of acclaim; that range from fashion to advertising, a United Nations sponsored presentation on ‘Ageing in India’ and an award winning book: ‘Jaipur – The Last Destination’. His involvement in Phaneng has included an education project, a monastery, and a unique eco-tourism venture that has built local capacity as well as raised incomes. Samar’s proximity to the Tai Phake tribals, their trust in him, evolving over the years spent documenting facets of their life, led him to this project of portraiture where the eyes speak and fleshed lines convey with exquisite subtlety the complexity of his participation.

Her wrinkles are a painting in themselves. Who is she? Is she married to the enlightened one? We don’t know. Does it matter? In our chaotic lives are we likely to meet her? Perhaps not; but somewhere, somehow, we all know someone like her. The quintessential kindness of a nurturing bosom radiates from the eyes of a woman who has given birth many times; saddened by the shadow of infertility that looms because the mining of coal is polluting the water this community drinks. Can we change this reality? Will we consume less electricity to keep alive procreation in a community that is dying out? Why should Samar tell us who she is? Can we be more than the occasional, socially motivated voyeur?

By virtue of the nature of his profession, a photographer would essentially be seen as an observer, but digital technologies have facilitated the camera being more than a mere documentary witness. The world of art has expanded considerably to include much more than painting in its canvas. Today, we see manipulated photographic images that speak more as an excoriation of an artist’s inner reality, than the subtlety of putting forward visages as perceived through patient observation of the external world, which evoke the inner dimension. The distinction between artist and photographer is slowly diminishing, with photography becoming a tool for expression in much the same way as water-colour, installation or video. Images such as these portraits from Phaneng veer away from the dramatization of much that is being seen in art galleries, requiring an informed perspective to evaluate. These photographs emerge through interactions that have progressed gradually where the “gaze is mutual.” The scale of work and its positioning ensure the viewer engages with the eyes of the portrait head-on. Can you look away? Many did.

The angry youth, radiating a deep sense of dejection, the young child, astonished by the blaze of a powerful flash, all have a story to tell. If we had silence in our souls, if we could momentarily eliminate the sights and sounds of a frenetic city life, we may have heard the music of the insects at night; we would have empathy with the disillusioned knowing of their elders, the rebellious gaze of this defiant North-Eastern woman who does not challenge or provoke but simply is. Ironically the coal that is being mined in upper Assam, fuels our eccentrically electrified lives without uplifting theirs, for the locals do not work in the mines, immigrants do. So what does the photographer want us to see? What is his intent of sharing without overtly revealing?

The pace of their lives, contrasted with that which Samar Singh Jodha shares with us, is the essence of what is unfolded. In that environment his stride is different. He brings this to our notice by using the old-fashioned 4” x 5” format camera which he inconveniently lugged across unfriendly terrain, against many odds to record this silent tread that is without rush of purpose or anxiety. The format he uses is tedious, but in his mind it is reflective of the world they inhabit more so than the digital camera. The process of photographing them was in itself an experience. The format does not permit multiple frames and therefore the level of trust, the camaraderie between the community and him is expressed via such sophisticated subtleties that Jodha employs. He brings in the totality of his experience of being a part of this community, accepted by virtue of his involvement and yet never belonging. He faces complex dilemmas and guilt of his complicity with the paradoxical engagement to uplift not because he believes he can change the world, but in slowing his pace, living in their time reveals other dimensions of being that the city has robbed him of and us.

Is there a prayer that reverberates as we look into that middle-aged woman’s face? Did you notice the drawn lines that shield those lips which once readily smiled at the light? Wide eyes startled by an electric flash, lips fulsome with hope, what is the future this child inherits? Are the issues under view relevant to just a distant hamlet in upper Assam; don’t they need to belong in our world with as much engagement as Samar Singh Jodha has ventured into theirs?

In reviewing the nuances etched by the refined details of these black and white portraits one feels chided, for the photographer reminds that viewing is not about being seduced by colour, emotion and digital manipulation. He does not impose his views but prods you to question his reticence and once you touch the core, another whole world is uncovered. Its perspective of time and material so alien to ours, that in not connecting with the initial glance we almost let its beauty pass us by. Samar’s diffidence in the words that accompany the exhibition does not facilitate easy access into the sanctum of his engagement. Is this a telling comment on our viewing facility? Have we have lost the ability to assess the visual dimension which is traditionally equated with a value greater than that of a thousand words? Somehow, it seems evident that no matter how consummate the visual art, we need clarity of thought revealing the artists intent or dilemma. In our hectic over-crowded lives, a worthy vision may well be overlooked without this.

A Philosophical Fantasy - [Seema Kohli Essay, Mumbai]

2009-03-03T16:55:00.000+05:30

In deep seas Fish don’t need their fins; to soar in the sky, I need my Eagle wings…
“Tu shaheen hai, basera kar paharon ki chattano par
ke shaheen ke liye zillat hai, kaare ashian bandi”[i]
- Dr. Iqbal

Travelling through an imagined world created by Seema Kohli, you undertake a journey into many realms of life. Her presentations are multi-layered in meaning. Through them Seema explores ideas she grew up with and then studied as a student of philosophy. The ‘Vedas’ and ‘Bhagavad Gita’ form an essential part of her oeuvre. Her forms are simple. She says they are a kind of rebellion; where reprimanded as a child for these unconventional representations of nature, she now asserts them wilfully. Her fish have no fins. Her cows are clearly masculine and Krishna effeminate by comparison. Traditionally in this ‘avataar’, he has no mythological steed or ‘vahana’ but in these paintings he rides the cow-bull and peacock too. Her birds and butterflies do not have much bearing with natural facets. Her figures are disproportionate; her ‘Gandharvas’ have wings and trees grow on the sun wherein a maiden rides the moon with eagle-winged angels pulling her crescent sledge. All these ideas beg to be questioned. Filled with extraordinary detail that could easily be mistaken for ornamentation, each canvas is a complex tapestry of a highly imaginative mind that playfully investigates deep philosophical realities of life.

Somewhere, a lush but mono-chromatic tree spreads itself covering the whole span of an eye’s view. Women are flying, walking around or sitting on its richly coloured orange branches. Unclothed, they move uninhibitedly, liberated from social conventions. Leaves, roots, clouds and waves create a continuous unending pattern signifying a seamless continuity of life. Nestled deep among its roots the golden womb or ‘Hiryanyagarbha’[ii] has been drawn. Representing the ultimate dimension of consciousness which encompasses the whole universe, this cosmic womb signifies the fruit of a life well-lived. It is this that the woman aspires for in ‘Her Quest’, as she falls gracefully from the sky. Her descent enshrined in an inverted pyramid suggesting a possible inversion or representation of hitherto perceived ideals. She gently wafts down from the higher reaches of heaven; dreamy spaces of cotton-wool clouds that cushion rather than daunt or hinder. Etched in spartan sepia hues exuding a tentative sensuality, she extends an arm, reaching out to Krishna the eternal lover; a simple gesture cognizant of need. He is surrounded by dancing nymphs exulting in his flute-song, separated yet, by the womb of consciousness they have not penetrated. Can she reach him? Has she evolved to enter the realm wherein he resides? Before she can converse with him, she must tackle the tree of life, descend through its branches and unravel the roots of her existence. This is the essence of Seema Kohli’s canvasses. She explores philosophy through the exotic colour she gives form, through her drawings of pen and ink on canvas, carefully layered with acrylic paint.

Her technique is unusual. She layers the canvas with thin coats of acrylic, sometimes as many as twelve, to get just the right shade and richness of the medium. This process is often emotionally liberating as she stands on the roof-top of her studio, splashing or throwing the colour onto the canvas, while maintaining the consistency of paint on the surface. This methodology is in direct contrast to the details she draws on this surface. Using a fine ‘Rotring’ pen Seema Kohli works on the prepared canvas, drawing the plan. The forms are rarely filled evenly with pigment. Making jagged, scratch-like marks Seema fills in coloured ink with pen, employing a deliberate unevenness that allows the multi-layered base to add its own hue. This could also be seen as being evocative of a restless spirit hungering for liberation from within these forms. The characters whether figures meditating, trees or clouds, are usually repeated. This could be mistaken for mindless repetition or doodling, but for the artist it is a visual chant, akin to repeating a mantra.

The present exhibition draws upon ideas postulated in the ‘Yajur Veda’, pertaining to the ‘Hirayangarbha’ or cosmic womb and the fifteenth Chapter of the ‘Bhagavad Gita’ which explores the concept of the Tree of Life or Eternal Asvattha[iii], outlining consequence of action or fruits of labour as being the basis of the life we live today. The link between the two may seem obscure until you delve deep into the curious but profound connection the artist makes between the cosmic womb as being representative of that ultimate state of consciousness which contains the whole universe; and the knower of the Vedas as one who has understood the foundation of existence by pondering the boughs and roots of the ‘Asvattha’ tree.

This eternal tree of life is invoked in almost all of Seema Kohli’s paintings as a kind leit-motif that spreads its pattern of seamless branches and roots to represent clothing, skin or the backdrop of the whole visual plan. It is the foundation for contemplation on the purpose and deeds that delineate the pattern of our daily lives. This enduring tree of life which finds mention in scriptures all over the world, including the Bible, is a representation of the human body and mind. In a book on anatomy, turn the chart of the human nervous system upside down and it is possible to discern that the human form has similarity to an inverted tree, a trunk with many branches. If this chart is turned right-end up, the nervous system looks like an inverted tree with hair, brain and spine above; and numerous branches of nerves below. “As trees spring out of the soil beneath them, the human tree of thought, life force, and nerves grow invertedly downward from the ‘soil’ or ground of cosmic consciousness.”[iv] Our thoughts form the fertile ground from which our hands and feet execute the actions that define our lives, through which we grow to perceive the deeper implication of these, towards an emancipation of mind that finally opens up to encapsulate the secrets of the universe: the ‘Hiranyagarbha’.

In our contemporary high-rising world, the windows of perception are conversely narrowing. Confined mostly to everyday routines pertaining to the needs of a shrinking nucleus family or solitary existence, we rarely have the opportunity to contemplate the mysteries of life and what it is that keeps us going as we mechanically strive for this that or the other, whichever is the agenda of the day. Seema Kolhi’s canvasses give us a glimpse into ideas that form the core of Indian spiritual thought and ideology. Philosophy uplifts life from the mundane and petty giving it a renewed purpose and sanctity. Seema says that the life of Krishna, as a child or as the charioteer who guided Arjuna through the battle of life ennobles us for his actions sanctify ours. When sibling battle, they are judged harshly for being unable to perpetuate love, but when Krishna tells Arjuna it is his ‘dharma’, the right action for a misdeed; he gives him the wisdom to find moral courage, absolving him of his dilemmas to kill his kin. It is ideas such as these that the artist ponders upon as she paints.

In ‘Krishna, Krishna, Krishna –a prayer’, Seema depicts the playful element of Krishna, as he exults in the natural splendour of being, simultaneously atop a cow and riding a peacock within the cosmic womb. Here the cosmos appears in intertwining layers, each a kind of womb that leads to the other. Often, thinkers focus intermittently upon philosophical ideas and their roots in the physicality of existence. Logically, the ‘Hiranyagarbha’ can only be attained if the ‘Asvattha’ has been explored, not the other way around, but for a sincere seeker, focus on the larger dimensions of knowing also bring them to the mundane-ness of being which in effect exalts the mind towards cognition of the hymns of the ‘Vedas’; represented in the mythological ‘Asvattha’ tree as its leaves, symbolizing sensitivity and vitality. The rustling of the leaves denote whispering of knowledge and the green colour is evocative of the life-force flowing through living beings.

An avid observer of nature, Seema often watches the plants sway in the breeze and imagines what their life must be. She attributes each thing animate or inanimate with a particular rhythm that governs its life. A wooden table was once a tree. It continues to live but with a different rhythm. In watching the fish swim in the deep sea, Kohli notes that they find their way without really knowing how or where they must go. It does not seem to matter if there is a purpose to their existence. She envies them, fantasizes and extends these ideas to draw them without fins. Deep seas become a metaphor for human despair, when in total surrender to the forces of life the being is carried effortlessly towards destinations unforeseen. In such a context ‘Fish’ do not need their fins but paradoxically, in her paintings the ‘Gandharvas’ are often given eagle wings.

Angels of positive energy, the ‘Gandharva’ have their roots in many ancient Indian texts and scriptures. Traditionally they do not have wings and exist unseen in the atmosphere aiding human beings to their goals. She paints eagle wings on these angels, inspired by a verse by Dr.Iqbal, invoking this free spirit residing high in the mountain peaks; for whom the poet states, it would be a travesty to nest. The correlation between the fish and eagle is an unusual one, yet is a simple but profound metaphor for evolution of the human mind; presenting the Gandharva as an angel evolved from fish that once swam in the deep seas. This spirit, liberated through trials and tribulations that evoked a total surrender to the forces of life, epitomizes the essence of the energy which governs us. In the painting ‘I couldn’t fly without these Eagle wings’, Kohli implies that the wings are a garb, not a natural attribute. The angel seems to be clothed in a highly patterned but transparent costume that fits the body like skin, onto which the wings are awkwardly sewn, implying that an angel that needs these wings, is unaware of her powers to soar high in the sky.

‘The Magician’ conjures fantastic imagery. Chinese cloud forms, angels riding peacocks, Krishna riding alongside them, but isolated in separation by his elevated consciousness depicted by his containment within the cosmic womb. Through this the artist suggests that the difference is merely a state of mind. Be it Gandharava, Gopi, Krishna or artist, what separates is the level of evolution of the mind’s perception; for the physicality of the world and its environs remain the same. The female magician, arms outstretched seems to hold the cosmic womb in them but that is just an illusion. Look closer and it’s not yet within her reach. Dressed in a gaily patterned, flowing robe, with garlands in each hand she yearns to, but is grounded in another reality where ducks, stiff like wooden artefacts, create a dense atmosphere of obstacles for mermaids to swim through these waters, below which lies the Asvattha tree. Is the magician dancing in the physical plane that we know of? Has she transcended some, but not enough? What place is this where trees grow below water, where mermaids swim among wooden ducks? Is it just imaginary or did it really exist in the realm of the Vedas? Has Seema Kohli uncovered a world the ancients knew?

Thus the artist extols the viewer to question the veracity of her landscape, delve into its philosophical depths to uncover the mysteries of life that keep her fascinated with each day. Seema reveals that she awakens with a smile, looking forward to the challenges that will uncover yet another facet of being, taking her closer to her ‘Krishna’ waiting in the cosmic womb. She is separated yet by virtue of an incomplete knowing of the hymns of the Vedas, which can only be explored through the mundane realm of living on the physical plane. This is a powerful message. It reveals as it fascinates and through extraordinary imagery that compels us question, Seema Kolhi takes us on a dream-like journey of hope, re-colouring the dimensions of the mundane, exalting it by connecting lofty philosophical ideals with the everydayness of being.

Gopika NathJanuary 2009
[i] You are an eagle, go live high on those mountain peaks.
It would be a travesty indeed, to build yourself a nest.
[ii] om! hiranya garbha samvartaghraha bhutasya jata patirakeaseet, sadadhara prithveem dyamuttem kasmayee devayahavishavidhema
Yajurveda 13. 4[source: the artist]

[iii] Sribhagavan uvaca
Urdhvmulam adhahsakham ashvattham prahur auyayam
Chandamsi yasya parnani yas tam veda sa vedavit.

Bhagavad Gita XV.1
[The blessed lord said: they (the wise) speak of an eternal asvattha tree, with roots above and boughs beneath, whose leaves are Vedic Hymns. He who understands this tree of life is a Veda-knower.] from
God talks with Arjuna, The Bhagavad Gita by Sri Sri Pramahansa Yogananda, Vol. II published by Self Realization Fellowship 1999.

[iv] God talks with Arjuna, The Bhagavad Gita by Sri Sri Pramahansa Yogananda, Vol. II published by Self Realization Fellowship 1999 page 929.

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The Way We Are [VIART Exhibition essay]

2009-01-22T16:07:00.000+05:30

“The real function of art is not to transmit feeling so that others may experience the same feeling. The real function of art is to express feeling and transmit understanding.”- Herbert Read

Art reflects social values and aesthetic sensibilities, indicating broader developments in society and in doing so, presents the way we are. Contemporary Indian art is primarily preoccupied with the moral dilemmas of the urban environment and an ethos which has unwittingly evolved to entangle the spirit of being in its multifarious directions or lack thereof. There appears to be no prescribed ethic for the urban metropolis denizen. It’s each to their own will; free for all. A consequence of liberated economic policies, capitalized upon by the rest of the world, we are presented with choices we never had. This is creating an environment of want that goes beyond necessity to manifest as greed, which complicates the mechanics of life and its value thus far imbibed.

These young contemporary artists are exploring, deconstructing and reconciling with the chaos of being. Shivani Aggarwal defines this via the metaphor of thread, Sonia Mehra Chawla evolves through a dialogue with her inner and outer-urban self, patterns that represent the coagulation of the heart of society; while Vibha Galhorta exhorts us to re-view the innocence of childhood versus its senseless abuse today, and Oli Ghosh reminds us not to forget so easily. In our past paced lives, we move on without a catharsis of emotion that permits us flow with purity into another circumstance. Often not emotionally present in tragedy, merely seeing this as an opportunity for selfish gain. The paradoxes of life are tough to reconcile and these artists inform and engage us with the dynamics of their personal visual conversations.

The perceived changing values conflict with an aesthetic deeply rooted in an ancient cultural sensibility, compelling the artist to question, present, resolve and/or compromise with the circumstance and experience. Surender K. Mishra was born in Madhuban, in a farming community where animals were integral to their livelihood and thus cared for; unlike today where cattle run amok, eating from garbage dumps, run down by cars and truckers alike. Mechanization of farming activities has highlighted the selfishness of the human temperament. He is further occupied with attempting to understand the ethos that walks past sleeping bodies, uncaring if they be in pain or discomfort, so caught up in our focus to get somewhere, we seem unaware of the intricacies of living around us; walking as if asleep. He thus questions the pace of contemporary living and its toll on human compassion, depriving us of the solace of its embrace. Presenting each image in multiples Surender compels us to look, reflect and re-align with our humanness, through these black and white photographs of a life within the ambit of our existence but not necessarily included in its purview of thought.

Life is cold and calculating and this disturbs. It is the way we are, but do we need to be so brutal and callous? Oli Ghosh’s involvement as a volunteer rescue worker in the 2001 Gujarat earthquake left indelible marks; not so much of the devastation but of human resilience, where within a matter of two years, she found that there was no physical evidence of the destruction. Everything had been re-built, life seemed back to normal, and this was despite the fact that all the aid did not reach the victims as corruption was rife. Her multi-media installation recalls images of the trauma experienced by some of the victims she encountered. Unable to accommodate the slickness of the physical re-construct with these harrowing visions recorded in her mind, she asks we identify with these memories, register the torment in them and her. She beseeches you not to treat it as a reference point for idle conversation while simultaneously recognizing the resilience of the human spirit akin to that of a rubber band; pulled in a million ways returning to its original form, until it snaps.

From being a mechanical engineer to product designer, design consultant and artist, Kumar Kanti Sen, has walked many paths in life, questioning the creation of the homo-sapiens. He says it is not the present urban chaos that distorts the human spirit, but coerces us to dwell upon the demon within, which he believes, regardless of circumstance, exists in the genetic design of the species. In coming to terms with our humanity or lack of it, Kumar Kanti examines through sexuality, various dimensions of being. He crafts a chair made in the image of a tongue, provoking with its surface of simulated hair, as opposed to skin, and legs moulded on the human toe. The digital photographs evoke a grotesqueness of being, where the eye of the beholder and what is seen is distorted by lack of ability to perceive the truth. His angst is deep and personal. Anger at man’s capacity for subterfuge, camouflaging the baser instincts and the general lack of compassion, are what drive him to question the veracity of human existence. Why do we exist? What do we contribute to life? If we chained the demon which he believes emerges through hedonistic pursuit, will we be worthy of creation?

Floating in the greyness of ambiguity, clarifying to create order; not unlike Sen, Shivani Aggarwal is also seeking a means to define herself. Sometimes as thread, sometimes a mechanically produced reel of yarn, or a blank space and even as a shadow of it all is the tangible evidence of her intangible mind. She engages with each thread of thought, unravelling, entangling, presenting the mind as a knot of threads, whose shadow defines a body, attempting to fly, weighted by its mass of unresolved ideas. Shivani observes herself, commenting upon her performance in life, not that of others. She reveals a compassionate stance that creates a greater mess in attempting to repair relationships and contentious situations where she lacks a self-observed quality of detachment. Her quest thus takes her beyond the mundane activities of living and engaging with urban turmoil. Working with acrylic on canvas, as opposed to using the needle and thread which she meticulously paints, Shivani sublimates the tedium of thought clarifying itself, whose intensity is absorbed in the observation and presentation of each minute detail of her photo-realistic images.

A pre-occupation with devising patterns is how Sonia Mehra Chawla’s generates a sense of harmony amidst the pulls of a life driven by myriad desires. Her canvas is an intricate maze of sensual imagery that draws the gaze into its labyrinth of thought. Human faces metamorphose into tentacles which represent the hardening arteries of society, which the artist delineates is being caused by the great urban development, growing higher into the lunarian sphere. The body becomes her map for recording this human experience, alienated from the nature of being, not in form but in un-knowing. The frenzy of the environment is inescapable impinging in ways incomprehensible to the conscious mind, waking and sleeping. She extends her own personal encounters to present the implications of mechanization in our lives, eliminating the charmed distinction between inner and outer worlds. The artist questions an urban phenomenon that thoughtlessly uproots trees to grow cemented walls; where the once revered cow scourges for food, becoming a double headed menace in a world of mortar and steel. Through organic forms, she explores the possibilities of fecundity and fertility with its consequences in such a world. Her paintings attempt reconciliation with the dynamics of this ‘urban-biomorphic’ nature of life.

The metropolis is also Vibha Galhotra’s site of exploration. In the present installation she extends a childhood caprice by creating a larger than life-sized kaleidoscope. The structure is covered with newsprint stories of child abuse, with particular reference to the horrendous Nithari killings, a blot on the nation’s attitude towards the children of its future. Vibha thus re-creates the inner world of imagination without denying the tyranny of the outer. The implications are tremendous. It speaks to us on dual levels. The first comments on the polarities of the internal and external constructs of mind and the other presents a strategy for a child-like approach to life. Making, more than representing is important for Vibha who relishes the engagement with an idea and the dynamics of its fabrication. When she paints as opposed to sculpting, she reveals that the idea is not as empowered for she has discovered, as did the artisans of ancient India that in the plasticity of hand lays the plasticity of thought. Its pliancy arising from the humility of knowing for the process curtails imagination with physical constraints of doing.

Immersed in the mechanics of contemporary living, this collective endeavour is not merely a presentation of their existence, but equally an exploration of it. The quest of each is a comprehension of experience, its inner and outer dimensions, represented as sexuality and the city, creativity and compassion; with evident tensions between logic and faith, denoted by the cow which symbolizes many things in the Indian culture from deity to mother; the womb and fruit as symbols of growth; toys and their simple pleasures as a means to re-define recreation, and the delightful notion of thread as a metaphor for the complexity of mind. Carnal instincts, industrialization and the urban-rural divide are merely the means for the larger existential quest. These ideas manifest the materiality of survival. Some are reconciling, some are vehement in their condemnation of the demons within us and some are quietly synchronizing with a system beyond this chaos, finding grace in imagination. This in essence is the way we are.

Gopika Nath
11th October 2008

Damien Hirst in India-of Cadavers, Gaffar Market, Butterflies and Gurgaon

2008-09-19T18:13:00.000+05:30

Damien Hirst may not yet have set foot on Indian soil, but his presence is certainly being felt. When I caught a glimpse of the news that his work had sold for £ 10.35 million, breaking Picasso’s record, I did not blink, but later realized that this record breaking fact had caught everyone else’s attention. The very next day, sitting in a tiny cubicle, in a lawyer’s office, in the high court, I was asked: “who is this Damien Hirst guy?”, the lawyer said, hesitatingly pronouncing his name. I blinked then, many times, for the context and environment in which this question had been posed was odd to say the least.

Are artists and their work garnering attention for appreciation of the aesthetics they infuse our lives with? Is this even a consideration? When you see the kind of money people seem to spend buying works of art, it’s natural to question what motivates them to do so. However the manner in which art is being traded today, it may as well be a commodity on the stock exchange.

This past week has been a rather disturbing one. The bomb blasts across Delhi have been too close to home to be shrugged aside. Braving the necessary but disorganized security checks creating long, snaking queues of cars at Khan Market, not withstanding, what have each one of us done to awaken the conscience of change? Are we still shrugging it off, as how could ‘they’ do such a thing? Are we still denying our role in creating ‘them’? What has Damien Hirst’s work, shown recently at The Oberoi, in New Delhi, had to say to us, that he and his work is a subject of such interest?

Much of art that is being done today is not beautiful in the context of being pleasant to behold. It reflects the environment we live in. Art is as much about beauty as it is about truth and plays a pivotal role in re-defining both. A work of art that raises questions succeeds, for it makes you think about what the artist wants to say, but people are dismissing Hirst for passing off cadavers in the name of art. Conceptual art is easy to dismiss as it is easy to fake, but when you question Hirst, can you really dismiss him?

In viewing the small section of works shown in Delhi less than a month ago, aside from the rest we have read about and seen visuals of, it is not easy to dismiss him as either grotesque or fake. He uses such unusual means to get your attention. This is as much a sign of the times, as his creative genius. To re-create the idea of stained glass cathedral windows using butterfly wings with the precision and dexterity Hirst does, presents his conviction in his own point of view. Do we have what it takes to make the kind of stained glass windows created in Renaissance Europe without taking fragile lives? I think it’s a very powerful statement on how we perceive ourselves today – as fragile as butterflies, beautiful as they may be. Where then is the spiritual strength, we’re constantly talking about? Where’s man’s supremacy?

He also questions our notions of faith, if we let him, by penetrating the layers that reveal the anatomy of an angel. These works are beautiful for what they say, the truth they reveal, but what most of us learn about, are the prices collectors are willing to pay to own them. A recent column in a daily newspaper has questioned why anyone “would wish to display such a work at home or in a public space”, as a mystery. The piece under consideration is a rather grotesque box of maggots turning into flies to feed off a severed cow’s head. The mirror does not always reflect what we would like to see, just like the chink in our armour against terrorists, reveals how vulnerable we are, despite high security.

I cannot drive past an auto rickshaw today, without thinking about the picture of the mangled remains of the one that blew up in Gaffar market on Saturday. Bumbling along, gasping to keep pace with the Toyota and Mercedes, the auto-rickshaw in many ways represents the mayhem in our minds, filled with the chaos of aspiration and inequities. How do we even begin to address, what is a mammoth situation that we happily leave to the ‘authorities’? When do we begin to claim responsibility in creating the world we hate to live in? Art should help us introspect. Art is not about beautification. In today’s world it cannot be. Art should be society’s conscience, but sadly it is not.

We’ve built fantastic steel and glass offices in Gurgaon. The city boasts of a beautiful hotel, The Trident. It’s a veritable oasis just off NH8, but further down that road, past the many offices and factories that position Gurgaon as the millennium city, the road is nothing more than a deeply gouged gutter, filled with stones and has been so, untended for a whole year. For every such road you avoid taking, there are traffic snarls on the few remaining tractable ones. There is power back-up in the multi-storey buildings but everywhere else, there are long outages, not enough water to cook or bathe.

There is so much lacking in the infrastructure of cities that rise higher or spread horizontally, it’s terrifying to live in this chaos, but we do and the stress of it is gruelling. It is no longer good enough to comment via art or words. Each one of us has to become a kind of activist in our own environments, with courage to confront each other with the dysfunctional dimensions of being each presents. It is only this that will awaken the conscience of change. It is only when issues impinge on our daily lives and being that we question. Art is a mirror that no longer speaks to our souls. Sometimes, because it is not coming from the realm of soul and sometimes, ours is too steeped in materiality and needing tangible proof we dismiss the subtlety of our own perceptions.

Gopika Nath
19th September 2008

Citing the City - Sudhir Patwardhan

2008-09-16T19:47:00.000+05:30

As an artist Sudhir Patwardhan has made a significant contribution to the landscape of contemporary Indian Art. Working in a distinctly individual style, his paintings have focused in different ways, over the years, on the working classes. “For 30 years, it is the human figure as the vehicle and site of those relationships which has fascinated Patwardhan--especially the proletarian figure which is stationed at the receiving end of society's most exploitative impulses.”[1] His paintings have presented a series of portraits of the heroic tableaux of the common people of the city of Mumbai. ‘Citing the City’, a recent exhibition of his works by Sakshi Gallery, at Triveni Kala Sangam, New Delhi, brings this city into focus yet again. For many years, he has presented himself as a “spokesman for the oppressed”, but in this exhibition he seems to have distanced himself from the people, focusing on the chaos of the ever-developing urban landscape instead.
Mumbai is a city of contradictions. The visual aberration of slums against the backdrop of high rise buildings and luxurious living is accompanied by its sound and smells; of “the continuous din of traffic… the stench of bombil fish drying on stilts…the inescapable humid touch of many brown bodies in the street.”[2] As Suketu Mehta, author of ‘Maximum City’ tells us, the new inheritors of the city are “badly educated, unscrupulous, lacking a metropolitan sensibility – buffoons and small time thugs, often – but, above all, representative”[3]. His research reveals that murderers are successful in Bombay through engagement in local politics, “where burning the bread seller alive” got a thug [Sunil] appointed as special executive officer, “a person in whom public trust is reposed”[4].
It is a city where justice is not executable because perpetrators of crime are often the politicians and police who are virtually impossible to prosecute for various complex reasons. Five years after the riots, when the findings of the Srikrishna Report placed the blame “on Thackeray and on the city police”[5], the Sena government officially rejected the report as being biased. Its only remaining value was that “for many of the poorer victims, it is enough that the judge has listened to them, acknowledged that some wrong was done to them. That’s how little they expect of the justice system.”[6]
This city with all its inordinate inequities and frustrations is the one that Patwardhan is citing. The scale of his canvas is awesome and impressive. The skill with which he presents the complex panorama compels the eye to look. His attention to detail in recording the landscape, his selective juxtaposition of buildings, highlighting the chaos, is intriguing. Although the imagery is compelling, as you delve deeper, close enough to read between the lines and shades, you realize that the people, who were once at the forefront of his exploration and presentation, no longer seem to engage with the viewer, as they once did.
In ‘Death on the Street’(2007) a 38 x 46 inch canvas painted with acrylic, he presents an oft visited scene where a pedestrian has been mowed down by some automobile or other and the passersby are curious but do not help. Here, Patwardhan depicts a policeman looking the other way and someone unconvincingly hollers, pointing towards, a long gone from the scene, erring vehicle and driver, while a Sardar and others inexpressively look on. Jitish Kallat, in his catalogue commentary tells us that “deaths on the streets of Mumbai, or Thane, have the potential of being treated as commonplace simply because of the frequency of such occurrences” for “when so many people set out on the street the startling statistic of 30,000 accidents in a year in Mumbai city no longer seem exceptional”[7] His statement appears to condone the apathy, which is alarming. If the sensitive become insensitive, what hope does society have to redeem itself? This poses another question: if Art is about infusing life with a sense of aesthetics, do our cities have this? If not, and surely it is not, can artists distance themselves when and where this infusion is sorely needed?
The city is impossible. It’s become worse, but is it the city that creates the problems or us? Can any one of us afford to create this distance from what goes on, even in defeat? It is not just about Mumbai, it is the same story all over the country. Life in the city can be a veritable nightmare. But the sense of its trauma and frustrations is just not explored enough in these paintings to bring forth our indignation or any sense of self-disgust, condemning ourselves for having let it become so. We need to be faced brutally with what is, to bring about any measure of change. The point then seems to be: does the artist want it to change? If not, then the burning question is why not? How can it be acceptable? Perhaps it does not yet impinge enough to demand change?
In ‘The Clearing’ (2007, acrylic on canvas 54 x 72 inches) we see lots of shanties, cement houses and tall buildings which in part, have been painted evoking a Cezanne-like depiction. Elsewhere, Patwardhan presents with considered detail, almost every shadow and curve of the landscape. People are reduced to matchstick figures or virtually absent from this huge panoramic view of the city which veers on romanticizing rather than condemning the apparent chaos. The artist thus, disconcertingly evokes the ‘Stockholm syndrome’ effect, where it is assumed that the condition is now perceived as inescapable therefore conformed to.
All around us media cites the ‘Incredible India” growth story, its super power potential et al. The euphoria is unbelievable and nothing short of self-delusional. Patwardhan has been telling us how unbalanced and disorganized life in this country is, but the problem is that he no longer says it powerfully enough. What he says, we already know and do seemingly nothing about, for the situation has got worse, not better. Maybe somewhere, through this we should acknowledge that passive presentation or protest via art is just not good enough. Now, each one of us has to engage with the city and its problems, become ardent activists in our individual capacities, becoming involved with the moral dilemmas of our personal worlds, within the city, to even begin to heal the situation. Is this what the artist intends? Or is he telling us that this is the way it will now always be and therefore in his acceptance, romanticizing it?
In the drawings too, this thread prevails. Kallat informs of the challenge of painting/drawing on the street, where unlike studio models, the people being drawn do not oblige by “eyes fixed in one direction offering a blank stare without batting the eyelid”, reminding us that Patwardhan, “didn’t attend the conventional art class in an art institute.”[8] He seems to ask us to make allowances for the simplified figures Sudhir Patwardhan presents. Simple lines have their own way of conveying ideas as strongly as the intensely detailed observational life drawing of an art class, if not more so. Artists such as Cezanne and Van Gogh and many others have amply demonstrated this, paving the way for our appreciation of the emotional stance simplicity affords, which is often far more expressive than the stultified school of still-life studies they broke away from. This argument therefore is quite unnecessary. However, the drawings do lack punch. The figures appear more wooden than alive. The charcoal on paper drawing entitled ‘Threat’, does not threaten, nor does the ‘Slap’ intimidate, with only an occasional sense of emotion in ‘Punch’ (acrylic on paper, 2007- 30 x 22 inches). The drawings do not in themselves inform of what actually was observed, perhaps because of the fleeting nature of street life and this has not been augmented with the artists own emotional data bank to draw from similar experiences, imagined or real.
In an interview, given almost a decade ago, Patwardhan said the artist, “bears the responsibility of addressing the moral issues that confront every individual, and must dramatize that encounter in memorable, even perplexing images elaborating with the idea”[9] and further that: “We don't resolve these complex issues by addressing them,” but “Rather, we remind ourselves of how important it is to go on addressing them instead of pretending that they don’t exist.”[10] At some point he has also expressed that in presenting himself as the “spokesman for the oppressed”, he wondered whether he “did not somehow appropriate their voice, turn them into pretexts for the expression of my own anxieties and dilemmas.”[11]
Looking at the recent paintings and comparing this with the imagery cited in ‘Maximum City’, what struck me was the way in which Mehta began the dialogue, with his own personal experiences. Ironically, it is this “personal geography” that Patwardhan seems to aver from. In his concern to not impose upon the common man, his own “anxieties and dilemmas”, he becomes an observer; without an intellectual and/ or emotional view-point. Thus he does not allow himself to get involved with the situation beyond his role of commentator which now lacks the indignation, the frustration and anger, because in removing his own personal dialogue of his “anxieties and dilemmas”, the situations do not affect him as perhaps he once he allowed them to. Although he lends insight into the predicament that generated the emotional distance, one is left wondering what really changed and why. This question lingers persistently, invoking greater interest than the painted views.
Gopika Nath
13th March 2008
[1] Ranjit Hoskote, Times of India, 2 February 1999- ‘A doctor trains his X-ray vision on his art’
[2] Suketu Mehta, Maximum City- Bombay lost and found, Pg. 15
[3] Suketu Mehta, Maximum City – Bombay lost and found, Pg. 81
[4] Suketu Mehta, Maximum City – Bombay lost and found, Pg. 81
[5] Suketu Mehta, Maximum City – Bombay lost and found, Pg. 87
[6] Suketu Mehta, “ “ Pg. 88
[7] Citing the City, Sudhir Patwardhan, Sakshi Galery, catalogue essay,2008, Jitish Kallat, Pg, 7
[8] “ “ “ “ ,2008 Jitish Kallat, Pg. 5
[9] Ranjit Hoskote, Times of India, 2 February 1999- ‘A doctor trains his X-ray vision on his art’
[10] Ranjit Hoskote, Times of India, 2 February 1999- ‘A doctor trains his X-ray vision on his art’
[11] Ranjit Hoskote, Times of India, 2 February 1999- ‘A doctor trains his X-ray vision on his art’

Art in Steel

2008-09-16T19:46:00.000+05:30

Steel in the realm of art is as yet a rather under-explored medium. Apart from some well known buildings by architect Frank Gehry (Guggenheim Museum Bilbao/ Chrysler building) and few breathtaking pieces by sculptor Anish Kapoor, it is familiar more for usage in the home. In India especially, stainless steel is commonly used as cutlery, cooking utensils and watches. This image has undergone considerable transformation with two recent shows sponsored by ‘The Stainless’ in New Delhi, curated by Dr. Alka Pande who says that steel today is not just a metal, it is evolving into a global language of art.

In the ‘Saptarishi’ show at India Habitat Centre, seven contemporary Indian sculptors were invited to engage with steel; drawing from their diverse backgrounds and schools of thought, to ‘stretch’ the “language of both the medium and the spirit of creativity”. The extravagant ideas that emerged from NN Rimzon, Shiv Verma, Vivek Vilasini, Karl Antao, Valsan Kolleri and Sumedh Rajendran, awakened the art going public to the potential of steel, as never before.
The scale of most of the exhibits commanded your attention, but as most of the artists were working with steel for the first time, it will be a while before they can make it speak evocatively. Anish Kapoor’s pieces are sophisticated by comparison and work well because the medium is used to explore ideas that he has worked with for decades. His work is also site specific, having a designed public space and interactive dimension. Although many of the pieces in ‘Saptarishi’ were grand in scale, they lacked the conviction of ‘Sky Mirror’ [2006, New York City] and ‘Cloud Gate’ [2004, Chicago].
In direct contrast to Kapoor’s seamless, expansive pieces, Vilasini explores the ornate filigree of silver artefacts, using water-jet lasers to cut unrelenting metal into delicate streams of pattern; devising dream like forms in ‘Too many fables on the ground’ [15’x 15’x 4’] and ‘Theatre of intervals’ [19’7” x 14’8” x 3’]. He seems at ease with the ‘design’ dimension of working with steel, where the concept has to be planned in advance then executed independently by engineers at the Jindal factory; while NN Rimzon expresses awkwardness at this distance from his otherwise preferred, personal involvement with creating. For Vibhor Sogani the shift occurs in the reverse, from the discipline of design towards freedom of expression as art. This orientation is evident in the body of work which is more innovative than expressive. By comparison Sumedh Rajendran, in his inimical visual language rooted in the everyday living of common folk, retains the imagery, texture and tone of his dialect, using the slickness of steel to enhance its meticulous crafting and telling.

Stainless steel with its natural lustre is pleasing, but it can also be put through processes to add various textures such as explored by Sogani in his exhibition ‘God and I’, held at ‘The Stainless’, that one did not find in ‘Saptarishi’. Despite this depth of exploration with the medium, Vibhor was unable to represent the intimacy of a dialogue with ‘God’ with his free standing and wall mounted works of varied scale and texture. His most successful piece was ‘Stroll’ where the artist appears to walk tentatively on roughly hewn bands of steel, suggestive of the beginning of a visceral intimacy that evokes a dialogue with God. However, this honesty is not represented in the other works, where he does not reveal his vulnerability in the relationship cited, allowing the different dimensions of steel to have their say instead. He has explored the physicality of the material in greater depth than the ‘Saptarishis’ but they have left a greater impression, for the sheer scale in size of the works which makes them unforgettable. Steel has undoubtedly left a mark, its stain indelible.

Gopika Nath
28th March 2008

Wondrous Woods - Manisha Parekh, Bodhi Art

2008-09-16T19:44:00.000+05:30

In the preview of her recent works [opening in New York in February], we see Manisha Parekh using an austere colour palette of maroon, black, beiges and browns. She plays with diverse media, ranging from light-hearted drawings with Chinese ink, water-colour and gouache on paper; carefully worked layers of overlapping paper-cut patterns; to intense wrappings of jute. Her preoccupation with seeds, eggs, fecundity; of form arising from within form; multiplying forms, pattern within pattern, is engaging in its obsessive-ness. The visual language is minimal, largely abstract and not easy to define. It has however, evolved through years of exploration, developing a certain conviction which compels one to look.

My earlier viewing of Manisha’s work has been fragmented, occasional works here and there and its intensely self-absorbed, abstracted pre-occupation did not hold much appeal. However, quiet solemnity envelopes as you enter the realm of ‘Wondrous Woods’ at Bodhi Art, Gurgaon. Emanating from calm of deep contemplation, her expression is understated and reassuring in an environment, where everything is designed to grab your attention with bright neon lights and larger than life signage.

The composite body of work makes a statement that no single work can express. In a sense, a quibble I do have is that each work does not quite stand up on its own, but there is cohesiveness to the whole show, each piece complementing the other, together expressing her endless meandering. Lost in the woods of ‘creativity’, Manisha experiments with one seed of thought and then another, letting little ideas build-up. They germinate together, where the identity of one seems unimaginable without a reflection of the other. Like mother and child; or akin to words in a sentence, taking them apart and then expecting the same profundity to emerge as expressed in the statement together made. The context of each piece, like a word, is the basis of the conversation they have with each other. In carefully following this thread of thought, we find access to an intimate dialogue the artist conducts with herself. Working in a series Manisha does not define but lets ideas grow, each thought adding its own point of view, allowing the viewer to draw their own conclusions – if any.

Her world seems insular, speaking of a very personal space, precluding the larger, cognitive physical environment we exist in. She appears unconcerned with issues of communal violence, terrorism, or haphazard development of our nation and other such issues of Indian identity in art etc., yet the conviction with which she speaks, in its quiet assertion makes one almost envious of her disciplined self-absorbedness. Her attitude of self-containment renders superfluous, many of these issues, in its more expansive dimension of being. We see not the absence of our chaotic world, but sense the presence of another realm, which acts like a balm for the cacophonic frenzy of everyday living. In expressing a gradual evolution of thought, resolving ideas, as opposed to regurgitating the whole, she tackles issues, without bringing their trauma into being. Delving into experiences, painstakingly sifting through the emotion, Manisha inspires contemplation. This, in essence, says more about issues she does not touch upon, for is there need to reflect what is, when reflecting upon; she shows us a way to transcend?

Working with Chinese ink and watercolour on paper, in ‘Beads of Silk’, she is tentative, even playful, with multiple postcards recording each uncertain step in the woods. In ‘Beans’, one is disappointed, for the pattern is deliberate but gauche and un-innovative in a world where design has taken huge strides. However, she takes a quantum leap in ‘The Secret Within’, using tactile and ‘raw’ jute threads. Textiles with their everyday familiarity present a powerful metaphor for expression, evolution and change. Wrapping thread upon thread closely, tightly embracing each turn, pulling and binding, a series of sculptural-like forms emerge, that speak of a yearning for the possibilities of plurality in thought and being, without needing or severing the umbilical cord. Manisha expresses a certain solace in the process of making, material and form, conveying a wringing angst that couldn’t be expressed another way.

In ‘Uncertain Eggs’, She is perhaps the most candid and definitive in expression and this triptych is the also the most resolved piece of work - complete in itself. But, it is in the palimpsest-like multi-layered paper-cut series of twenty pieces ‘The Sound Lingers’, that I found so much of what Manisha had been saying earlier, find adequate voice. The material, the shapes, colour, use of space and the placement of twenty, in three rows, ending unevenly, gripped my interest, for I saw an envious maturity in resolution. Through her myriad explorations of layering and cutting, she had found conviction without an intimidating intensity, but through a considered evolution of thought.

Gopika Nath
25th January 2008