A Misplaced Universe [ Review - Jayashree Burman, Gallery Art Alive]

Vibrant colours, exotic detail and a folk-art-like frontal faces whose large white flattened eyes looked directly at me, was how I encountered Jayashree Burman’s mythical universe at Lalit Kala Academy, presented by Art Alive Gallery. I decided to view the exhibition from top to bottom and was able to see her earlier work first, which allowed me to reflect on the extent to which Jayshree has explored the more western oriented ideas of modern art, towards a manifestation of her Bengali antecedents; searching for an idiom which will nuance her own peculiar identity within this. Ina Puri’s essay reveals that given the background she came from, Jayshree has led a rather unconventional life and in her own way is quietly spirited rather than meekly accepting the traditional ideals her family’s culture espoused.

 

Women in India’s metropolises may consider themselves emancipated for their assertion in breaking the glass ceiling in the corporate world, but is the Indian woman really freed from the rituals and tradition that are deeply etched in our psyche? Does she even want to be, is the question Jayshree’s water colours present.
 

She draws in situ while travelling; never takes photographs, confessing that she does not know how to. In her studio she then translates the people she has seen around her and drawn. They are people like you and me, her maid, the dhobi and panwalla or anyone else she encounters who become integral to her mythical universe, where she presents her everyday world, seen though the perspective of senses moulded through traditional lore and its iconography. I found this interesting for even if externally we have adopted the sensibilities of a western world through their steel and glass high rises, malls and a culture that is reminiscent of an industrial and a digital civilization, we have lived with these inherited God and Goddesses far longer than the brutal icons of our modern world - a reminder that those centuries of ritual are not that easy to erase.

However, the physical indicators of the contemporary world are missing. We do not see anything that immediately locates the work in this present era. If you look deeper you will see the relative freedom with which Burman interprets the Gods and Goddesses because she does not start out to paint one. The starting point could well have been a sister-in-law or a friend, but while working, the form becomes infused with notions that emerge from deep within her reservoir of memory and habit, evoking ideas reminiscent of idols and images that she grew up with. These are then presented through a visual language and technique that she has evolved and is comforted by. The loosely painted background is worked intricately, but again loosely with pen and ink and does not speak of the discipline or power and accomplishments of the inherited gods and goddesses that she represents. Here Jayashree is perhaps questioning this world versus ours where we pray to them as stone idols as opposed to respecting each other as manifestations of this spirit.

 

To visually locate Burman’s heavily decorated watercolours in an art milieu that is preoccupied with a material world, concept art, installations and digital media is virtually impossible. But scratch the surface and there are subtle resonances of this in the way she

 works. The randomly painted watercolour base and restless scratching of the ‘Rotring’ pen on the painted surface are indicative of the influence of a frenzy that has gripped us all. This leads to a perception that her art is an escape into a mythical universe where she does not have to acknowledge this, but can inhabit the world of memories, healing old wounds and reconciling with the enormous changes that have been forced upon us in a bid to compete with a world that does not have cognizance of this deeper spiritual connect.

 

The problem that I have with this imagery is that it is really not exploring the outer world enough and therefore is distanced from its realities, both physical and emotional. While she does acknowledge this rather perfunctorily, she appears to be out of sync with the aesthetics that govern our everyday living and inhabits a world of imagination almost as if it’s too much for her to bear. It is a personal choice, but one which positions her work more in terms of nostalgia for the exotic, a past that has long gone, rather than a tapestry of the exciting contemporary world. The culture and physical dimensions of life today have changed so much; does she not wish to explore these nuances at all?
 

 

Guy de Maupassant in commenting upon the imposing presence of the newly built Eiffel tower in Paris said that the best way to escape it was to get inside it. If she takes a leaf out of Maupassant’s book and plunges right into this teeming universe, throbbing with its own peculiar rhythm and dissonant harmonies, Jayanshree Burman may well find that the presently intimidating, rapidly transforming contemporary world is as vibrant and engaging as the nostalgic one she inhabits; discovering and revealing yet more facets of her spirited herself.

 

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

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]

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.

Exploring The Potential of Stillness [Review] Threshold Gallery



In this age of the internet, we have a group of artists presented as Neti-netizens. Curated by Girish Shahane at Gallery Threshold, these ‘Vanguards’ bring forth a legacy that produces meditative imagery which differs refreshingly from the populist present-day avant-garde expression.

Prajakta Potnis, 2010 [41.5x30 in] 
 acrylic & dry pastel on paper

They are not contemplating the divine in an abstract sort of way nor are they seeking to define the pulsating energy atoms behind all creation, instead they meditate upon seemingly mundane objects of everyday living. Thus rooted, Prajakta Potnis uses careful brushwork; painting with the kind of attention to detail, Rembrandt gave to ruff collars in his 17^th century self portraits, creating light and luminous canvasses. Yashwant Deshmukh takes simple objects breaking them down to bold geometric forms, while Madhav Imartey‘s fascination with a typewriter or cement mixer gives us renditions of the object’s form and its reality beyond this and Parag Tandel explores the line as representation and evolution of thought. In leaving his hand free to discover what it will, he brings forth a network of dense lines that are dark and foreboding. Thus in their individualistic ways, they arrive at individual interpretations of reality.



Parag Tandel [37.2x27 cm]
gel pen, ink and charcoal

The idea of such consideration being given to facets of being that are not glamorous or overtly celebrated, but intimate and personal is indeed charming. Potnis draws a single rail with a carelessly hung, bunched-up towel with residual body hair, using acrylic and dry pastel on paper. The handling of the object is detailed to the point of realistically painting each hair caught on the pile of the fabric and everything else that may have been in the space around this, is erased. Her focus is only on the towel where one assumes the rail is nailed onto a wall, but it could well be floating in space. She does the same with the sofa-bed, where you can see every stitch, pinch and tear of the mattress, but it has a certain lightness of being, where defying gravity it appears to levitate.

Using acrylic and charcoal on paper Deshmukh takes a bottle or cone, simplifying the form to the extent of distorting perspective by creating a flat surface out of 3-d articles, belying the physical reality of these objects, as we have seen and felt and known them to be. In doing so, he appears child-like and one could dismiss the work as rough and un-finessed, but in this age of technology this naïve representation is curious and therefore questioned. Unlike Potnis, this austere interpretation does not please in a sensual way. Its extreme simplicity is evocative of peeling the peripheral layers of intellectualization to get to the kernel of the object’s existence, but removed in texture, form and colour from the lushness of the contemporary material world, its appeal is not spontaneous but intellected which defies its own objective.

 

Yashwant Deshmukh - 4 drawings 2010 [20 x 30in each]
acrylic and charcoal/graphite on paper

Parag Tandel, 2008[37.5x27.5cm]
Gel pen, ink & charcoal

In de-selecting details and perspective or elements that constitute the larger environment, most art works in this exhibition seem to eliminate [or exaggerate] sensory vibrations of the physical world from which they draw upon for their reference and inspiration. This creates scope for misinterpretation of the context of their existence and yet there is a certain uncanny, unquantifiable resonance with the world we inhabit.  It is this almost paradoxical nature that engages; where I am intrigued but not comforted by these explorations of the possibility of achieving inner stillness amidst internet connectivity and urban street sounds.  Prajakta Potnis succeeds the most, for her simple and straightforward canvasses have a visual pleasantness evocative of the sensual world and she also achieves the objective of meditation where in her single-minded focus the articles under consideration levitate, but I am tempted to question this effortless achievement in a world weighted with desire and the frenzy to achieve.

Prajakta Potnis, 2010 [41.5x30 in]
acrylic and dry pastel on paper

All the works together, present various dimensions of a spiritual quest, but in isolation none has seemingly explored it with authenticity. I want to feel that resonance of the universality of truth, but the works though evocative are not entirely convincing.

Reflections Through Another State [Devi Art - Pakistani Show] Resemble Reassemble

The works in ‘Resemble Reassemble’ an exhibition of Pakistani Artists at Devi Art Foundation Gurgaon, present facets of life peculiar to Pakistan. While the art works are indicative of global influences in terms of the media and a visual language that is used world-wide, the artists do not engage with global issues, being more involved with those of immediate concern. This allows us a unique opportunity to reflect on parallel concerns prevalent here too, at less obvious levels perhaps, but existing nonetheless for centuries of a shared history cannot be wiped out in mere 60 odd years of partition. We in India are culturally linked to Pakistan in ways that would be impossible to dismiss, yet the art also reflects an ethos that sets us apart and viewing this show was an informative and touching experience.



Bani Abidi - Security Barriers

Representing primarily the first decade of this century, from 2000 to 2009 through works of artists born after 1970, most being in their late 20’s or early 30’s, the dialogue focuses on the implications of purdah, relations between men and women in Pakistan, ties with India, gender and other such issues. Though young, some works display considerable intellectual maturity while others are yet gauche in perception and execution. Some are a direct manifestation of the experience as opposed to brilliantly creative ones, but the disarming honesty and simple intellectualization of ideas presented was refreshing. The catalogue makes frequent references to the political upheavals in Pakistan, contextualizing the conditions under which the artists have worked.
 

Imraan Mudassar - Aerobatics

Weapons play a major role in the work of Imran Khan. In his suspended installation,  ‘Implode 1’ parts of a rifle are placed in front of surgical instruments, making an uncanny connection between the fact that both penetrate the body, one to hurt and the other to heal. In a black and white print ‘Aerobatics’ Imran Mudassar draws a lattice of fighter planes and through the spaces between the conjoined parts, we can see what the city would look like if under siege. He suggests that death could come via terror attacks from the sky. The juxtaposed pattern of airplanes over the entire city scape asserts the disturbing and unsettling fact that you could be anywhere, praying inside a mosque or ambling through the market place and it would not make a difference. In the screen prints by Nazia H Khan, ‘Organza’ and ‘Hair’, lines and marks that denote folds of the organza fabric and the imprint of flowing hair evoke a tension, which I assumed as emanating from terrorism because of the context they were placed in, but the same lines of tension could be evocative of what we face in everyday situations, outside Pakistan. 



Nazia Khan - Organza

Some other artists have spoken of more universal human issues too, such as the essential futility of life that we all may experience as in the video by Ferwa Ibrahim – ‘I Didn’t’ Plan to Drown, the Nixes pulled me in’, where, in her struggle to contain the spill, she ends up spreading it farther and farther, becoming totally embroiled in a situation she had not counted upon occurring. In another video which is untitled, she keeps trying to draw her own shadow which is beautifully evocative of the fact that life is ever-

changing and so are we, and as the light falls and ebbs, so does our sense of self. In Huria Khan’s untitled video, the written word undergoes transformation as pages of writing become a boat which is then immersed in water and the once clear water becomes darkened with the black ink and the paper loses its content. She thus makes a rather subtle but poignant comment on the whole notion of being and non-being, of transformation from one to the other.



Ferwa Ibrahim - video stills -'Untitled'

Unum Babar too attempts to address a spiritual idea in ‘Then Both of us were Born Anew’, referring to two births, when light first strikes and a new awakened sense emerges and when two souls unite and are renewed through love, but I was drawn more to the heavily clad woman and inferred a gender reference rather than the spiritual, as referred to in the poem by William Cartwright [17^th century] whom she quotes in the title. Her two other videos ‘Laminar Turbulence’ and ‘Wherein all Plunges and Perished’ were projected together, bringing forth the extreme stillness of time as water drops and ripples in a blocked bathroom sink in a slow and almost agonizing way, amplifying the torment of a woman trapped inside the drain of a bathroom sink, projected through the pedestal of a wash basin. The carefully measured precision reflects the artist’s honest sensitivity to herself and her situation as a woman in Pakistan, where she is not just subjugated by dictatorial regimes and terror but also as a woman where the do’s and don’ts are extensive. The scale of projection is miniscule, effectively revealing that size is irrelevant when making a point that is deeply felt and well examined.
 



Aisha Khalid - Gul-e-Haan

There were a number of works dealing with gender issues. Aisha Khalid uses dizzy designs of very intricate patters painted with superb craftsmanship in the tradition of miniature paintings but her handling is contemporary. In ‘Gul-e-Haan’ the pattern of the veil occupies the full page without any physical representation of the woman. She thus speaks of the implications of purdah, where in excluding the woman the artist signifies that women have virtually been reduced to being a piece of patterned cloth.  Hamra Abbas in ‘Please do not Touch, Stay Out and Enjoy the Show’ speaks of woman and her home as being a kind of showpiece, not to be touched. She uses the English script on the ‘jaali’ which is an easily recognized form of Islamic architecture used in India too. A brightly coloured self-portrait is framed and neatly hung within the contours of a house such that a child would draw, but defined through an intricate jaali which overlaps the portrait, thus also denoting her imprisonment within the home. She uses the Islamic ideal of the ‘jaali’ signifying the veil between God and us, to speak of seclusion and exclusion in a temporal sense. While the idea resonates on an emotional and intellectual plane, it falls short at the level of execution where greater finesse was required, especially in the making of the paper jaali which comes unglued at various points. 



Bani Abidi. Security Barrier Type G,
Traffic Police, Karachi

By Contrast Bani Abidi’s digital prints of ‘Security barriers A-L’, has clarity in thought and articulation and is presented with minimal fuss. She uses icons that are universal security barriers, but by contextualizing them within specified locations occupied by the international community in Pakistan, she makes her comment about the kind of scrutiny that people undergo on a daily basis. This however is not specific to Pakistan alone, but a universal phenomenon which a preoccupation with terror has inflicted upon  the whole world.  Abidi’s videos bring into play parallels and dissimilarities between India and Pakistan both culturally and politically. In ‘The News’ she  uses the double channel format to project the news being read in India and Pakistan simultaneously wherein the subtitles inform of the difference in how each interprets the same situation. ‘Shan Pipe Band Learns the Star and Spangled Banner’, is a layered commentary on the relationship between Pakistan and America, where traditional Bandwallas, a colonial inheritance such that is still part and parcel of life in India too, are learning the American anthem possibly to please some visiting dignitary. They could have been Bandwallas from Chandni Chowk or anywhere in India and it is difficult to really see the difference.          
                                                    

Bani Abidi - Shaan Pipe Band, video stills

India and Pakistan have had strained relations for the last 60 years where there is considerable distrust even as there is bonhomie. There have been many attempts at a dialogue towards peace, but the general opinion is that we are working to keep us apart rather than to bring us closer together. Looking at the show, I was rather touched as I became aware of situations and life in Pakistan such that have never really been considered in the mayhem of everyday lives, having no real connection with Pakistan except when affected by terrorist attacks of identified Pakistani origin. Then it was convenient to believe the national propaganda, but now Pakistan has begun to have a more humane face. The conditions they live in, as exemplified through the works in this exhibition - the curtailing of freedom, the implications of wearing a veil and the fact that death by terror is considered normal are factors that generate self reflection.

The artistic dialogue may well appear insular and the works not highly intellectual in content and while this may be true because most artists are young and haven’t developed their full potential, it was their honest interrogation of ideas and situations that appealed. In Delhi we see a lot of ideas that have their rooting in the mind and often become obscure because of this and I think the most interesting revelation of this exhibition was that when threat sits at your door-step daily, there really is very little scope for elaborate thought. Then honesty of how you ‘feel’ is the only way to tackle any situation, where the vulnerability of being connected to this is the way forward, towards an expression of it.

A Curious Inheritance - Gautam Kansara [Review]



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.

Weighing The Scale - Size Matters, Gallery Latitude 28, Review

The exhibition was presented in two parts and we saw a diversity in visual expression with each artist presenting their concept of size. This was not necessarily done by tackling the basic premise of the size of their ‘canvas’ and how the content or intent differed, was inhibited or expanded upon, by virtue of size. However, it was interesting to see that for those who worked within the format they usually do, size was secondary to what they had to say.

                                                                                         

Mithu Sen brought size into play with reference to sexual intercourse, where she ‘inflated’ the size of the photographed penis of a Classical European sculpture and played with its form. While appreciating Sen’s unreserved approach in tackling size matters, the debate was a non-starter for her visual presentation did not titillate nor repulse, nor make any statement on sexual satisfaction or lack of it, based of size.

 Art today is valued according to square foot area; akin to how property is sold, but large works are also difficult to sell for lack of space to hang them in, especially in private homes. Should either be a criterion for the artist to create, is a question that emerges from between the lines of Bhavana Kakar’s concept note. G.R Iranna addresses this by painting a large and a miniscule canvas, bringing out nuances of size. In the larger canvas [‘Qawaali’, 52 x 198 inches] the imagery is roughly sketched while in the ‘paduka’ [6 x 6 inches] he focuses on a small part of the front of the slipper with greater attention to detail in the painting of its form, which along with the perspective of the ‘paduka’, made it all the more interesting. Both canvasses were treated as objects/pictures of an era gone by and it is the small one that commanded attention, while the ‘Qawaali’ scene was bland by comparison. God, it has been said lies in the details and here one was inclined to agree.

 

 Manisha Parekh explored facets of a singular idea through myriad presentations. The humbler size is her forte which she chooses not to deviate from. Her use of watercolour and spontaneity of thought are handled adeptly in this scale and by contrast to Iranna’s ‘detailing’ that convinces, Parekh engages through multiple projections, expanding on the brief, by suggesting that scale could also be determined by the intensity of thought. Pooja Broota Iranna used the micro-sized staple-pin to build with, drawing on the urban-scape for inspiration. Her steely structures are ambitious for the material she erects them with, but they do not tower and intimidate as do the glass and steel constructions sprouting all over the country. She allows us to view the precision of the building process and hers is all the more attractive for the meditative qualities this embodies while real life sky-scrapers create chaos and cacophony adding to the stress of already frenetic lives. She thus makes a point in favour of a scale that is in harmony with the nature of one’s being.
 

This is portrayed perhaps the most convincingly in the sparing, delicate works by Niyati Chadha. White layered on white, with some minimal marks in pencil.  The play of light creates a subtle magic of shadows through overlapping layers of paper, depending on the angle of overlap and where the light source is. Could this kind of subtlety work successfully on a scale five or even ten times larger? The beauty and irony are that like Manesha and Pooja, Niyati does not even attempt it. However, if these artists had taken on a deviant scale, we may have had a better sense of the manner in which the content changes and how, if at all. 
 

Drawing from the story of Alice in Wonderland, where size becomes problematic when Alice shrinks too small to reach the key or grows too large to get her head through the door, the gallery concept note suggests that purpose determines size. N Pushpmala who uses photography, had technology at her disposal to enrich the debate by shrinking and enlarging the same image[s] but she presented two different works instead. While the smaller work engages the eye because the artist-protagonist looks straight at you, I am left wondering if this could have drawn the viewer equally, on a larger scale. Would I have been intimidated, or would the moment have been lost? This comparison/debate is however lost, for the larger work differs in content and unlike G.R. Iranna, does not shed any light on the debate of size.
 

Does size matter? It depends on what the artist is trying to convey is the inference drawn.  Jayshree Chakravorty supposedly looks at the earth as insects prowling beneath our feet might do. In the smaller works she merely examines insects in a semi-biological way, highlighting their jewel-like colours and curiously presenting them as integral to the paper they’ve been painted on but  the larger work with its squiggles and scratches makes no sense. If she had contrived for insects to crawl on the paper, their real-time marks may have revealed more than her own banal approximation. The larger work is double-sided and must have posed a technical challenge, but here size is not relevant; the artist’s engagement with the idea appears to be a hindrance to its evolution and disappoints on either scale.

Art these days is often portrayed through some kind of theme, which is interesting but does it serve art’s purpose? Differing from design essentially because there is no brief/theme, artists explore ideas close to their being, to reveal perspectives others may not see. The matter of size has not been debated conclusively and while this did not hinder appreciation of some of the work, the exhibition could have benefited by tighter editing. Simrin Mehra Aggarwal presents an obscurely painted connection between an object and its representation in her ‘small’ drawing of ‘large’ machine parts and T.V Santosh, who usually does large scale work presented only smaller ones.  It would have been interesting to see the change in content and texture if both scales had been side by side. Drawing inference from the works themselves is possible only where artists like Iranna have sincerely explored the concept or like Damani, Chadha and Parekh, who have worked within parameters of their own preferred scale.

 

An Ambitious Quest - Seema Kohli, video film Review

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.

Inhibiting Threads [review - Shivani Aggarwal, Gallery Vi-Art, New Delhi]

I walked into the newly renovated Ashna Gallery [previously Viart] on a hot April afternoon to a sparse offering by Shivani Aggarwal, of her recent works ‘Close Knit’. The painted photographs in off white, greys and whites with minimal use of red are neither comforting nor alienating. In fact the problem is that they do not engage you for their own sake but in their apparent incompleteness compel you question. 

Shivani not only paints and photographs the textiles portrayed in her work, but creates some of them to further work with. In ‘Pin-cushion’, the crochet piece held by fingers pointing at us, has been constructed by the artist and I wondered why she does not make the textile rather than paint or photograph it, but this is how she draws your interest and reveals that she is not concerned about making the fabric, but uses the process of construction and de-construction, where threads entangle, support, entwine, loop and sometimes fall apart, as references for those thoughts that occupy us in the relationships we engage with. The fact that she uses textile as the metaphor with which to elucidate this point is insightful, for etymologically textiles refer to the main body and defining this beyond the physical form, is essentially done through relationships
 

Living in the urban metropolis ofNew Delhi, Shivani as as much a part of its cacophonic frenzies as the rest us. This is what she seems to address through the relationships she encounters that reflect its morals and ethics or lack of, not in presenting their physical reality but disassociating from this altogether. The emotion seems to compel her expression more than the physical dimension of these relationships, implying that it is not a singular association, but a general state of being that is articulated. While the works are not entirely abstract, for she presents some physical attributes through threads, fabrics, implements and partial representation of the human body, they are not rooted in any physical space or context.

 

 In a large untitled work that occupies a whole wall; on its pale ground Shivani places a ‘potli’ of white fabric containing some unruly red coloured threads, above this, a semi-knitted red fabric hangs from apparently nowhere and on the right of the bundle, at a lower level, lie a pair of bent knitting needles that have miraculously knitted a few lines, again in red. The use of Red is evocative of strong emotions. Trying to contain unruly threads in a stark white bundle is a challenging endeavour. The bundle has been tied with ease; aside from a few threads that peep out of the ties, there is no sign of a struggle in containing them. While Shivani says that the works exhibited through ‘Close Knit’ are formed as a result of contemplation to understand, analyze and resolve thoughts and situations, this is not visually explored or presented in a way that displays any characteristics of the resolution of emotions. The implication therefore is not of dealing with the feeling and therefore containing it through a detached stance, but suppressing or controlling it and even so the bundle is too neat to convey this either. Can unruly thoughts ever be contained? 

At the opposite end of the emotional spectrum, the colour white is predominant in the lace or crochet work. In ‘Lace 1’, we see a series of six works where a body sews white lace onto itself, with red thread. The lace is readymade, easily purchased from the lanes of Lajpat Nagar market. Lace is intended as a metaphor for social affability and adornment, where regardless of the way you feel, this must be not be displayed when interacting in the social arena. The use of white here is not particularly evocative. As in the other works, there is an apparent hesitation to speak freely of the struggle in dealing with complex emotions or of the discomfort in suppressing them. She paints knitting needles, pins and cutters to express the process of construction and deconstruction, yet the cutters don’t cut, needles don’t knit and pins appear to puncture the skin only superficially. The inference drawn is that the artist speaks of either not being able to inflict pain, pierce right through the skin/surface of the body or relationship or that somehow, the idea or person is disabled from doing so.

All the works on display are very orderly and neatly painted; everything is carefully controlled, even at its most chaotic. The artist’s comfort level in textile making is clearly not enough to induce a creative presentation of her experience and therefore she resorts to using it as a metaphor, while photography and painting allow a certain comfort in representation. Given the underlying meaning of a desire to contain rather than inflict pain, this may however have been a useful endeavour. Engaging with the repetitive, almost chant-like, painstaking mechanics and tactile materiality of knitting or crochet would absorb and diffuse the intensity of emotion, calming like a mantra, thereby achieving a certain sense of detachment, but sublimation without excoriation does not appear to be the intent either. 

The work is subtle and does not have the visceral appeal of much of today’s art but sensitively leads deeper, questioning the very act of creation. Should this be about creating a more wholesome and fulfilling life, where the artistic practice becomes a means to resolve feelings/emotion and move beyond them? Or is it about creating for the sake of play, to nuance age-old dilemmas in a novel way. Which element of creativity should be valued, the artistic practice or human evolution? This point of view or any other is not clearly articulated and like the bent needles that can barely knit or pins that don’t prick, Shivani leaves us intrigued but is unable to convey what she feels.