Connecting the Threads, to Re-Connect with the Warp and the Woof



 

‘Connecting Threads, Textiles in Contemporary Practice’,  was an exhibition held in Mumbai earlier this year. “Tracing textile practices, traditions and histories”, it sought to present “contemporary art practices that engage textiles as a medium, metaphor or process.” These fabric-inspired works were  showcased at the iconic Bhau Dadji Lad museum in Byculla East, where the opulent, restored interiors and artefacts navigating the history of Bombay, its facets and cultures, became the site for contemporary art-works that were placed on and alongside the stairwell and beside the glass-boxed objects of the museum,  as well as within the quieter, reflective spaces of a dedicated viewing gallery.

 

 

Manisha Parekh, Enshrined, 2016. Handmade paper on wool, silk and velvet.

 

In this work, Parekh responds to her visits to pilgrimage sites in various cities including Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka and Varanasi in  India. Taken by the sense of detail and tactility imbibed by the adornment within such religious spaces, Parekh creates sculptural works that represent personal shrines. Intricate small, solid forms made of fabric, including velvet and silk, are carefully organized within the structures.  The geometric shape of the outer box structures contrast with the organic sensual forms made of fabric, giving it a sense of precariousness.

 

 It had an impressive line-up of artists from Anita Dube, Anju Dodiya, Lavanya Mani, Manish Nai, Manisha Parekh, N. Pushpamala, Nilima Sheikh, Paula Sengupta and Reena Saini Kallat, among half a dozen others. Textiles were represented in their art, in diverse ways. Few had devoted their procedures to the art of cloth-making, fewer still were makers in themselves and some had just featured painted renditions and photographs, rather than fabric itself. This was in keeping with the curatorial concept which proposed a choice of material and processes that prevalent art praxes suggested, towards “a nuanced understanding….of the art form” encompassing “the traditional, the modern and the contemporary.”

 

 

Archana Hande, All is Fair in Magic White (image courtesy BDL)

 

Hande uses fabric as a medium to narrate a satirical story that comments on the rapid urban growth and aspirational plans for the revitalization of Mumbai that are rooted in the history of  class, race and power in the city given its colonial and industrial  history. The story moves to Dharavi, Mumbai, the second largest slum in the world, with the largest conglomeration of sweatshops and small-scale industries in  India.  The work features traditional wood-block prints to  create a series of works on cloth that form a storyboard depicting characters, landscape and topographies of the city.



An interesting intercession by Monali Meher, wrapped the  ornate railings of the central staircase with red yarn. This installation was overhung with paintings by Anju Dodiya. The day I visited, the museum was abuzz with activity. Curious to see how many people engaged with this macabre intervention, I was surprised to find that not one of the chattering groups, that passed by me observing them from a relatively silent corner, even noticed there was something uniquely odd about the stifling of a lovingly re-established Victorian aesthetic. Nor did they even glance up at the adjacent walls, to be disturbed by the melancholia of Dodiya’s canvasses that, nevertheless, looked down upon them as they ascended or descended the grand stairway.

 

 

 

Monali Meher, Running Thread, 2018,

Red wool wrapped around the Museum's grand staircase,

temporary site specific installation - a detail (image courtesy BDL)

This apparent lack of interest, in these museum goers, to engage with something so incongruous and disquieting as dark red, bloody hued thread wound around the gilded insignia of the V&A as also the delicately fashioned metallic leaves and florets that surrounded it, (built in 1872, BDL was Bombay’s own Victoria and Albert Museum), was thought provoking. Was it something to do with the viewing public or had the exhibits themselves failed in  their attempt to garner attention and even question the merit and/or activity of contemporary textiles as art. Were they even meant to, is the uncertainty I was left with.

 

 

Rakhi Peswani, Fruits of Labour (A Monument to Exhaustion)

 

Cloth fades, bleeds, stains and dyes. This work attempts to take such material attributes of textiles and transform them into spatial metaphors, engaging the viewer with cultural narratives seeping from the physicality of the medium of fabric. The rudimentary impression of the work is derived from temporary relief shelters/tents pitched at the site of displacement, constructions, migrations, devastations and various intensities of these situations.  These social ruptures of modernity are microcosms that our world witnesses closely and repetitively. Embracing the viewer within the space of the museum, the work opens up an experiential realm within this cosmetic, cultural, public space. The work as a temporary shelter carries an association of (a) larger body that stands desolately…..yet looms above our fragile individual selves.

 

Curated by Tasneem Zakaria Mehta, the museum’s director and Puja Vaish, these materials that are inherently definitive of culture through their fundamental relationship with aspects of the human existence, had left little or no impression upon the average visitor, such that I had been able to witness. The tall, slim, colourful columns of Manish Nai’s collected and compressed fabric, on the first floor galleries, found perplexing glances by ‘shikha’ donning, saffron clad Brahmin pandits and Paula Sengupta’s ‘River of Blood’, had me right confused.  It had been so well-camouflaged among the general  exhibits of the museum, I had to double-check, if it was indeed part of ‘Connecting Threads’, or an earlier acquisition. And how I felt about it positioned thus.

 

 

Paula Sengupta, ‘Rivers of Blood – Caste Baidya, Village Kalia' 2010, ( A detail)

Wood and Fibre-glass almirah, found objects, corn-fibre paper lining, hand block printed wallpaper lining, hand-embroidered bed linen and shirt, wooden hanger and vinyl stickers.

 

‘Rivers of Blood’ is a tactile diary, filled with stories documenting the artist’s travels through Bangladesh to discover her roots across the border - a mere two-hour drive from her Kolkata home, where she discovered the fabled nakshi kantha. This brought back memories through which she reclaimed the process as the script for her narrative. Her grandmother and mother are inheritors of the tradition where women quilted layers of used textiles with kantha stitch, for domestic use. And she had learned from them too.

 

This choice of locating the works of a specifically curated exposition in the midst of the museum’s general display, with walk-ins that created an almost, traffic-jam-like viewing situation, barely leaving room for serious contemplation, was as peculiar as it was disturbing. It made me uncomfortable. I wanted to look without the ‘noise’ of everything else. After all, there has  barely been such a day, in all my decades of working with textiles, that one has been able to walk into an exhibition in an Indian metropolis,  which is dedicated to the modern-day language of cloth and its skeins as markers of cultural residue, with significance in the world of contemporary Indian art. I didn’t take well to the approach, even as it made me trace histories and revisit and review my own perspectives. More particularly, since I had just travelled from the desert, hand-crafted textile haven of Kutch, where I had occasion to notice many revised parameters generating query and concern. And this exhibition added its share of dilemmas, provoking much internal debate.

 

 

Paula Sengupta, ‘Rivers of Blood – Caste Baidya, Village Kalia' 2010, detail, (image courtesy BDL)

 

When I first started working with textiles as art, in the early to mid-1990’s, it was an anomaly. I seemed to be going against the grain of time-honoured conventions where art was primarily utilitarian and the very idea of this becoming the medium for self-indulgent expression an anathema; arising from philosophies of  the ancient world that had nurtured the rich legacy of textiles, we are fortunate to still have amongst us as a living tradition. My reason for venturing beyond the accepted practice arose from my work as a designer that took me into rural spaces where textiles and their makers were struggling to survive the rigours of the modern world.

 

 

 

Weaver's village, Kotwa, Banaras

 

What struck me was that we, as  they, were concerned primarily about the product and how to present it to buyers in the ever-expanding global village. And, little attention was being paid, if at all, to the life-style that was essential to those that worked with an expert dexterity of techniques passed down through successive generations. A way of living that was capable of stepping back from the chaos of the world to indulge in painstaking labour of love, simplifying necessities and focussing on what fostered the spirit of making with the hand. In my myriad experiences as a textile-designer, I learned that if I could bring any value, if I could find any means to contribute towards sustaining this inheritance, then maybe I could do so, by becoming a craftsperson myself. I chose the role of an artist-craftsperson to add value to age-old skills by lending the dignity afforded to contemporary art, as much as attempting to adopt the pared-down lifestyle of those that crafted with the hand. I ‘painted’ with hand-embroidery techniques without seeking to match prevalent skills, which have taken many generations to master.

 

 

 

Gangaba, Bhujodi, Kutch - pakko stitch on Maggie Baxter's textile

 

In Kutch, I had been travelling with an Australian artist who’d been engaging with the fabric and artisans of Kutch for over twenty years.  I was a bystander to more than just the unusual long-distance collaboration. I had returned to the region after three decades and the socio-cultural shifts were telling. As I wandered with Maggie, to hand block-printed units and  artisan’s homes, I noted many changes.  A middle-aged, bespectacled embroidery artisan from the Sodha clan, with faint strands of white on otherwise, well-oiled  black tresses, sat cross-legged on the currently fashionable tiled flooring of her home, on a two-coloured plastic floor-covering - woven vaguely along the lines of the customary bamboo chattai. Her fingers, with chipped, dull-bronzed-maroon nail-polish, deftly handled the ‘sui-dhaga’, working the distinctive Sodha ‘pakko’ stitch, following instructions in Kutchi, passed onto her by Sandhya, a local Jadeja girl, who was assisting Maggie.  Gangaba covered her head with the pallav of a mill-printed polyester saree imprinted with multicoloured polka dots and mock ombre-dyeing. Unlike the conventional garb of her people that once comprised a ghaghra, richly embroidered kurti-kanjari and tie-dye odhani that was usually paired with abundant silver and gold jewellery, closely resembling costumes worn in the deserts of Rajasthan.

 

 

 Vankar Shamji Vishram , Bujodi Kutch, at the indigo vats

 

Outside, carelessly strewn on the balustrade of the staircase leading up to the rooftop of the single-storey home, was a traditional, local-wool shawl with its definitive extra weft effect – in hues of beiges and brown and a hint of vibrant red tones; part of the garb that once defined the Rabari community of Kutch, usually worn by men. It’s casual placement on the steps of a Sodha home, in close proximity to a saree clad woman washing clothes, carried the implication of  belonging to her. Making one note how patterns that earlier demarcated gender and communities, now blended into a generic Kutchi dress-code. Their attire, choice of colours and fibres, the way they lived and the things they filled their homes with, no longer had an organic feel nor distinctive touch.

 

 

Manish Nai, Unititled I-VIII

 

Nai comes from a family of textile artisans and he frequently uses discarded fabric and clothes to create minimalist forms that vary in colour from exuberant to meditative, inviting the audience to reflect on the extraordinary potential of art to renew and rethink the mundane. These works use old, discarded clothing that Nai collected from his mother and other relatives, that he compressed in a mould, using heat to ensure they remain consistent in shape. The otherwise versatile nature of fabric, in terms of shape, is altered, as the clothing is moulded into a series of slender poles. Displayed within a frame the works tread the line between painting and sculpture.

 

The room we sat in led into the kitchen area – a semi-open-plan arrangement where glass, stainless steel and plastic utensils lined shelves that had been placed in a large void in the soft-green painted hues of a wall, adjoining the kitchen, behind the bold colourful, geometric-patterned, mill-printed sheets covering the aluminium and polyester-niwar ‘manji’ that Maggie was seated on. Whilst this wasn’t the real cause for concern, what bid me ponder was how much farther could these living traditions sustain themselves, when what they make is no longer of use to them, nor are they emotionally or creatively invested in the evolution of the fabrics sewn by their dextrous fingers.

 

 

N. Pushpmala, Tryptich, 2000

Portrait of a Hindoo woman, Portrait of a Mohhamedan woman, Portrait of a Christian Woman,

From the Bombay Photo Studio series

 

I have always held that the great crafting traditions of this country arose not only through enlightened patronage but because of the ingenuity and passion of the maker. I have noted again and again that commerce alone, no matter how lucrative and well-paid, doesn’t lend itself to excellence, but personalised involvement of the artisan can create unimaginable magic. But, much of what they make today, if not all, is not for their own personal use. It travels to unknown people in faraway countries - features of the products dictated by the markets they are destined for. Becoming increasingly  removed from the intimate needs of the maker and the aesthetic sensibilities that crafted them. Developing more and more into a commodity and the craftspeople relegated more and more to becoming just skilled labour. The traditional dual role of artist-producer is no longer pursued, leaning of extraneous design inputs which, while assuring better market-share are also contrarily stifling the artistic voice vital for the sustenance of this labour intensive work.

 

 

 

Anita Dube, Silence, (Blood wedding)

(image courtesy BDL)

 

In this work Dube transforms a skeleton, formerly used by her brother while studying medicine, into objects including a garland, a fan, and a flower, among others, wrapped in red velvet. The bones embody a juxtaposition between notions of  death and  when covered by the opulent fabric. Wrapped in red velvet and decorated with embellishments including bead and lace, the works represent a wedding trousseau. The objects symbolizing death take on a new meaning, embracing the fragility of life, love and beauty, through the second skin that they are provided.

 

 

Textiles as art is not something new, it is as old as history itself, but our definition of art has altered. The history of Indian textile-making is proof of the kind of respect this art once earned. In the Indonesian islands, these fabrics were deemed a form of storing wealth, ascribed with magical properties and elevated to the status of heirlooms. In fact, the Indian maker was called ‘Klinga’ or God. It was such value and veneration that created the impetus for cloth as currency on the famed spice trade-routes. It was such worth and honour that sustained the impetus to make, even when their handiwork was separate from their personal utilization.

 

 

Reena Saini Kallat, Walls of the Womb

(image courtesy BDL)

 

Autobiographical in nature, these works speak of the artist relationship with her mother, whom she lost aged eight, and were arrived at through frequent contact with her sarees that remained in a cupboard for 27 years. Kallat collaborated with Khatri families in Kutch for the process of tie-dye, which evoke Braille-like translations of her mother’s hand written recipes. Associations of motherhood are carried through the usage of 12 sarees and the recipe books evincing notions of nurture and nourishing. The language on the cloth remains inaccessible echoing Kallat’s bond with her mother, which is based on fragments of inscrutable memory.

 

Beyond the utilitarian, fabric as contemporary art expressiveness, is also not an innovative quirk of the millennial digital world, but draws its antecedents from the beginnings of the industrial revolution and the arts and craft movement in England that  was the impulse for highlighting the craft of making, celebrating the ‘simple life’ synonymous with rural traditions and hand-craftsmanship. This, in turn influenced the Bauhaus outlook and pedagogy. And, it was in the studios of the Bauhaus in the early 1920’s that Anni Albers, a pioneer of the modern art fabric, discovered the wonders of the woven grid along with fibres and the loom, through which she found  “ways to regain sensitivity towards textile surfaces: texture” and an expression of modern life. As mechanization made textile production cheaper,  the preciousness of cloth and clothing rendered greater artistic experimentation viable, and the younger generation of contemporary artists like Shonibare, Do-Ho-Suh and others have used the pliable drape, abundantly,  as compelling and dramatic metaphors to make private and socio-political statements about displacement, colonization and more.

 

 

 

Shakuntala Kulkarni, Of Bodies, Armour and Cages

(image courtesy BDL)

 

Kulkarni’s ‘ wearable sculptures’ as she calls them, traverse a space where historical objects like armour and the elaborately designed costume/dresses of different communities are brought together in a contemporary context by re-articulating the usage and the medium, collapsing and metamorphosing the two, thus blurring cultural and visual boundaries. Armour of the yonder days were worn by warriors to  protect themselves during encounters and war. Made of metal and leather they were designed to look grand. Although the cane armour/costumes on display speak of that grandeur but these elaborately structured costumes are also feminine, linear, fragile and organic. This work attempts to address the relationship of the body to notions of protection and the notion of being trapped.

 

A century after Albers’s fabric inspired a generation of modern weavers, and a hundred years after the industrial revolution, where automation didn’t just evolve a refined aesthetic and produced fine goods, it also made our choices clonish. This facet is now among others, the incentive to renew corporeal parameters. Such that  the unique, the original and the imperfections of handmade are  fashionable, precisely because we have lost the sensibilities of feeling, holding and handling things before couriers from Amazon or Flipkart deliver them at our doorstep. Further heightened by the digital ‘touch’ of our smart-phones, and lack of physical engagement in socializing through social media, we are no longer compelled to touch the texture and glaze of the cup or bowl, run our fingers through that scarf or saree, or see if we actually enjoy sitting in a that funky looking chair or Avant Garde sofa. Fostering a growing disconnect with the dynamic physicality of being.

 

 

Shahzad Dawood, Point and I will Follow (a detail)

 

Dawood interweaves histories, realities and symbolisms to create richly layered artworks. The original textiles, from which Dawoods works are based, were created by nomadic weavers of South Asia, throughout the 1970’s . Composed from discarded scraps from textile factories, his vintage textiles form a key element of the artist’s multidisciplinary practice. Intervening on quilted surfaces, Dawood adds layers of screen-print, paint and shorthand to create a bricolage of elements. By working with the textiles’ pre-existing narratives and highlighting their resonance with other cultural phenomena, Dawood questions the established binaries between different value systems and cultures.  

 

For Albers, weaving offered a means to regain connect to a bodily existence. This ideal becomes an important consideration in an era where we are we no longer making things for ourselves, nor engaged in everyday kinaesthetic experiences. It was especially pertinent while viewing this exhibition devoted to textiles within a contemporary Indian art ethic, where, despite a rich, unparalleled and ancient lineage of making, intellectual concepts prevailed over the tangible intricacies of fabric construction. Of textiles in modern-day art practices that were largely removed from the warping, weaving and embellishing of the cloth that, most of the artistic precepts presented, were fashioned on and by.

 

 

 

Priya Ravish Mehra, rafoogari on Pashmina cloth.

 

Growing up in the 1960s, her summer vacations were spent at the family ancestral home in Najibabad, in the Bijnor district of Uttar Pradesh, home to many rafoogars. These early interactions with them,  inspired a life-long dedication of  researching and documenting this art form. For Priya, a rafoogar, was not just a darner of torn textile but “ a healer of damaged cloth”. Diagnosed with cancer she used the act of ‘visible’ as opposed to their ‘invisible’ repairing in her thread-work, to creatively speak of her own inner transformations during periods of recovery.  Conjuring the saint-poet Kabir who poetically meshed the tangible with the transcendental, she said that, “to revive darning is not just a revival of skill and craft……it is also about healing suppressed past emotions connected with memories and the mending of cloth.”

 

 

These insights, coupled with my recent observations in Kutch, left me pensive and perplexed. Still grappling with the expanding gulf between textiles in art and the art of textile-making, as also the lives and sensibilities of practitioners on either end of the spectrum, I travelled to Banaras, the mecca of textiles.

 

 

 

Nizamuddin at the loom,  Ramnagar, Banaras

 

Engaging with weavers from all faiths and reminded of the vast difference in the ‘feel’ of fabric made by human hands and manufactured by machines, I was reminded that in the Indian tradition, the weaver or ‘julaha’, has always occupied a low station in the social hierarchy and even the wisdom of the weaver-saint Kabir hasn’t been able to alter that. We recite his ‘dohas’, laud the vitality of his verse and its pertinence centuries after he passed on, but we don’t seek to emulate the life-style that inspired his sagacity, nor uplift the makers, even as we celebrate cloth in our existence and art practices.

 

 

 

मन दीया कहीं और ही, तन साधन के संग ।
कह कबीर कोरी गजी, कैसे लागे रंग ।।

 

Mn diya kahi aur he, tan saadhan ke sang
Keh Kabir kori gaji kaise laage rang

-Kabir

 

When the mind digresses
from the task at hand, and
the body continues robotically,
it weaves an un-hued cloth

(trans: gopika nath)

 

 

 

 

A peek into the interior of

Nizammudin's home

It Is But A Matter of Course……Isn’t It?

'Sensorium' - the end is only the beginning, was a multi-gallery presentation at Sunaparanta Centre for the Arts, a non-profit arts initiative founded by Dipti and Duttaraj Salgaonkar. Sometimes, Viewing art can be akin to a pilgrimage, and this exhibition certainly took me into deeper reaches of one’s existence and beyond.

 

Dhruvi Acharya

 

The last time I’d visited the centre was months ago and I had never driven there before. As luck would have it my maiden attempt was confusing and disorienting because the Jio Wi-Fi dongle acted up. And when I did have signal, google map was confused by the on and off signals such that I was taken on a long and needlessly winding route. When I finally got there, the painted blue and white  facade was indeed a welcoming sight. Located atop Altinho Hill, Sunaparanta overlooks the city of Panjim and you can also catch a glimpse of the Mandovi River. The arts centre is housed in a large Portuguese-style villa with lush foliage and flowers overhanging the entrance and courtyard. As a venue for compositions pontificating the concept of that which doesn’t have an end, but is just another beginning, this colonial bungalow showcasing contemporary art, was an apt location, in more ways than one.

Art work Jacob Fellander - Bodega Cafe

 

After seeing some of the art,  sipping a cup of Earl Grey tea at the Bodega Cafe housed in the inner courtyard,  I mulling over the works seen,  I couldn’t help but notice how alluring Dhruvi Archarya’s, canvases, expressive of her inimitable wry humour, appeared, when framed by green Areca fronds in the foreground, and bordered by the undulating edge of a traditional, Khaprael-tiled, darkened terracotta roof above. Desmond Lazaro’s polaroidic images, musing on family and personal history, glanced over my shoulder as I relished a slice of carrot cake, as if nudging me to talk about my own.  Standing up to take a closer peek at the framed images, shadow-like lines of the courtyard and it’s various surfaces were reflected on the glass. It made for a rather pleasing juxtaposition, however unintended this may have been.

 

Desmond Lazaro

 

In the gardens, at the entrance to the centre, Riyas Komu had constructed an ode to his father’s balcony in Thrissur. Chancing upon this oddly styled sculpture-installation at the very start was bewildering. It was only after I’d seen the rest of the works that,  I was able better to appreciate its facets . Seen from different angles it took on varied shapes, where the contours got distorted or enhanced. Although the artists intent was to enable spectators to experience their immediate surroundings through an altered perspective by climbing up onto this  “ideological balcony”, I was more fascinated by walking around and noting how the model was re-crafted from each observed point. Created with metal and recycled wood the isolated balcony seemed to stand on its own. The structure that surrounded it and from which it rose above, was a crudely built house-like façade with a nave raised at one end and dropped at the other. This edifice used simple, monopoly-type house,  ‘building’ blocks. Rusted metal crosses also made their appearance within this house of houses. All in all, it conjured a most curious tribute to a parent who was cited as a strong influence. It was when I stood at the end closest to the bungalow (farthest from the entrance gate), where the nave was laid on the floor, and thought how it resembled a quirky ‘Noah’s Ark’ that, I got a sense of Komu’s relationship with his father and of his fathers’ relationship with the world: an embracing refuge, yet not built on this external validation, but standing on his own - powered by a potent inner self.

 

Riyas Komu, My Father's Balcony

 

My reading of this visage as a could-be Noah’s Ark, may well have been suggested by Gigi Scaria’s video ‘The Ark’. In this 3 minute,  single channel black and white projection, Gigi takes us back to the biblical myth as “an abode of continuity in a terrain of utter destruction”. Shown on a relatively small screen,  one was compelled to peer closely at the moving images watching a primitive, wooden,  luggage-carousel-like-contraption, leaving the ark-ship which stands marooned on cracked, dry mud. This moving bridge enters a large chamber that’s spewing grey smoke. It struck me almost instantly as an asphyxiating gas chamber, evocative of what our polluted cities are becoming. I could only discern luggage as passing from the ark into this threatening space - were there no people, I wondered. And then, what’s the continuum?  But, perhaps the artist suggests,  that carrying forth untended emotional baggage, this is where mankind is headed - the end of the world as an envisioned reality? While using Noah’s Ark as a symbol of continuity (that life on the planet survived the engulfing deluge thanks to the rule that only two pairs of each kind could enter, to procreate and ensure continuity of their species), Scaria also refutes the impression that the end is a new beginning. He doesn’t see a continuance to the Ark and its implied notion of survival. Gagging with toxins, breathing the poisonous air of a crowded metropolis, it’s probably too difficult to imagine one.

 

Gigi Scaria - video still

 

Numerous interesting  works were on display, making untold demands on the viewing eye: Michael Muller from Berlin, Juul Kraijer from Holland, Julien Segard from France and Jacob Fellander and Pers-Anders Pettersson from Sweden, Iftikar Dadi from Pakistan in collaboration with Elizabeth Dadi from USA, Munem Wasif of Bangladesh, along with Belgium-born Srilanka-based artist Saskia Pintelon, made up the international quorum, while Indian artists from Jammu to Kerala, Tamilnadu and Bengal presented their work.

 

Saskia Pintelon

 

Reminding us of how mindlessly traditions are can be carried forth, Saskia Pintelon’s ‘Faces’ were inspired by matrimonial adverts in Sri Lankan newspapers. In series of collages with obliterated faces, (using smileys or empty egg-shells and other such interventions), she reworks old photographs (studio portraits), highlighting marital discord and the naivety of traditional choices. Above all, her comment resonates with the fact that traditions are kept in continuance, often without understanding the merit they were devised upon or for, or their relevance in contemporary times.

 

Shreyas Kale, Ascending Descending and 5mm

 

Minimal, precise and incisive, Shreyas Karle subverts norms of perception. The two mirrored brass stairways of ‘Ascending Descending’ was quirky but it was the two brass pipes entitled '5mm' that compelled me delve deeper. What were those two parallel pipes depicting? If the simply presented visual hadn’t  commanded attention, one could have missed the whole point. Intrigued by it, I glanced through the accompanying text and learned that the pipes were once of equal length, but one of the pipes had been cut into 6 parts and re-joined, which altered its size. The change is minimal and barely noted and the entire premise of cutting a pipe, joining it and placing the uncut and cut-and-joined bits, one above the other, seems almost absurd. But such works take art beyond that of visual delight, bringing into play psychological implications of parity versus identity and how a simple thought can alter this. At the physical level it’s an insignificant change. But, in an emotional capacity, and thereby the mental realm, what are the ramifications? How will this impact entities which once belonged as a whole or homogenous group, are separated by lines of caste, creed, religion, and then brought together as a single entity again? A seemingly banal play of ideas stimulates thought and debate.

 

In a similarly abstracted and quixotic mould was Jitish Kallat’s ‘Rain Studies’. A unusual group of black and white drawings, denote ‘rain’ notations made by the artist when he stepped outside, during seasonal showers; holding the drawing paper skyward, turning them into unusual receptacles of rainwater. By virtue of the patterns formed on them by descending raindrops , these graphite and acrylic epoxy presentations on Arches paper become suggestive of planetary constellations. I’m uncertain of whether the undertaking was purely accidental and based on rainwater impacting drawings already done on graphite, if there’s a happy marriage of happenstance controlled by imaginative meanderings and how much of each is deliberately orchestrated, if at all. The initiative intrigues and highlights the potential of artistic endeavour to open up possibilities and creatively address issues of life, death, continuance. Where it is said to have all started with an astronomical explosion, by invoking the astronomical through the atmospheric, Kallat reminds us how energy destructed to recreate, paving the way for life as we know it. Suggesting that existing is but a ‘matter of course’, even if form and matter are reconstructed and re-formed, that the continuance lies in the life-force flowing into one altered form and the next. Thus revisioning age-old philosophies about past lives and reincarnation.

 

Parul Thacker, a detail

 

There were many other presentations ranging from the very personal to political as well as abstract thought. Parul Thacker’s ‘We Penetrate Deeper And Deeper into the Heart of Darkness’, was fabulously tactile and tempting to touch. Yet too chaotic and intimidating in its hard edges, to endear. Exploring notions of eternal existence, through enmeshed monofilament fibres, raw cotton and phalanx-like, white stalactite crystals, a plethora of hardened crystal formed into  phalluses  of light, protruding horizontally from within the disordered depths of ‘symbolic chaos’, to suggest  a continued existence through procreation. A simple, well-heeled opinion, most commonly held, was presented through the deeper, more abstract dimension of light - as the infallible, age-old wisdom of life.

 

Julien Segard

 

In his multimedia installation, ‘As He Takes From You,  I Engraft You New’, Julien Segard touches on the codes of death and resurrection. He uses left-overs and fallen leaves along with plastic and other stuff that’s washed ashore. All of which he has picked up from a scrapyard in Panjim, and while walking the streets and shores of Goa. Delicately strung mobiles depicting skull bones and vertebrae among his other collected finds; hanging from the high ceiling of the dimly, but srategically lit ‘Library’ of the Centre, its not the engrafting of ‘new’ that shines through, but the concept of death is subtly reframed. From that which is traditionally enveloped by ghosts of despair, to an eerily playful event that, all which is born must face. The presentation is child-like and charming, belying the weightiness of a profound and philosophical theme.

 

Carrying forward the haunted melody through surrealist photographs, Juul Kraijer suggests alternatives to conventional seeing. Two hands, laying one on top of each other, wearing netted gloves, don’t let you ponder on the beauty of those slender fingers, the quality or craftsmanship of the fabric. But, the gaze penetrates the physicality of form imaged, to fathom another, unstated, but decipherable dimension. It’s as if an underlying essence is being unmasked through tonal gradations, which emerge through a unique  process employed by the artist. What you see, isn’t all there is to be seen. An invisible presence is felt. Placing her subjects under a cloak of darkness lends her images this sublime sense of unease which emanates from that which her subject experiences in the dimmed environment – not able to see, not able to centre, knowing she is being watched. Seemingly alone, she is not. And then, neither is the viewer, for the impression of what is perceived renders the perceiver self-conscious.

 

Niyati Unnikrishnan - The Cake

 

Exploring another dimension of the seen and the apparent is Niyati Unnikrishnan of Kerala. Tapping into a vibrant inner world, he presents fictional landscapes with the complexities that emerge in his engagement with current affairs, literature, art and the lives of the people he is acquainted with. In ‘Cake’ he brings together, sunbathing women, half-clad sadhus, yoga practitioners and socialites as part of the cake. They are seated on top, within its layers and in the surrounding scape. the soft contours of watercolour, pencil and ink on paper blur the edges of a satirical comment on the self and its counterparts in the external world. Where does it begin and end – who is who and what is what. Is it a cake or is it not? And is it the world we know, or is it not, or just an imagined space in the artist’s mind? The myriad questions that emerge, from observing this engaging dialogue of the inner and outer worlds with its apparently recognisable, figurative dimensions, lead into one’s own inner-scape.

 

Bodega Cafe - Desmond Lazaro on right.
 Kaushik Chakravarty, behind, in the adjoining room

 

The Sunaparanta Centre is a small and intimate viewing space. And each of the works were housed in what were once,  rooms of sleep and leisure in someone’s home. Walking from one to the next, the arched windows and wooden beams leaning in with their own resonances, examining art that was as disparate as the works curated in ‘Sensorium’, can be a distracting affair. The thematic content was so variously presented that it wasn’t always easy to comprehend what each said, and while this certainly brought to light the continuity of diversity, it also compelled a reference to an inner self.

 

Reena Saini Kallat 
Hyphenated Lives, Tri-khor

 

In ‘Hyphenated Lives’, Reena Saini Kallat added a series of  question marks, semicolons, colons, commas and in a contiguous dialogue.  Resembling zoological or botanical drawings of hybrid creatures that are formed through different species, enjoining to create a variegated kind. (Which our world may well have known, had it not been for Noah’s wisdom of two of each). Reena Kallat created curious hybrids primarily using the national symbols of each country, rendering overtones of political reconciliations that could be compelled into being. At the base the quasi botanical drawing, also reminiscent of a postal stamp, of ‘Rosila’ – a cross-breed  between a rose and dahlia, she writes in cursive hand informing the type as part rose,  wherein “the rose is a woody perennial of the genus Rosa within the family Rosaceae. Its name comes from  the Latin word Rosa. A symbol of love and beauty (as well as war and politics) the world over, the rose was designated the official flower and floral emblem of the United State of America in 1986.” She feels that, instead of uniting people from a region, such symbols have become contentious and reason for monopoly, with the original significance being overshadowed. She pairs the rose with the Dalhia, which draws its name from the Swedish botanist Anders Dahl and has been the national flower of Mexico since 1963. Will this genealogical marriage between the universal symbol of love and the “busy, tuberous, herbaceous and  perennial” Dahlia, espoused by its contentious neighbour, augur well for the future of human relations? Will the ‘Sun-poe’ formed of the Palestinian sunbird and Israeli Hoopoe become an ambassador of peace between two embattled nations. And will the Ti-Khor fused of the Tiger of India and Markhor of Pakistan re-unite a people so bitterly partitioned – the price paid for independence from colonial masters? These interrogations ruminate as the eye takes in the unusual forms these amalgams have birth into.

 

Reena Saini Kallat 
Hyphenated Lives, Rosila

 

A broken glass will always show its cracked joint and cut pipe ends will never quite weld to be the same length. They can exist as an extension of what once was but there is no turning back. I came away with from this presentation of many voices, humming in unison yet singing in  parts, concluding that the continuum of all which is sensory in this world, must mean that whatever the future of the world, whatever form it may or may not take; whether procreation is of same species, or hyphenated in contrived combinations, it is the same energy that breathes that itself into matter formed, re-formed or deformed. Varied and differing in facets of being, but each perfect to its aim.

 

Innovative...But is it Art?

                                    

Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration

                                                                           -  Thomas Alva Edison

Art 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.



Chitrovanu 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?