Representation is executed at many levels in Tejal Shah’s most recent set of exhibitions, “Pentimento,” and “Encounters” both at the Kashi Art Gallery. These closely paired shows each address the historical notion of insanity and how it has been mapped on the female body since the concept’s inception in the late 19th century. At another level, Shah’s works address the condition of madness “itself.” Madness is not some empirical truth to Shah, but rather a reality that is always experienced through its representations in the language (or art) of science. It is neither prior to science, or a complete science fiction, but something forever caught in-between.
Shah became interested in this theme during a residency in Paris, where she discovered the photography archives of the Salpetrier hospital. More than a century ago, this was the place where the so-called “Napoleon of Neurology,” Jean Martin-Charcot studied and “treated” hundreds of women afflicted by hysteria. He also assumed the strange and ambitious project of documenting the condition through a series of “posed” photographs with “real” patients. This endeavor was supported financially by the French government and the resulting albums were circulated across Europe in the name of medical advancement.
As part of “Pentimento” Shah recreates Charcot’s recreations. These eerie images feature both models and the artist, extending her oeuvre of theatrical self-portraits. “Encounters,” the other show at the Kashi space, also showcases artist-as-subject. In this set of photographs, based on a collaborative performance with the dancer Varsha Nair, two bodies lay connected across space by the surreally circular arms of elongated straightjackets. The costume invokes the physical and psychological constriction of the hysteric condition, as well as perhaps the strong though remote bond that psychiatric patients might have experienced with one another in a place like Salpetrier.
There is also a kinetic sculpture in the exhibition called “When I am bored, all I do is make a red knot and look at it,” after a quotation from the diary of Augustine, one of Charcot’s patients. In this work, rotating rope slowly dangles out of the wall as red paint leaks down their length, until, unexpectedly—a release! The ropes fall to the floor with a thud. Along with a video, the multi-media aspects of the exhibition add abstraction as well as dynamism to an otherwise moving but subtle meditation on madness and time.
Encounter(S)
November 14, 2009 - December 12, 2009
Kashi Art Gallery, Kochi, Kerala
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