“ It's good to have a title that's not just one word. If you're going to title it, you might as well try and say something .”- Damien Hirst
It is no one's guess as to how delighted I was to find Hirst validate, or at least echo, my optimism about titling this group show of ten energetic emerging artists. Yes, I intended to say it all and more in the title. These artists are the small but essential formula needed to bring about larger, more paradigmatic shifts in art practices; that small but potent 10ml of ingredient needed for any alchemic result. They are, more than anything else, the new blood needed in the scene. The contemporary scene has become larger than ever before, and it has become all the more important to look at the real level of engagement of the young artists. And when we do find the potential, it is imperative for those in the art world - galleries, foundations, collectors and curators - to respond to this new environment in a productive manner.
Before one enters into the complex territories of “reading, interacting, negotiating, psychoanalyzing and critically engaging” with the works, lets first introduce the context of this whole process and its relation with Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art a.k.a. FICA. Being presented in the form of a group show, this exhibition marks the conclusion of FICA's first year-and-half of activities and the initiation of next year's agendas. However being much like a baton relay where the baton is passed from one runner to another who takes it further, the momentum will continue with a new set of runners. The initial idea for this exhibition was born out of the 2007 jury for the Emerging Artist Award while choosing two young and emerging talents in contemporary Indian art. It was apparent that these ten artists, who were amongst the last list of finalists, could not be ignored after choosing the mandatory winners, for they displayed a contemporary fervour which might be lost unless acted upon and presented immediately. With no intensions of competing with the various other “young contemporaries” shows, this is purely about having these artists present their works at this juncture where they are standing, where they have made the important cross-over, and yet not comfortably settled into their artistic role-playing modes.
Spacing the Contemporary
Drawing together these artists has brought forth a core dilemma of curation, as I was faced with having to put these ten artists, of highly individual expressions and varied concerns, under the same roof. Neither did I want to force an overarching theme upon them, as the point of them being here is for their unique and individual practices vis-à-vis the contemporary art scene; nor was it possible for me to isolate their works, for there are multiple points of overlap among some of the artists. Their involvement with the contemporary is multi-loci-ed, and multi-layered, and the approach manifold from historical, textual, spatial and psychological reference points. However there are the points of overlap, which become the much needed links to bring together their works. It is at these points of intersection that the dialogues begin; and at most times it doesn't begin with the aim to reach a synthesis, but happens for the sake of the dialogue itself and the resulting tensions and contradictions. In an attempt to balance these discrepancies, I chose to present each artist in more or less their own independent space, to exist as a whole, and opened up the forum for non-linear debate, not mediated by the physicality of the gallery.
While Sakshi Gupta's Untitled work of a bed is what one encounters as an introduction to the show, Dilip Chobisa's work Corner- An Analytical analysis to a brilliant question which left Confusion is displayed in the secluded inner room upstairs; and yet there is an interesting interplay of tensions between the two. They are both indicative of private spaces, but with very different psychological values attached to them. Despite being in the large open gallery space Sakshi's bed maintains its sense of privacy; it's a metaphor of comfort, of those things familiar; whereas Dilip's conversations of the corner space evokes a feeling of emptiness and the anxieties, and it even seems voyeuristic in the way the viewer gets a glimpse into the psychology of the artist. A parallel dialogue develops between the works of Rajesh Ram and Ved Gupta, along larger socio-political lines. If the stooping boy in Rajesh's Heavy Load stands in as a metaphor of India 's rural poor, who ‘bears the burdens' of larger social ruptures, Ved's ‘big men' are deliberately dwarfed like in The Men..Confused? No Way… , stripping them of their higher/superior status, and placed on the same platform on eye level with the common man. There is a thread that connects the plasticity of the two works; though one is much more grounded in the real and the other cynically idealizes the real. While the painting and sculptural works, by their very presence, respond to the gallery space they exist in, through interplay and dialogue with other works, the audio-video installations of Baptist Coelho and Abhishek Hazra, by their very nature, moderate and redefine the spaces itself. We are not confronted by the work, rather engulfed into the multi-sensory experience. Finally, there is the instance where the space itself becomes the medium; like in Sisir Thapa's Untitled suspended installation where the work is built upon the materiality of the object and the space between and around it. He further exploits the possibilities of openness and expansion of the skylight in the small room to open the work out beyond the four walls.
The Text and the Narrative
“ The power of a text is different when it is read from when it is copied out. Only the copied text thus commands the soul of him who is occupied with it…… because the reader follows the movement of his mind in the free flight of day-dreaming, whereas the copier submits it to command . ” - Walter Benjamin
The ‘visual fables' generated by Abhishek Hazra through weaving together fictitious narratives, foregrounds the use of text, in the form of short commentaries interspersed with abstracted computer generated graphics. In the ebayday- Communist Manifesto , the text is both the identity of the ‘anonymous author who is steadfast in his communist beliefs' and the object of art itself. The work's original domain on the world-wide-web, I imagine, would have constructed a different meta-narrative from what is being formulated here in the gallery space. In Dweposit Abhishek employs the deconstructivist reading of the text, and looks for the rupture in language at the points when the text begins to contradict itself. The contradiction is more definite, reference more direct and language more pronounced in Baptist Coelho's HOW TO BE YOUR SELF , as he draws parallels from Candace Simpson-Gile's book “How to be a Lady”. The “copying” of the text happens as he engages with the women who recite the text. With the same ease he borrows/copies from the narrative of Draupadi's Cheera-Hara , in Mahabharat, to generate his critical narrative on the patriarchal society in Chapter 02: You Get Dressed . The text becomes that medium that allows him to traverse through and across the local and global. The text and the narrative become most pertinent in the work of Lavanya Mani as she builds a compelling colonial critique, drawing references for her images from history books and colonial records. Through the act of weaving a parallel and fragmented narrative she dissects the ‘grand narrative'. In her titling of the works like Madder Route one sees how she uses the text for its essential linguist form as she plays with words – ‘ social fabric' , ‘ route-root' and ‘ weaving a story' . The narrative reads more like a map, through which the traveler can choose to journey, taking any “route” he/she desires.
Employing the Metaphor
The other pervasive element in the works of these artists is that of the metaphor. The metaphor is much like a found object, laden with its associations, consciously picked by the postmodern artist to assign specificities and simultaneously open up the work for multiple interpretations. One is immediately reminded of Ved Gupta's works when thinking ‘specificities'. The three-wise-monkeys metaphor is traced upon three corporate-style figures in The Men…Confused? No way..'s , as a tongue-in-cheek critique of the fast growing new urban Indian corporate bourgeois. And the other work, Untitled Man III , becomes the ultimate parodical critique of the economical, social and political elite and their insatiable thirst for greater power. Abhishek Hazra's Some Fables on the Unstable Oscillation of Uniformity , traces more oblique metaphors by repeated layering of meanings; the ‘fable' itself is broken into shorter narratives with its own contradictions. Here the fable becomes a layered micro-level metaphor of the underlying structures of reality.
Rajesh Ram's hybrid imagery of a girl becomes a consolidated illustration of the children who have been burdened with the responsibility of contributing to the nation's work force. She is also metaphoric of the farmers/labourers whose lives have been ‘consumed' in the ambitious quest to produce more to meet the insatiable needs of the rapidly growing urban consumer market. Simultaneously Chinmoy Pramanick gives a different take on the human condition and its endless greed to control and consume in BUT SOMEHWERE I BELONG TO THEM/ LOOKING AROUND . The burning heap of coffins in the background is set against nature's nourishing fruit in the foreground - contrasting metaphors for the unending desires of mankind even upon facing the limits of mortality and the reborn hopes which are at stake of being lost respectively. Chinmoy sees himself a part of the larger community, who is admits to the responsibility, but wonders how to act or intervene as he “gazes” upon the gloomy landscape.
Material(ity) Matters
The material is no longer perceived in its pure form, it is now a cultural relic, a personal artifact, and has specific geographical associations that it brings to the larger context of the work. In Lavanya's works while the material choices define her feminist position, and facilitate her critique on the patriarchal society, the materiality of her work (with the distinct hand-made stitches and embroidery) challenges the fine art-craft dichotomy along the lines of creativity and labour. The physical act of stitching, embroidering and attaching materials together is consciously foregrounded in her practice. Not only does the material play a crucial role in locating the practice of the artists in contemporary art, but it is also the materiality of their works that becomes a significant extension of their idea and comes laden with authorial intentions. Let us look at the works of Sakshi Gupta and Sisir Thapa in this context. Sakshi's urge to aestheticise the mundane has taken her to exploring the material possibilities of objects as they are transformed by the artist into a new form, in a new space with a new set of meanings. The materiality of the site-specific bori work The Lost Identity is unavoidable especially inside a white-cube, where it stands in contrast to the straight lines and sharp edges. We wonder whether ‘the lost identity' refers to her loss, or of that of the work itself as it is transplanted inside a gallery space. Sisir's engagement with the material is at a more personal level, where the authorial intensions are constantly challenged by the materiality of the work. The natural materials in his assemblages, such as in the Rosary , maintain their individual characteristics, and participate in a play with the other materials (screws, bolts, nuts) and the space around. While the natural fibers/materials have no temporal attachments, the industrial materials are the markers of their times.
Inside Out- dialogues with the self and other
Reji Arackal's works are a slight departure from the others as he shifts from analyzing the group to understanding the individual, from the external to internal. In an attempt to understand the ruptures and violence in society, Reji turns inwards to look at the violence and struggles within the individual; for the total is nothing but the sum of the parts. His massive amoebic figures seem frozen in inertia, but there is the violence that continues inside, silent and potent. The psychological tensions in Active Inactiveness , reminds one of Edvard Munch's The Scream , where one only ‘hears silence', but keeps expecting to hear the cry.
In Dilip Chobisa's Corner- An Analytical analysis to a brilliant question which left Confusion , the artist attempts to dive deep into his own psychology and the human need to find answers to every question. He does so through having a conversation with the corner space; do the walls exist to hold someone in, or to keep someone out? What is the purpose of the dual notion of inside and out? The checkered floor and horse become metaphors of the human intellectual pursuit, and the burnt match, knife and cracks in the tiles the pockets of mystery, the black-holes that exists in human perception and understanding of the world. Sakshi Gupta's Untitled bed, is created intending to reach into the psychology of the viewer, where the work becomes the agency and engages the audience in a conversation. By not having a protagonist in her work she makes way for the viewer's own contextualization, as he/she places their self in the space of the absent protagonist , occupying the empty space and building a n imagined reality. There is a presence in the absence…
On a concluding note it is essential to point out that while this is a group show, its emphasis has been not on presenting the artists as a group or a single force, but as individual practitioners occupying autonomous spaces, both within the larger discourse of contemporary art and within the galley space itself. The tensions and contradictions between their works makes this a forum rather than a presentation.
(The exhibition is organized by FICA in Travancore Art Gallery , New Delhi and essay is wriiten by Bhooma Padmanabhan) |
