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JohnyML: Why don’t we have effective curatorial practice in India?
Alka Raghuvanshi: I think, we should look at it in a larger point of view as a part of art management and art administration, which obviously does not exist in India. We have academies and galleries, but we confuse ourselves by allowing public institutions to be administrated by artists. Look at the condition of Bharat Bhavan in Bhopal. I used to be a trustee of that institution. But in the name of giving it to artists, we have done untold damages to it. They may be great artists, but they do not have administrative skills. There are a lot of possibilities for private interests to enter administration. Artists are very sensitive people but they are not balanced administrators. When you put an artist in charge of a collection, there are more chances of having a lopsided presentation. Of course, there are checks and balances by committees and the trustees etc., but in the long run it will not function effectively.
To come back to the question, I think curatorial practice should be viewed as a part of the larger scheme of administration. Since we do not have proper management systems, curatorial practice becomes ineffective and if at all there is an institutional curatorial practice, it reflects the lack of managerial systems in our cultural field. We do not have proper institutional curators at this stage. And, where we have them, the selection process is biased.
JML: Let us go to the other extreme. If we bring real management people from the administrative sections of the government, will they be able to run an institution properly?
AR: Management is a trick. What we need are good management people with a sensitive heart towards art. The classic example is from the mid-1990s, when Mr Kothari headed the Sangeet Natak Academy. He was a good administrator as well as an aesthetician. It is a very tricky job profile. Unfortunately, in India we do not have any training courses for such work. Now, as art has become a multi-crore business, we really need trained managers. These managers should be able to use the kind of money they generate for making the art scenario live. They should be able to mediate with the market and even if the bubble bursts, they should be able to sustain the scene. They should realise that there is an over-commodification of art at this stage and they should function as watchdogs for keeping the intrinsic values of art alive.
JML: Considering curatorial practice as the part of a larger scheme, how would you place the practice of the Indian curators in the present context?
AR: It is a problem area. First of all, many of our curators are not trained in curatorial practice. Most of the shows, which are coming under the banner of ‘curated shows’, do not actually need any curators. They are just group shows. Institutions are not looking at this scenario with a futuristic vision. They just pick up anybody and call him/her a curator. Many of the self-proclaimed curators do not have any business to be in the field of curatorial practice. Consequently, the works that are shown in such exhibitions reflect the shallowness of their curatorial practice. There is a method in this madness called curatorial practice. And, it is this method that is not being addressed by these half-baked curators.
JML: Now we have many huge and wealthy galleries. The trained art historians and critics are absorbed in these galleries as assistants and documentation officers. Interestingly, these galleries show ‘new and experimental’ works. But no curatorial process is revealed. Your views?
AR: Having an art history degree does not count much. One needs to develop a sense of discernment through a particular perspective. To achieve this, one has to have a constant interaction with the art and artists. Skill alone does not matter. One has to mature over a period of time. There is no short cut to experience.
JML: What is curatorial practice for you?
AR: Curatorial practice and design go hand in hand. In the Indian context, there is no sense of design involved in curatorial practice. There are a lot of indigenous and local aspects that can go as part of design. Now we are concerned more about the modernist practice of ‘hanging’ art in the gallery space. I genuinely feel that in any given context, exhibition design is a very important part of curatorial practice. Thanks to the lack of historicism, we have a tendency to look at art in a very casual way.
JML: When we study curatorial practice in the West (and you being the first Indian to study it), they teach us more about raising funds. Once you are back in India, you find no funds to raise. Where have our funds gone?
AR: I think in the earlier years the whole art fund was controlled by a few families in India. The same thing is happening again. It is being controlled by the big players. Freelance curators like you and me virtually find it difficult to practice what we have studied from the West. As such what we have studied is some kind of esotericism. Even within that esotericism, to find our own yarn, we need funds. But the unnatural buoyancy that we see these days in the market does not allow us to do that. The paintings that were sold for Rs 2 lakh yesterday are being sold for Rs 25 lakh today. Tyeb Mehta’s work is fetching Rs 6 crore. That is a lot of money. Nobody is asking the basic question: Does art command that kind of value, in whatever context? It is a great disservice done to creativity itself. Artists, art curators, art managers, gallery owners and all the other players should ask this question to themselves. We are sitting on a powder keg and it is bound to explode.
JML: Do you think that our establishments will realise and recognise this factor sooner than later?
AR: It is a matter of a year or so. Everyone will wake up and see this unnatural growth. It will come to an even keel, even if it collapses for a while. You see, we all should understand one important thing; ‘Art is not just visual arts or fine arts. Art consists of all kinds of creative expressions’. If we imagine art in the form of a human body, each art form is a constitutive organ. Now we see one limb growing unnaturally like in elephantiasis. The government is not an important player as far as the present culture industry is concerned. Hence, the private sector players should realise this unnatural growth and take remedial measures. |
