Srirangam an entry: In search of a methodology

A chapter from my research as  Nehru Trust & Victoria and Albert Museum Small Studies Research Grantee..also early experiments in art history writing.  

/As the train hauled into Srirangam railway station, there was some consciousness about entering the heart of the Kaveri delta. The anticipation of seeing one of the most significant Vaishnavite temples, also one of the largest temple complexes of Tamil Nadu was strong enough for me to be up before sunrise, bathe and yet be early for the morning darshan. As I soaked in the Srirangam town at the crack of dawn sipping coffee and buying flowers I realized that the town is heavily dependent on tourism and pilgrimage as sources of income; and one could clearly see it was not too much. As I went into the layered cave like temple towards the revered and enigmatic garbagriha for my darshan the  mind was pre-occupied with a question…….how can a ritually, culturally and art historically significant site like Sri Ranganathaswamy temple fail to draw a heavy stream of tourists and pilgrims?

Three days had passed I was walking aimlessly around Srirangam. When I had applied for the grant I had little idea that this will evolve to be a disciplinary crisis in a way. I had visited Srirangam many times before. With the department of art history MS University of Baroda I had visited Srirangam twice. Both were exhilarating experiences. However they were also codified experiences. We often headed straight to the Sriranganathaswamy Temple. There used to be a clear disciplinary brief….. (Dynastic affiliations, iconographic cycles, cultic affiliations, stylistic affiliation/locations…..how to look at a monument was already briefed to us way before we arrived. The observations based on which I had written my proposal for this research were made more during dinning, shopping, going for our Cauvery bath…..and moments like that.

          Suddenly my research and documentation required me to stop looking at the temple and start looking at the city. For the first two days out of sheer habit I kept waking up early morning and heading straight to the temple. On the third day I told myself this could not carry on. I had come with a limited budget, limited time and I needed to get a grip over my field visit.  My third day was spent walking around the town and having a sort of anthropological interaction with  rickshaw divers, shop owners, temple guides and others…..however the feeling of being blank walled by my object of study  was becoming stronger and stronger.

*****                                                                                                                        

After the darshana, surveying the various mandapas and sub-shrines, that as compared to complexes like Chidambaram or the Madurai Meenakshi, the Sri Ranganathaswamy temple complex is far from ordered. A simplistic semiotic equation drawing told me that what I was seeing was a lack of discipline[1] . Very   often within the same mandapas iconography, form and finish of the pillars, pillar capitals to the extent that it becomes really difficult to imagine that they might have been sculpted or conceived together. To put it in other words the over all plan of the sub-shrines and the mandapa was not well coordinate to my eyes at both the macro as well as the micro levels. It is not as if a temple had to be built all at once for the layers disappear in coordination. The Madurai Meenakshi and the Subramanyam shrine in relation to Brihadeswara Tanjavore are good examples.

Thirsty, under a hardening morning sun, I headed out towards a shop selling home made lemonade sweetened with honey. The spartan shop was adorned with three large representations of a goddess on a lion holding the sword as a chief attribute. The shop keeper explained that she was Bhadrakali (along with Munniamman the most popular goddess in the region), the chief goddess of the sudras.  The city of Srirangam seemed more dynamic and layered than I had anticipated.   The last thing I was expecting to encounter in this ‘eternal seat of Vishnu’ was an overwhelming popularity of Shaivite mother goddess. By now I was interacting with a small group of people who had all joined the conversation out of curiosity.

It was a surprise to learn that there was not a single Bhadrakali shrine within the first six gopurams of the temple complex (counting from the core outwards). Exclusions   can be interesting…… what disturbed me is that a temple which has grown and prospered over the years by being able to hegemonise   various cultic practices. Could it be an exploilitary exclusive institution in its home base? Quite an interesting   understanding of caste unfolded as we talked on, the general level of interest in our group being quite high. Every one who had gathered identified himself as shaiva and claimed that said that all shaivas were sudras. When I asked about the shaiva priests who conduct their religious rituals, it was very grudgingly admitted that there were some shaiva Brahmins……but very clearly they did not identify with these Brahmins at any level. There is no meat shop within one and a half kilometres of the forth gopuram when most of the Srirangam population eats meat.

The rest of the day was spent walking around the town studying how it spreads. Soon learnt that all the Vaishnavite priests stayed within the forth and fifth enclosures of the temple complex (the Shaivite priests are seemed so ‘invisible’ that my new guides could not tell me where they lived).  The rest of the town had fair degree of caste homogeneity though one could clearly see new and powerful class equations shaping the landscape of the city. Most of the river front was being occupied by the upper middle class hailing from Trichy. Exhausted and terribly sun burnt, I returned to the hotel………the strange town still very much on my mind. The grand gopurams, the gigantic enclosure walls, the maze of mandapas, the lavishly sculpted pillars of the ‘thousand pillared hall’ and the barely finished pillars of the same structure were images playing in a loop[2].

Too restless to sleep I picked up my travel guide^[3]  to bed. Aimlessly flipping across pages I stopped and pinched my self for failing to notice that in the Srirangam delta itself, there was a huge Shiva temple in the village of Tiruvannakoil^[4]. Don’t know how much sleep came my way that night but I was up at the crack of dawn. Sipping my coffee and drinking in the early morning flavours of kukmum, haldi and jasmine, I asked for directions to the Jambukeshwara temple.

The temple is situated on the other side of the railway track, and as I walked towards the connecting bridge, I began to notice a significant change in the cityscape. Form the eastern fringe of the town onwards right through to the Jambukeshwara temple, there was an extended village/slum dotted with Murugan, Munniamman, Bhadrakali and Ganesha. All the narratives about the Kaveri delta being hegemonised into Brahmanism during the Bhakti movement turned in my head as my eyes continued to hunt for at least one Vishnu or Shiva shrine. I had to wait till I reached the Jambukeshwara temple.

The temple is gorgeous and one of the finest examples of Nayaka period architecture. The planning and ordering of space far surpasses the Sri Ranganathaswamy temple and yet it became clear to me that it had long lost its ritual status and funding had dried up.  Over the last two days the structures through which I have studied temple and temple urbanization had come under serious strain and I desperately felt the need to push the refresh button…. By noon I was on the bus to Chidambaram to a new temple in a new city…….

One of my lasting memories of the five hour journey was searching the countryside for Shiva or Vishnu shrines and not finding any………….

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[1] …and pointed out that I saw ‘discipline’ as being analogous to ‘ordered’.

[2] Rahul Bhattacharya ‘A short note on Srirangam’, Rathyatra, (forthcoming)

[3]  George Michell, Blue Guide – South India, A&C Black (publishers) limited, London 1997.

[4]  The Sri Jambukeshwara Temple is dedicated to Lord Siva and has five concentric walls and seven gopurams.  It is built around a Siva lingam partially submerged in water that comes from a spring in the sanctum sanctorum.  Non-Hindus are not allowed inside the temple.  The some parts of the complex were built around the same as Sri Ranganathaswamy temple. However the ‘stylistic quality’ of the pillar decorations, and attitude towards finish (especially if looks at the pushpapotitas and the crispness in the carving) puts it closer to Chidambaram. 

another

the black, yellow, blue and the other
in this summer even the greenest leaf fades
except those caressed by a river 

Caste in/and History of Indian Art..

again written  years ago for a  site which is now dead ....revived to bring back some debates that got silenced during the art  boom...and   our henceforth continuing obsession with the market  

.. 

This is a critique of the caste/class locations of nationalist art historians, and how this has been an important influence on the way the role of the artist and the figure of the artists of ancient India were imagined, and how this in turn influenced the scholarship on pre-modern Indian art. Locating this bias on the role Indian middle class played in pre-Independence nationalism, this article enquires into the role of this middle class in forming nationalism and national identity through the discipline of Art History. One of the key implications on the history of art has been that centuries of caste violence has been written out of our history and that, art museums and history books betray the strong influence of colonial imaginings of Indian history as that of a trans-caste Hindu culture.

Like in the West, 19th century India witnessed a proliferation of academic institutions, which under the guise of ‘impartiality’ and ‘precision’ sprayed inculturated[1] Enlightenment upon the Indian masses. When India began to articulate its nationalist zeal, the socio-political location of its leadership began to reflect heavily on the movement. It is well known that the leaders of the anti-colonial program were largely from the middle class (sometimes described as the bourgeoisie) and were exposed to Western education. This very class had initiated the ‘nationalization of modernism’. Nationalist modernism perpetuated a myth about the historical necessity of colonial rule, arguing that the British rule in India was a double-edged sword, destructive as well as regenerative[2]. The Indian nationalistic leadership owed too much to newly emergent modernist institutions and to capitalism at large to seriously rethink or challenge the implications of modernism on the Indian social fabric.

Ravana cuts Jatayu's wings, Raja Ravi Varma, Oil on Canvas 1895           

                                   

Caravaggio, Death of the Virgin, 1605-06, Oil on Canvas

 19^th century is characterized by the Indian elite privileging modern over traditional. Hinduism itself was ‘reformed’ and redefined in accordance with enlightenment norms and its version of Hinduism during the golden era. Someone like Raja Ravi Verma would choose European Naturalism and oil paints, to paint Indian mythologies. In this case one may read a certain hybridity. However upon closer examination, we see that the mythologies he painted were valorized by European scholars, used by them to construct an Indian culture. As it turns out Ravi Verma was then an actively reinforced of orientalist constructs.  

Similar to the search of a ‘great’ artistic tradition in the West, art historians began seeking out European-style individual masters in effect undermining the entire collective process of art creation in India.  Textual sources such as the Mayamattam (an 11th-Century text on art production written in Chidambaram and belonging to a literary category known as the Shipla Shashtras) discuss that the Sthapti, Sutragrahins, Vardhaki and Taksaka (different ranks within the pre-modern architecture guild) worked together. Does the question of authorship then rest only upon the Sthapati (sometimes translatable to mean an architect) or the Taksaka (meaning a sculptor)? Both Ananda Coomarswamy[3] and R. N. Mishra[4]  have dealt exclusively with the Sutradhar / Sthapati. Of course any study of the position of Art and Artists has to be based on empirical evidences. Our obsession with empirical evidences seems to make us forget that it is only a particular class/caste that would/could leave behind empirical evidences (like stone sculptures, temples or Shastric texts) for our academic consumption. Post-colonial historians have begun to allege that the class/caste positions of the scholars interrogating this aspect of Indian Art did not/ do not call for the destruction of the existing procedural cannons, or the class/caste sensitivities of the scholars do not provide enough motivation in this direction.

narrative relief showing  sculptors at work, Dynasty, Candella , 11^th Century

It is refreshing when Prof. R. N. Misra in “Art and Religion: A Study of Relations in Early India” (1992) questions whether the artists were allowed to enter the temple after their job was done. The post-Vedic labeling of shilpins (artist) as sudras, prompts him to ask the question. But clearly the sthapatis   were not sudras. They seem to have had free access to religions texts and seem to be the ones who executed the crowning of the temple. When Prof. Misra is concerned whether the shilpins were allowed inside a temple, he promptly assumes that they in fact wanted to, whereas it is possible that they had their own gods and goddesses and did not revere upper class deities. We know alarmingly little about the religious practices of the sudras. Is it possible that they cared little about entering high Brahmanical temples? Like many illiterate and poor Indians, who care little about visiting the temples of modern nation states, like the museums?

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[1] A term coined by Rev. Arnold Matthew to describe Christianity’s adaptation to local cultures

[2] Partha Chatterjee, A Possible India, OUP New Delhi 1997

[3] Ananda Coomaraswamy The Transformation of Nature in Art (1934). South Asia Books, 1994 edition

[4] R N Misra, Ancient Artist and Art Activity, IIAS Simla 1975

this is no text art

push-button emails bringing heartless dreams
afternoon wakings and their static nightmares
insipid promises of disgusted souls
menstrual  fantasies are my contemporary heritage


fragmented archives of deleted dreams
coldest city that the heart ever knew
dead awakenings screaming 'money-honey'
lost mobile phones are my postmodern utopias

art galleries and their desperate inventions
everyone wants to eat the same crystal pie
the shining impotency of expression
menstrual  fantasies are my only contemporary heritage

thy name is red

Staring
waiting for the morning to come
some hours after it arrived
fighting to rescue words
some can be rescued no more
a cup full of coffee
meanings have changed too much
some miles to run
that's how poor souls fly
no music this morning
the birds have taken flight
leather wallets and masculinity
red shall keep me alive

Art-Value-Culture

taken from MONA: A Pop-Up Museum..http://www.detroitmona.com/mona_pop-up_museum.htm

It’s a curse …it’s a blessing…spending time inside art galleries challenge basic theoretical presumptions so hard that it forces you into some kind of poststructuralist nirvana, but sometimes it just sends a chill down your spine. In one such art gallery in Delhi I happened to overhear a conversation “the middle-class” has no space in Art” said someone, “yes” came a voice in agreement...“only for the very rich or the very poor”… as I walked on in the gallery the conversation trailed off. There was feeling of being stunned. What baffled me most was that we live in a age where the business class never ignores the middleclass, and makes it a point to ensure that middle class is the highest consumer of the product or the brand.  Depending on how the particular business likes to play the number game, the refined capitalist mindset has figured that the middle class plays a key role in sales or marketing.  So while brands like Coke will look at the middle class as the largest market where actual sales of their products happen, brands like Christian Dior ensures that the middle class buys into their branding and ‘generation of desire’. In fact it is well known that an expensive niche brand stands on the grounds of the middle class desiring it and only the rich being able to afford it. That’s why even if the precuts are only available in super posh shops, the brand is available to the middle class through media campaigns. So when the most expensive  Haute couture brands don't feel that the middle class is irrelevant, how come the thoughts echo hard inside our art galleries? Maybe this betrays a deep seated feudal mindset that makes it impossible for art galleries in India to adjust to high capitalist approach to marketing.

The other reason why the chill traveled up my spine is that expect for a few super stars, most of our artist, viewers and writers belong to the middle class, how can the main pillars of the industry be so dis regarded by people who are entrenched and market leaders (such was the position of the people involved). Then, it is not just about the fine arts industry, in contemporary times, money is fast emerging as the sole symbol for value. We have lost the ability to see value in money less contexts. When we were in Art College, there was an awareness that so and so broke record in auction houses, but that for even once affected art historical analysis of an artist or the respect that circulated in peer groups.  This is increasingly un imaginable now a days. Moreover works of tremendous value like heritage sites and the murals at Shantiniketan lie in sheer neglect. Artist lead initiatives have become dodos, living masters like KG Subramanium and Joiti Bhatt are almost forgotten in the centers like Delhi and Mumbai, and we have one of the smallest artist banks and print making is almost dead. Maybe these are signs of what happens to an industry leaders think that the middle class does not matter.

There are positives that we may get if we expand out horizons of taste. India as a country is going through so many problems; it would help if the youth of the country contributed some time to volunteering. But they are so busy, when will they find time. There were time s when artists were extremely political in the lives they lead, they fought freedom movements and went to jail, yet in their art they explored humour, or the human form…or even the beauty of landscapes. Today couch potatoes make political art. We deserve what we get.

And we are all suffering from it. This deep seated feudal attitude has ensured that we have not yet developed into a recognized industry, and we continue to grope with fakes, lack of price control, lack of investors’ confidence and governmental neglect in terms of funding and regulation. I often ask my friends that unless we have long queues of visitors outside the NGMAs, and till art events attract a much wider audience, in a country like India, why the government would invest in art?  Sadly its’ a question no one is willing to take.

written as editorial for for the 39th issue of Art&deal Magazine Monday, 11 July 2011 at 18:33

Art&Deal Magazine 39th issue Cover 

Law making , Cultural shifts + life of Devadasis

Woke up this morning heard today is 'Mother's Day'. Somehow felt like digging this write up... written  years ago for a  site which is now dead .  

This article focuses on the mysterious, controversial, and often misunderstood tradition of Devadasis in India, and follows the effects of modernism and particularly colonial law making on the followers of this cult. In contemporary times it is the Yellamma cult, which continues and furthers the practice. In the recent years, various Governments have restricted their rituals and this control has led to several violent and caste-based conflicts. History of the deccan tells us that the ritual of temple women (or devadasis) was well established by the 10th century A.D.

It is not clear how the Yellamma cult has its roots in the Devadasi tradition, as the Devadasi tradition was an upper cast mainstream Hindu practice, whilst the followers of Yellamma, who are mostly  poor, and  illiterate, and belong to backward castes. Moreover since it is a Dalit practice, it is difficult to trace any ancient or medieval texts, which can   help to historicize the practice. However presently, it is the Yellamma cult which stills vehemently follows the devadasi tradition, making the enforcement of the 1934 Devadasi Security Act (the act through which the Devadasi system was banned through out India) difficult. Even the Jogini Abolition Act of ’88 hasn’t been able to totally root out the practice[1].

According to Shastric texts, the Devadasis were invariably women, typically resided in the temples, and were educated in arts and literature. This is in part verified as the largest body of women’s writings from ancient and medieval India is written by the Devadasis. Moreover these women appear most frequently in inscriptions as ‘donors’, making gifts of various kinds to the temples themselves. Compared to other women and men associated with temples, Devadasis appear as donors in increasing numbers throughout the course of the Chola period, and as time passed, were increasingly implicated in the life of numerous temples throughout Tamilnadu as a consequence of their donations. Their appearance as donors leads to the question of their possession of property and wealth[2].

However, with the beginning of British law making in India, the traditional social fiber of India, went through major transformations. When the Europeans first arrived in India, they were surprised to see girls who sang and danced in temples. They called these girls as “nautch-girls”. For a European mind, a dancing girl could be just an entertainer performing for the pleasure of rich men. The idea of art as an offering to God was unknown to them. To their outlook, a dancing girl was showing off her body and was no better than a prostitute. Yet, there is no mention in any historical book written by early European visitors to indicate any evidence of prostitution on the part of “temple-maids” or “nautch-girls”. Pressure from the colonial "reform" movement led to suppression of the practice of Devadasis. Adherents of this movement considered devadasis immoral since they engaged in sex outside of the Christian concept of marriage, and described them as prostitutes. This coupled with the British takeover of the revenue rights of temples resulted in the traditional support system of the Devadasis falling apart, severely affecting their social and economic status and (ironically) leaving the Devadasis no option away from prostitution. Devadasis who did not become prostitutes had to struggle and survive as agricultural bonded laborers[3]. In the course of the early 20^th century; the upper caste/class educated Indians had moved away from the practice, but the practice spread amongst the lower castes, and has metamorphosed into an extremely exploitative tradition.  

In different regions of Deccan they go by different names but they are all variations of a similar tradition of sexual exploitation of poor, illiterate Dalit women in the name of religion. These girls are married off to the local deity, Yellamma, making goddesses of them and forfeiting their own right to marry. Then as joginis or "servants of god" they become the property of the men in the village. On the night of her initiation, after reaching puberty, the young girl is normally offered to an upper caste village elder or landlord. As months and years go by, most of the men in the village end up exploiting her. Even today, there are an estimated of over 60,000 joginis spread all over the deccan. In the remote villages there is no one to implement the law. Often people are unaware that it’s an illegal practice[4].  

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[1] http://www.kamat.com/kalranga/people/yellamma/yellamma.htm

[2] Donors, Devotees, and Daughters of God: Temple Women in Medieval Tamilnadu

Leslie C. Orre, New York: Oxford University Press, 2000

[3] Asha Ramesh, Impact of Legislative Prohibition of the Devadasi Practice in Karnataka: A Study, (Carried out under financial assistance from NORAD), May 1993.

[4] http://www.sikhspectrum.com/052007/devadasi.htm

Coffee with Mithu and Probir

Rahul Bhattacharya in conversation with Probir Gupta and Mithu Sen on art, art making and contemporaneity. These are two separate conversations unfolding in the same space, overlapping in time, have been woven together to construct a imaginary conversation.

(an old interview first published in Art News and Views) 

PG: I don't understand the category of Indian-ness in art.

RB: Though till 2-3 years ago I used to use this question of Indian-ness in contemporary Indian art and strategy to remind artists about a certain responsibility to the local, I now feel that its misunderstood and over used. 

PG: Yes, as an artist, I have never thought about this question of Indian-ness. When I work, it is more about what I want to do. My dialogue happens with both, the society and art history. Say for example, my paintings are so impassioned not because I want them to look Indian or western, but because I am intrinsically a sculptor. 

RB: What I'm basically looking for now is how an artist is sensitive to social, political and aesthetic questions of their own surroundings. Let me frame it this way; we produce so many catalogs and circulate it among people who are known not to read them but how many of us send catalogs to art colleges, community reading rooms, etc. there is just no concern…nobody is even thinking in that direction.

MS: Yes, you are absolutely right! The very nature of events like Nandan Mela has changed. It is no longer for people but is now an event for the gallerist. 

The conversation takes off from there and goes across various examples. Mithu, Probir and Rahul talk their way through expressing despair about the current state of affair and come to an understanding that maybe mainstream contemporary art till right now is not really interested in having a dialogue with contemporary India. From there the conversation moved to Mithu's last solo in Berlin and she talks about a cultural event in Berlin, where for a weekend a year, galleries stay open till late and museums don't have entry fee. Most of the galleries put up their best shows during this time.

As Rahul gets up to make coffee, Mithu tells Probir how hundreds and hundreds of people are out on the streets, visiting art galleries, seeing shows, discussing works etc. Probir tells Mithu that in Paris, each zone in the city has an annual festival on the same lines, so the city has about 10 to 12 such art weekends.

RB: Why is that something like that doesn't happen here? It's not that art was so disconnected from the society all the time; From the 20's till the 70's, we've had art being debated and discussed in mainstream publications. There have been public battles over styles, but somehow the connection is lost.

MS: the art world has changed over the years. Nowadays an artist cannot just behave casually, dress casually, there is an element of glamour that has crept in and is now become a criterion of how an artist presents him/herself. 

PG: The best thing is that we can still resist it. There are still a lot of us who do not play upto this expected role and have shown a deep commitment to connect their work with the culture of their contemporary society.

The conversation opens up as they talk about Probir's work with the Jewish community of Kolkata, his experience of doing art projects with school children and Mithu talks about her 'Free Mithu' project. 

The second cup of coffee gets made as they discuss the kind of public responses that have been received and what are the various urges that make them want to reach out. It becomes interesting when both Mithu and Probir cite certain kinds of education and exposure in the early youth, when the art teachers they met, the idealism embedded in them. Rahul comes back with coffee and brings forward the 'Can it be done in any corner you like?' curation and suddenly they realize that in spite of migrating in Delhi over different decades, this hand-me-down idealism has somehow linked them and influenced their pursuits as artists and writers. After Probir winds up to leave early, the conversation moves on to this notion of local and vernacular and how a majority gets left out of the discourses around contemporary Indian art, just because the discussions unfold in English. 

MS: …And sometimes the works come from very very personal zones, and this zone is influenced by the land around you, by the art that you see the people you live with. Sometimes deep personal expressions become universal and are mistaken to be global. It's only when you analyze them and maybe sometimes even psychoanalyze them that you realize where the roots lie.

With that deep challenge thrown to the art historian the conversation begins its journey of winding up…winding down…another cup of coffee gets made.

http://www.artnewsnviews.com/view-article.php?article=delhi-dias&iid=1&articleid=18

NO!SE

At the dawn of the nineties when Contemporary Indian Art (CIA) was born, there was a clear feeling inside some sections of us, that a new era was being ushered in. Early breezes of neo-liberalism were blowing across the sub continent.  The USSR had freshly collapsed, Tiananmen Square was still fresh. The Rao-Manmohan era opened up consumption horizons for us and we kicked the moralist skeleton of Nehruvian socialism like Europe had kicked Catholic morality in the 18th century. Parallel to this global trends, Indian urban thought itself found it’s calling in the writings of ‘new thinkers’ like Arjun Appadurai, Gayatri Spivak.

There were always scratches and fissures in this narrative. Some of them raw…almost like wounds; however this narrative has been so treasured and protected from its contradictions, that anything that troubled its’ shiny surface was dismissed as obsolete, noise…or simply dirt. Even as the art was claiming to be more democratic, personal, political, fragmented and contemporary, the language which was adopted in art making and writing made art more elitist, urban and dystopic. As more and more public art is happening in India, the ‘public’ feels more and more distanced from the art object. Large crowds in art fairs are frowned upon in the fear that the discerning collector will get disturbed. More importantly we see a clear rupture, the international language of Contemporary Indian Art seems unable to hear, or talk to the large number of artists who have not, or have refused to catch up to this change in language. 

Strangely even though these very artists are considered to be residual or obsolete, it is with their art that the larger numbers of art viewing audience seem to connect. Naturally, in order to protect it’s self, CIA has dismissed this situation as reflective of taste and viewing traditions caught up in old middle classism. This (not so conscious) self positioning as avant-garde is still the biggest crisis visual arts are facing today. Is it yet time to acknowledge that instead of being a friend, the post modern is the post colonial’s biggest enemy?

NO!SE is an exhibition concept idea, which seeks to celebrate the stylistic reaction of a post digital aesthetics. The familiar (common) digital tropes of purity, pristine sound, images and perfect copies are abandoned in favour of errors, glitches, marks, fissures, and artefacts. This is a fast emerging trend in music, painting, photography and sculpture. These glitches can be seen in the artworks in the form of noise (stains, scratches, ruptures and jarring sounds) which disrupts the urban cosmopolitan taste.

A new strand of underground cultural practice can be seen in the contemporary art movement, which stems from a boredom with the monotonous digital finish, the mundane cosmopolitanism of contemporary art and the visual language of neo liberal hegemony. For a long time, it seemed that contemporary Indian art had become so insulated that it would fail to respond to and evolve with the changing times.  The art of this emerging underground creates a tension in the realm of aesthetic consumption, causing discomforts  by hacking into the mainstream taste, which still carries the bias stemming from age, class, gender and sexuality.

As fashion trends change and coolness takes on a new meaning, this meaning is sought in the craziness of noise rather than the image of the ‘ideal’. By breaking the flow of the artwork, the intentional error is able to draw attention to it’s self. Eventually as the awareness of the glitch and the aberration grows in the viewer’s awareness...the NOISE begins to dominate. 

The show proposes to invite four selected artists from the list[i] to hack into the system of Contemporary Indian Art (CIA) to propose a new algorithm as the global order stands at the edge of dismantling neo liberalism.

---

[i] The long-list includes the portfolios of the following artists:

1.      Vidisha Saini 

2.      Nandan Ghiya 

3.      Hemant Sreekumar 

4.      Sahej Rahal 

5.      Paribartana Mohanty 

6.      Mandakini Galore 

7.      Mitali Shah 

8.      Preeti Agrawal 

9.      Drupadi Vatsal/Wahshat Ghosh 

10.   Sambaran Das 

tantalising/ on the brink

being pushed to the brink

yet refusing to kill each other

the lure of supreme beauty and balance

water and fire

the possible pain was known

the promises were known too

the lure of supreme beauty and balance

fire and water

tantalisingly forever close

yet elements keep them apart

the faith in beauty and balance

water and fire

almost difficult to believe

still learning hard to fly 

the faith in beauty and balance

fire and water