Written in the summer of 2005, one can say this was my forst writing on contemporary indian art - that time i was teaching Indian History is a law school, and Puja asked me to write for her .
“Have you seen 'Jism'. i would like my woman to be some like Bipasha Basu. How i tried to achieve all this in my work is by working on a big scale (mother figure) but the other figures are smaller because they are her children, i gave her a posture with her legs wide apart. Meri ma har bar uske dono per ko saath rakhne ki koshish karti rahti hai. I always tell my ma that she is a besharam ladki aur thats how i want her to be.”
Puja Chauhan
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Explorations within any medium of
expression bear the imprints of the explorers urge to arrive at point where
aesthetic values combine with articulation of locational experiences. Various
artist, silpins, musicians etc try to
arrive at various levels of this combination. However, we are more attuned to
expecting such explorations in the realm of ‘Fine Arts’ or ‘Literature’. Often
such expectations are impositions as each artist decides her own measures
depending upon her location vis-à-vis of Aesthetics and notions of
subjectivity.
When someone actually
decides to plunge headlong into the tight rope walk and tries to attain such a
combination, the outcome usually lacks the ‘resolved’ quality which we are all
so getting use to (especially as art is more and and more a ‘consumer durable’
and a late capitalist notion of ‘the finished’ is affecting consumer behaviour
globally). Personally, this very struggle (also interpretable as rough
edgedness), and the manner in which it manifests, is what really draws me to
Puja’s work.
Confronted with her
work for the first time, I was very impressed, and struck by the amount of
development that has taken place ever since she opted out of Faculty of Fine
Arts MS University of Baroda (where she completed her graduate specialization
in Sculpture and stayed on for the first year of her Masters course). Working
from her home in Rajkot- on the fringes of the Indian mainstream- Puja has not
only shows a mature ‘coming to terms’ with an unconventional medium, but also a
refreshing critique of Patriarchy.
I don’t know how successful Puja’s
works are as political strategies against Patriarchy, maybe the question itself,
is but an imposition of the analytical frameworks that dominate us. Any
experience which is not ‘post modernized’ is under the threat of being labeled
invalid and unacceptable as knowledge. However, is post-modernism as a
discourse (or a constellation of discourses) in sync with the experience of
post-modernity? When the ‘Radical’ has been defined as a crusade against
consumerism and declared to be a leftist
prerogative, can a work which invites consumtion of the female body with the
artist asserting her right to be nude and sexy (especially within the context
of a orthodox Indian family) ever hope to be accepted as knowledge?
However, it will be limiting to simply
view Puja’s works as an assertion of sexuality and from a subaltern location.
These works are very much a voice against the patriarchal disciplining of
women’s bodies and body language. Language being a cultural construct is
destined to be governed by norms. However the agency that disciplines needs to
be questioned. The disciplining of a girl’s or a women’s body language that
takes place within house holds mirrors the colonial disciplining of ‘native’.
Just that this has happened over a much longer period of human history and is
still the most dominant expression of patriarchy and is unquestioned in many
dominant value systems. Frighteningly issues of ‘woman’s safety’ have got
intertwined with this and thus we always live in a world where violence by men
towards women allows men the right to discipline women’s right. The dominant
voice says “She got eve teased because of the way she dresses”. Men not only
violate the law, but also claim that it is the women’s faults that lead to the
violation. Puja sends out a message that unless women discipline their bodies
they are doomed to be violated upon.
Such an experience take a different
context within a small conservative town……especially for someone how has
experienced greater physical freedom within an art school campus. Sometimes one
needs to experience freedom in order to know how suffocating it is to be denied
freedom. Puja’s voice against the value system which dominates, suppresses and
yet protects her is a voice that needs much clearer articulation….. an area the
artist needs to develop in the years to come.
To me Puja’s works cut in two ways. She
brings in a question which is increasingly becoming important for third world
feminists to address. A question that was first fore-grounded by Spivak in her argument
for the ‘doubly subaltern’. When we think of the political project of feminism
in India India which is increasingly
being swept under the carpet post Rao-Manmohan era- ever since India India
Not that the sculptures being exhibited
could not be formally more resolved. Indeed, they may come across to look a bit
too much like caricatures, maybe odd, funny dolls. However for an up coming
fresh artist I find a lot of potential in the formal indecisiveness and knowing
Puja she will never relax and settle down. Looking forward to see her express
with more flair, and cut with more passion.
Moreover, the process of being more
formally resolved also encompasses the process of being more self-conscious
about the ways in which her works are seen. Puja’s works, filter through her
childhood experiences (of playing with dolls, learning codes of morality while
playing, stitching their clothes and accessories). It is on this foundation,
that her academic training in sculpture is enabling her to find her voice.
Puja has always shared an ambivalent
relationship with institutionalized art education. She has found her passion
and discovered her right to artistic subjectivity through her art school
training, and yet (since any mainstream institution necessarily duplicates the
control mechanism of the state) she has found it patriarchal, restrictive and
orthodox. It is only an institution like ‘Faculty of Fine Arts, M S University Baroda
that could give Puja the space to experiment with weaving, and cloth-cotton
sculptures. However, it is only far away from the mainstream, that Puja found
‘her calling’, enabling her to move away from just making sculptures in the
manner of stuffed toys, and introduce the ‘personal’.
It is this development that has given
her works a depth allowing them to have a voice, encouraging people to
communicate, and inviting people to communicate with them.
...Happy Communiating.
Rahul
Bhattacharya
---
“I read Shabana Azmi's interview in the paper. She said art should be a medium of social change. I agree with her. i believe that most people are very uncomfortable talking about personal things . But when you do that its because you think that your story will help other people and because you think that people should change the way they think. i think there are a lots of woman who can identify with my work and it should give them a courage to say I will not let this happen to me.Bye”.
Puja Chauhan
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