Written as the Critic in Residence:Published in Art India Magazine 2006
Three very different artists…completely different approaches to the medium called lens…some very decent chemistry…and some great hunger to explore…you get the makings of a good artists camp. Not that all work that has produced is very good…they have their own tryst with failures…but then again, the point is not always centered around object hood.
When I approach a theme based workshop…it is always important to be able to grasp what influence the structure of the workshop has on the artist and her methods. It has been quite interesting to grapple with the way Atul Bhalla, Himanshu Desai and Gigi Scaria have tried to impose a structure on the workshops and how they went on to take different roots. The workshop started with the artists going on early morning walks, taking still/video footage and meeting people in the neighborhoods around Turkuman Gate. Quoting a line from the concept note#,
“The idea is to intervene or understand the city in which we all live more closely with”
it seems that structure of the workshop was predefined by the desire to be the flâneur: to intervene ‘visually’ into a romanticized space, armed with a certain greater access to ‘knowledge’, and with certain desire to explore and re-present the ‘other’, maybe in an attempt to understand the ‘self’ better. At an overtly political level there is a positioning of this workshop in the discourses around identity.
“The
walled city of Delhi also poses certain questions on the "modern''
identity of an urban citizen. What exactly makes the old city
different?… “What
exactly contributes to a city's boundaries to exist?…The 'boundaries of
a city’ function today more as a metaphor than specific geographic
locations.”#
However, the workshop was not really about macro political concerns like the
schizophrenia of urban identities; it was more about a focused retreat,
which inspired a particular kind of self/artistic introspection…often
playing out intimately political articulations.
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| Atul Bhalla: Early morning ducumentation |
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| Display of Atul Bhalla's Piao |
But reading this nature of involvement only through the prism of politics is too much a single layered reading of Atul’s engagement. His attraction to the various Piaos in the city is definitely rooted in the realm of aesthetics. He has a very poetic understanding of form, and it is through this engagement that he has been ‘framing’ the Piaos. Atul reveals in being very consciously artistic, in his acts of capturing and strategizing the re-presentation of his ‘framings’: in giving an aesthetic validity to an object of his attraction…usually passed over as ‘mundane’. Through this last month Atul has had a near meditative
engagement with his process…, the early morning walks, exploring the
space, discovering the histories… it has been a journey in many ways. A
journey rendered significant by Atul’s constant re-thinking of what art
is, and exploring the boundaries of what different modes art making can
take. The set of still photographs clicked in a the course of the month,
document various Piaos in the walled city, shot with a great fondness for ‘form’ and a fine talent for locating beauty.
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| footage clipping. Artist enacting the Halal |
The video, which captures the Halal, strongly challenges the ‘image’ of a Halal embedded in our psychic. The focus is rooted in the experientiality of the
artist…showing the blood and struggle of the animal were easily
available means to make a startling video, but that is simply not Atul’s
style. The video is instead a very disturbing piece more because an
artist has turned ‘butcher’ for a morning a yet ‘the event’ is showcased
in the most tranquil manner possible.
***
Gigi Scaria’s involvement in the workshop is as an artist and very crucially
as a conceiver and the keystone of the workshop. One must admit, what
simply as a workshop concept, it is a wonderful imagination. The manner
in which the “Project proposal combines an agenda to explore a medium
and through that to explore culture, is a model that needs to be picked
up. As someone who envisaged the spirit of the workshop, it was
interesting to see Gigi laid back and spends a lot of time soaking up
the retreat value that the camp within the walled city offered. The laid
back quality was not around the nature of activity; in fact Gigi has
been active energy point through the workshop, he just relaxed his art
producing instincts…and instead chose to ‘listen’ to his environment.
The four videos he has produced are direct accounts of his ‘listening’. One
sees in Gigi an ability to connect with a certain strata of urban youth
who usually invoke disdain. His videos are intimate encounters within
the walled city mostly focused around the poor youth, a calendar maker, a
metal scavenger, or simply a young boy sleeping on the street. Gigi has
the ability to humanize them for us, displaying an endearing
sensitivity and fondness towards the ‘private’ dimension in their lives,
which somehow always escapes our imagination.
The artist’s rooting in visual arts speaks out in the manner in which Gigi
composes his frames, a definitely painterly engagement. However he does
succeed in not letting the ‘aesthetic’ make the work any less intimate,
and engaging.
***  |
| Clipping from Gigi Sicaria's video 'Chitli Quabar' |
Gigi Scaria’s involvement in the workshop is as an artist and very crucially
as a conceiver and the keystone of the workshop. One must admit, what
simply as a workshop concept, it is a wonderful imagination. The manner
in which the “Project proposal combines an agenda to explore a medium
and through that to explore culture, is a model that needs to be picked
up. As someone who envisaged the spirit of the workshop, it was
interesting to see Gigi laid back and spends a lot of time soaking up
the retreat value that the camp within the walled city offered. The laid
back quality was not around the nature of activity; in fact Gigi has
been active energy point through the workshop, he just relaxed his art
producing instincts…and instead chose to ‘listen’ to his environment.
The four videos he has produced are direct accounts of his ‘listening’. One
sees in Gigi an ability to connect with a certain strata of urban youth
who usually invoke disdain. His videos are intimate encounters within
the walled city mostly focused around the poor youth, a calendar maker, a
metal scavenger, or simply a young boy sleeping on the street. Gigi has
the ability to humanize them for us, displaying an endearing
sensitivity and fondness towards the ‘private’ dimension in their lives,
which somehow always escapes our imagination.
The artist’s rooting in visual arts speaks out in the manner in which Gigi
composes his frames, a definitely painterly engagement. However he does
succeed in not letting the ‘aesthetic’ make the work any less intimate,
and engaging.
 |
| Gigi_Scaria_Old-Cityscapes: Exhibition dispaly |
 |
| still from Gigi Scaria's video 'Search 2'2 |
***
Himanshu’s engagement with work production has been an interesting duel between
imposing his gaze on the walled city, and learning back. However, Himanshu Desai
is more of an ‘actor’ than a listener. His video ‘Scenes from a
Hallucination’ is a revelation of a new age re visitation of the flâneur.
In a certain sense, the video is also an introspection of the artist’s
own engagement with hallucinations…using fragments from others’ stories
Himanshu tries to communicate his own anxities.
What takes the video to a greater aesthetic realm…beyond an out cry of an
introspective soul is the artist’s long term engagement with sound and
how that engages with his use of visuals. Himanshu revels in making
sound videos…but this particular one has been a jump for the artist in
the manner in which he has treated the visual dimensions. However it
needs to be pointed out that the video has many elements of class
voyeurism, and in a certain sense it does come from his ‘high speed’
work production mode. Sometimes I have found the video a shade over
rendered…but mostly ‘tripped’ on the artists construction of
‘hallucinations’.
It was even more interesting to follow the artist in his postproduction
phase. When he moved into making posters and various other
paraphernalia, which were needed to give a screening a ‘movie hall
experience’. But the efforts of this phase will be witnesses when it all
comes together on the open studio day. Meanwhile Himanshui has gone on
to shoot and edit another video…a lens based critic of the workshop….
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| Stills from 'Scenes from a Hallucination' |
As this report is finished the artists have entered their last phase of planning the display…the zeal to showcase the months work and their personal journeys in very strong. Then the finished works will slowly begin to speak louder than the process. One must admit that it has been a great pleasure seeing artists work through the entire period of the workshop to be a participant in the delights and the anxieties
