Art , Nation, Representation on the Edge of Desire

A Reworked version of an essay written in 3 years after the fall of the 1st NDA government - at that point was appalled to see  an young scholar repeat the mistakes of the old. After the 1st year of the 2nd NDA government, feel the need to push for a new liberalism one that celebrates the heterogeneous, the global and the local but works outside nationalism and global capitalism. 

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A critique of  Chaitanya Sambrani's ‘Edge of Desire’ - Recent Art in India'. An that has recieved a lot of fame and aims to take stock of the country’s contemporary cultural heritage, traversing conventional divides between urban, fine art and folk tradition art, and between high culture and popular culture. 

Subodh Gupta, Bihari, 1998, Handmade paper, acrylic, cow dung in PVA solution, LED lights with timer and transformer127 x 96 x 8cm

The ‘Edge ofDesire’ came to town after it had already travelled to England, Australia and the US. One had heard so much about it, a major show curated by Chaitanya Sambrani, co-presented by the Asia society and the Queens Museum. The works span several professional, material, and disciplinary boundaries, extending across urban, gallery-based practice and Adivasi, folk and popular visual cultures. There are clearly visible links, dialogues and arguments across this spectrum. The exhibition seeks to contribute to a contemporary understanding of the multiplicity of the ‘image culture’ in contemporary India. A show of this stature, showcasing Indian art had allegedly never been give shape before. When one encounters such accolades, it is always useful to run it down memory lane. Geeta Kapur’s Bombay/Mumbai at Tate Modern immediately comes to mind.

How useful is it to get into a scale comparison; it never is able to evaluate the impact. On the contrary, it might be right to ignore Geeta  Kapur for the moment and visit ‘Edge of Desire’ through an article written by Arindam Dutta titled  ‘The Politics of Display: India 1886 and 1986 (Journal of Arts and Ideas, Nos. 30-31), and Tapati Guha’s Thakurta’s ‘Marking Independence’, which scrutinises the policies that inform the setting up the inaugural display of the National Museum and defines itself as “the first serious attempt towards stock-taking of the nation’s heritage through the event of an art exhibition.” (Cited from ‘Marking Independence: The Ritual of a National art Exhibition’, Journal of Arts and Ideas, Nos. 30-31). Especially of relevance is the part where Tapati concentrates on the setting up of the (rather small) ‘contemporary’ section and the politics behind the selection of Bendre, Abanendranath Tagore, Hussain, Amrita Shergill and some others.

Edge of Desire claims to be the first serious stocktaking of the country’s contemporary cultural heritage. Positioning itself as a show that traverses conventional divides between urban, fine art and folk tradition art, and between high culture and popular culture, it claims to represent a time of socio-political transformation in India. The exhibition addresses contemporary political, social, and environmental realities existing in India. The selection, (of 36 artists and three collectives from both urban and rural India produced from the early 1990s to the present) explores the role of place and desire in the creation of visual art in contemporary India, at a time defined by economic globalisation and political fundamentalism. (In an oxymoronic way, the show operates by seeking to generate desire around contemporary Indian art.) The exhibition investigates the impact of these germinal forces on the work of a diverse group of artists who (according to the curator) represent different generations, regions and social contexts, and in Sambrani’s judgment reflect contemporary Indian society’s constantly shifting experiences of caste alliances, class structures, and global trends in localised settings. It is because the exhibition carries claims of such a representation that one is invited to interrogate the politics of representation informing the exhibition.


The way the show seeks to define and echo the many ethnicities, languages, religions, political ideologies, and social strata that define modern India betrays a ideological positioning, which would have been labelled hypocritical and pseudo-secularist not too long back when saffron was hounding the centre-left and had turned institutions of culture (visibly) into terrains of contestation.  Even tough we are more comfortable with this kind of outdated liberalism, it is important to remember this kind of seculirm has remained terribly insulated and failed to represent the larger heterogeneity of the Indian Subcontinent and (possibly) thereby loosing ground to populist Hinduvta. 

Of course, when one questions the politics of representation, then ‘who’ is representing in front of ‘whom’ assumes greater significance. The Edge of Desire needs to be seen from two perspectives, one a representation of ‘contemporary Indian art ’ to an audience abroad and the other as a show to challenge preconceptions of contemporary India, whose presence in Western culture is often limited to Bollywood, yoga, outsourcing and the curry. According to the Asia Society Museum Director Melissa Chiu. “This exhibition aims to do for contemporary Indian art what Inside Out: New Chinese Art did in 1998 for raising awareness of the vibrant art scene in China.” However, when the show travels to India and is showcased in the National Gallery of Modern Art, the shifts in the semiotic value become tremendous. It suddenly becomes hierarchical–invested with the authority of the state that claims to represent the nation.

Raj Kumar; Apne Zindagi Ka Khambha (The Pillar of My Life) I, 2002-2003

When the show first opened in Australia, it was arranged in five interlocking thematic categories. These thematic divisions suggest flows across porous boundaries rather than watertight compartments. In New York, Edge of Desire was presented at two locations, the Asia Society Museum and the Queens Museum of Art. The Asia Society Museum featured the categories ‘Unruly Visions’ and ‘Location/Longing’, and the Queens Museum of Art featured ‘Transient Self’, ‘Contested Terrain’ and ‘Recycled Futures’. Though there is a sequence in the way the exhibition was conceived, inherently, the viewer was invited to see it as groupings by thematic structure, offered as a way of entry into this rich, complex and varied body of work that is unflinching in its encounter with the contemporary world.

To a great extent, the exhibition addresses religion and politics (specially the part originally shown as Contested Terrain. Gulammohammed Sheikh’s works depict the obliteration of the Babri Masjid in 1992 that has in a certain way been a loss of innocence for Indian secularism (The loss of Babri Masjid becomes the dominat theme of this section) . NN Rimzon's moving installation, Speaking Stones, is an anguished scream reacting to the loss. And Nilima Sheikh's decorative-poetic large scrolls describe the Kashmir of her youth, before it became a site of communal contestation.  RUMMANA HUSSAIN's seminal Home/Nation  is poetic articulation of torment, which was disappearing from memory just because it was not being seen around. Nalini Malani’s installation, The Sacred and the Profane (1998), projects a play of shadows from images painted in acrylic on large, rotating Mylar cylinders. Her work challenges notions of separation and insularity. A series of works (2003) by Santosh Kumar Das respond to communal violence in Gujarat, referencing a figurative tradition of Madhubani painting of juxtaposing recent events with historical figures such as Mahatma Gandhi. 

Rummana Hussain; 

Home Nation, 1996  

Multipart installation including wooden planks, plastic folders, photographs, glass bottles,

 cloth; 5.6 x 4 m

In the last decade, it has become clear that the Nehruvian notion of secularism is struggling to find relevancy in the post-Babri Masjid times (read ‘Secularism and Its Critics’, edited by Rajeev Bhargava), and what is troubling about the exhibition is that none of those lessons seem to have been learnt, and its claims towards heterogeneity seem to have been lost in an homogenous articulation of political concerns. The absence of K. P KrishnaKumar, Manjit Bawa, Akkitham Narayanan and some other voices hint that the ‘Contested Terrain’ is very narrowly understood, and such a show coming in during Congress rule is temptation to return and continue this piece….trying to decode the Edge of Desire….what is the desire? 

N.N. Rimzon, Speaking Stones, 1998, Photographs (laminated), stones, resin fiberglass, marble dust (on figure)
90 x 500cm (diameter)

When one came across, the Director of the National Gallery of Modern Art, Rajeev Lochan’s quote in the Hindu: "By bringing this highly acclaimed, cutting-edge exhibit to India, the NGMA hopes to facilitate a meaningful engagement between artists and their works, and to understand how the art resonates in its own environment”, one could not help wondering as to whether it would have been possible for the NGMA to bring in a show like this when the NDA government was in power. Of course we always use timing as a political stategy to bypass censorship, but the point is that is Chaitanya Sambrani is self reflective about how the nation is imagined and showcased and how his imagination simply  echos Geeta Kapur's and Jyotindra Jain's scholarship...and theby the politics of their imagination. 

Nataraj Sharma; Freedom Bus or A View from the 6th Standard, 2001-2004, Iron, wood, electrical moto, oil and enamel paint on paper, ink jet prints, rubber tyres, electroplating
103 x 237 x 76cm

De centralizing Art….re thinking Venice Biennale in a poly-centric world.

Tracing the conservative neo liberalism informing key curatorial positions : a case study of Robert Storr's positioning of the 2007 Venice Biennale. 

At the Arsenale, "Dusasa I" by El Anatsui

Photo by Romero/The New York Times

We are living in an era that is slowly beginning to celebrate anything which is polycentric and/or heterogenous in its nature or claims. This celebration of polycentricism is fairly recent, it coincides with the flowering and acceptance of the world as a multicultural soiety, and is often positioned in theory as a strategic resistance against a unipolar world. It is this pedestal of resistance that has made polycentrlism one of the intellectually most fashionable positions to take. In the realm of high art, the effects of increasingly polycentric world has lead to mutliforation of ‘centers’, and a blurring of geographical boundaries in terms of art production, exibition and patronage. This phenomenon coincides with the de centralization of financial capital and in many ways is collaborative to the process.  Sometimes it is important to remember that polycentricism (in culture) is not just a simple utopic discourse that enables artists and art works to travel widely and invites multicultural viewership; polycentricism in the realm of culture often takes up a centalizing role by enveloping cultural production in the ambit of a particular kind of centralized late capitalist market economy.

When the School of Art and Aesthetics, JNU, and The Biennale Society or organized a talk First Venice, then...Biennials in a polycentric art world, by Robert Storr, Director 2007 Venice Biennale and former ‘Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture’ at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, there was no space to wonder about the agenda behind the hosting. Robert Storr’s talk has in a certain way made the campaign for the Delhi Biennale visible, or as the mood during the question answer session reflected, in a certain way the Delhi Biennale has begun. However what raises certain questions is the need for an argument around polycentricism to legitamise the Biennale campaign, and more so the manner in which Robert Storr put forward his argument in favour of polycentricism carried so much baggage of the first world neo-liberal understanding of multiculturalism that one wonders how is it relevant for an audience and the ‘The Biennale Society’ which is seeking to use the Biennale to participate in the discourse of multiculturalism from a third world location. 

This takes the shape of a contradiction more so because of the oxymoronic manner in which Robert Storr put forward his argument for biennials in a polycentric art world. There were essentially two parts to the argument put forward by Robert Storr; he began by articulating a defense of the ‘Institution’ in the context of patronizing and show casing art and then moved on to trying to establish the ‘Biennale’ as a major ‘institution’ with a certain mandate to polycentralise the art world. On the face of it Storr’s seemed like a perfect argument, arguing for (or assuming) a neo-liberal role of institutions, and how through such liberalism (great) artistic exchange can take place. In that context Storr’s talk was like a re-visitation of modernist thought to the extent that he glossed over ideological ground realities and elements of cultural location along with the location of power. It is not that Storr does not mention the take over of institutions by (what he called) conservative forces, but surprisingly he gives us an utopist “all is well” story telling us that ‘intrinsically’ institutions are good. I thought we had left behind the idea of ‘intrinsic’ goodness some ten years ago.

It is Storr’s theoretical conservatism that leads to the oxymoronic quality of his talk. Polycentricism is theoretically a reaction against institutional monopolization of power and culture, and this comes from our experiential realizations that ‘intrinsic’ goodness is a myth, and powerful institutions use this myth to maintain their hegemonic value, hiding behind it power location and cultural biases. Infact the manner in which Storr spoke about MOMA’s founding Director, Alfred H. Barr is telling about a lot of locational biases that Storr refuses to acknowledge. Painting Barr as a great multiculturalist, Storr argues strongly that Barr’s curatorial taste did not carry any class, regional, gender or sexuality bias…it is strange to see someone still pulling off such an argument confidently at our age of theoretical anxiety, especially after so much has been written about the biases that informed the works of Barr and other such liberal modernists. Infact Storr might claim a neo liberal position for himself, but throughout the talk one got a clear hint that he was trying to legitimize his position by tracing a lineage from Barr, and Barr’s location can at the most be described as conservative liberalism.

It is this masking of conservative thought in guise of liberalism that is dangerous and needs careful attention. So when Storr goes on to give us a brief history of Biennale’s and argues for it to be a platform for multiculturalism one cant help but be skeptical. But Storr is one step ahead of us, he does not waste time and warns us that it is futile to criticise institutions and instead one must engage with them. That statement has a rhetorical value that has the power to sway many, however its rhetoric helps to divert our attention from certain important questions.

Monika Sosnowska, at the Poland pavilion.Photo by Romero/The New York Times

What about the possibilities of exploring alternative non-institutional modes? Is there any space that allows one to practice art, have a free flow of culture, and not operate under macro institutional modes and generate macro rhetorics? Art in a polycentric shold be able to adress such possibilities…other wise the stress on poly become minimal and centric shines out in bold.

Rethinking Field notes…attempts towards a cross representation from Shantiniketan

field notes from the Ramkinker Baij seminar- 2007

The three day symposium (16th, 17th and 18th February 2007) at Nandan Sadan, Kala Bhavana (Santiniketan) on Ramkinker Baij intended to address the dual issues of the 'National' and the 'Nature of Public', proposed by Anshuman Das Gupta. Eddy Chambers, a scholar from Bristol was one of the expected speaker. His book " Annotations" has more or less categorized the employees 'inside' Tate Modern galleries as 'whites' and those at the basement Cafetaria as 'coloured'. Hence he calls the gallery/museum culture of Europe as being 'whitewashed', while Carol Duncan calls them as places to perform rituals. Hailing as a protagonist of a movement--very similar to the Dalit movement in the context of Kannada literature of the 70s, for instance--his viewpoint would have been a matter of keen, comparative interest. In the 1980s Eddy led the art-society movement 'for' coloured artists in England. Ramkinker has been identified--almost for the first time in a clear loud voice— as a dalit, in both the seminars that intended to celebrate his centenary. (one at Bhuvaneshwar by Amit Mukhopadhyay in January 2007 and the other at Santiniketan seminar by Anshuman). 

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§  Where as the coordinator Anshuman Dasgupta's (with a ‘little’ help from his friends) attempt to galvanize the lethargy of Santiniketan, (through creating an event which does not restrict itself to a singular focus and thus (?) has an enhanced discursive potential (?), yet somehow engaging itself with the various dimensions of the Contemporary) is appreciable. The responses to his editorial/curatorial project sabotage the project by responding to the curatorial project very literally. Over three days the seminar presented (and unfolded) itself in a manner of a loose cluster of ideas...some very powerfully presented, some mediocre and others undeserving.

     The outcome of the symposium, however, touched upon a set of unpredictable issues. A 'predictable silence' regarding the legitimacy of established hegemonic orders of visual epistemology clad the whole symposium , like those shawls cladding and forming a second skin to the Santiniketanites, throughout all seasons, over the decades. It is important to understand the mesmeric-spell that the place itself has/had upon the theoreticians--more so with the Kala Bhavana alumnus--now engaged in theorization. Arguably, the finger pointing out at the moon itself happened to become the goal of the symposium. Who is it and from where are we addressing the notion of Nation, Public and Public Art?

• One of the successes of the seminar was that it created pockets of deep interest...sometimes laced with conflict. Also in the context of Santiniketan it has to be viewed as another introduction of a new contemporary. It somehow seems imperative that one now has to explain the notion of this 'new contemporary' before proceeding ahead with the narrative of the seminar. Santiniketan imagines its identity by imagining for itself a location that (allegedly) marginalizes the Contemporary and the 'West' (thereby completely marginalizing the (Contemporary West). Thus a seminar primarily aimed at discussing (or aiming to be discursive) around the language and framework of a certain 'New Genre' (which incidentally is also negotiating an allegation that of being elitist and a derivative form of euro-American postmodernism containing within it structures of late capitalist processes) is bound to have discussions laced with conflicts between schools of thoughts. Actually it is in these conflicts that contained and transmitted the ‘highpoints’ of the seminar.

• Many of the visiting speakers, panelists, observers were aware of their outsider status…conscious of being invited into the seminar as carriers of the 'new contemporary'…agents through whom this 'new contemporary' would/could decimate, potentially interpolating with the sub urban bhadralok which dominates the ground.

• The semiotics of hierarchised sitting (all the speakers, panelists, observers along with dignitaries were seated on chairs and the students nearly all (mostly) on the ground, and the ‘Asian’ habit of ‘taking off shoes’ ensured that from the first moment on there was an ambience of being located in a zone where contemporary is still (officially) kept (out) in the margins. Of course the ethnic location of the ground ensured the privilege of experiencing some brilliant hospitability, and the comfort of an pollution free environment, and many a times one marveled at Santiniketan managing to resist the onslaught of late capitalism…managing to remain in a zone in some kind of an authentic zone. Parul Dave Mukherjee’s ‘Cosmopolitan Modernism: Santiniketan from Elsewhere’, engages with this notions of cultural authenticity located in and around Santiniketan and how it is engaged with from various ‘contemporary’ locations. 

§  The problematization of Santiniketan’s neo-traditionalist claims was further acted out when in a response to Abha Seth’s paper (as a part of Shivaji k Panikkar, Abha Sheth and Parvez Kabir’s collaborative paper ‘Art and Ideology of Swaminarayan Hinduism: Issues of Modernity, Religion and Gender’) the issue of operational patriarchy in Santiniketan and how it might be influencing the staff recruitment policy at Kala Bhavan was visited.

§  The conflict within Santiniketan’s neo-traditionalist claims was further articulated during the plenary session (open forum) when questions around the teacher student hierarchies were visited…through observations about student participation…observations coming from being touched by the hospitality offered through the use of students, yet not being able to hear their voices within the seminar proceedings. These ‘articulations from the outside’ primarily came from concerns about the absolute invisibility of student as Peer relationship, and a feeling that it was being denied due to a traditionalist understanding of the Guru-Sishya parampara.

 Santiniketan is a place of varying and constantly metamorphosing meanings and representations alleged to already familiar and acknowledged signs. So much for its ambiguous site-specificity. While operating from inside, one would feel that (s)he is inside a double layer of art institution and museum, held together. They feel the warmth within twin layers of dual functions (a museum and an art school), and in between lies a void—like the walls of a coffee flask. This has been so since long. A library designed in Vatican by Michelangelo is turned into a museum, because of the popularity of the artist who designed it. Hence categorizing Kala Bhavana as a mere academic space for a dialogue is very defeatist classification. Everyone had to address the issues raised--from the very premise within which the subject had operated.Thus the main 'address' was regarding 'who' and from 'where' is it that the notion of Nation and Public is being  addressed. It was inevitable for the outline of the apparatus of addressing agency to be identified and tested before addressing the constructs of 'Nation' and 'Public'. 

In other words, it was the 'position' from wherein everyone--who falls into either of the two (easy) categories of Art History proper and Cultural Theory—operated, that was, incidentally, the actual issues addressed! More or less, there were predictable positions in the form of conclusions that were foreseen beforearguments. The pleasure of predictability is like a second screening of a suspense thriller. The demythified yet holds the pleasure of unveiling the secrecy of the thrill.
 When (and wherever) such a thing happens, when conclusions preface an argument, the one thing gifted to the keen audience is the kind of subtleties that is employed towards realizing those predictable positions.Does it mean that expecting anything beyond or radical, is, in fact, itself a radical demand that actually is the premise of those who are not yet institutionalized and or do not understand the nuances of the importance of being institutional. The question was either to look into the subtle-registers from within a well known issue or expect radical, drastic, newer methodology and results. It all depended on which side of the Nandan Sadan pillars were you positioned—the addressee or the addressed. Perhaps predictability and adefinite self-positioning, are inevitable parts of being institutional. In other words, what was being told was engaged in addressing the issue of how it was being told, that assigns a sort of self-address oraathmaavalokana (introspection)! You don't need an external agency to perform the Indian act of self-referentiality. Neither would it go off that very easily for those who are conscientious.

Any intention to address the dual (?) issues of the 'National' and the 'Nature of Public' through the historical, cultural, and political persona of Ramkinker Baij can be deeply problematic if the notion of a persona, national, nature and public are not interrogated and (possibly) fragmented. The presentations by Irit Rogoff “The Implicated - Reflections on Audience”, -revolving “around the question of 'what does it mean to take part in culture"? Beyond the roles that culture allots us, roles of visitors, voters, listeners etc. ” (from the seminar abstracts) -Grant Watson’s Notes Towards an Exhibition, - which was an attempt to look at “the work of Ramkinker as a starting point from which a network of ideas can emerge” (from the seminar abstracts) (and is also a strategy in a politico cultural project around rescuing communism in euro-America) - Parul Dave Mukherjee’s ‘Cosmopolitan Modernism: Santiniketan from Elsewhere’, Amit Mukhopadhyay’s Love, play, labour: Before and after independence, R Sivakumar’s ‘Ramkinker  and the Dual Commitments of   Modernism’, Shivaji k Panikkar, Abha Sheth and Parvez Kabir’s collaborative paper ‘Art and Ideology of Swaminarayan Hinduism: Issues of Modernity, Religion and Gender’, Artist Presentation by the Raqs media group, H.A. Anil Kumar’s “Reworking on the notion of ‘Modernity’ and the ‘Public’ “,Abhishek Hazra’s ‘Meta Meat: Some Initial Observations On Recent Online Phenomena’ and Tapati Guha Thakurta’s panel paper around public art practices in early modern India; successfully engaged with these concept metaphors of persona, national, nature and public.

§  However the possibilities of developing on and engaging with the discursive potential of the inter textualities of these engagements was not properly engaged with thus (only) leaving a range of ‘interesting starting points’.

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When Irit Rogoff spent about a hour and an half to speak and read out her paper, she had retained her sense of that position from within which she was speaking: (a) "I thought I should read out the paper, since that would justify the amount of energy and economy spent on me" and (b) "I believe in the whole world being a construct and the world is about events rather than objects". Between these two sentences she was actually suggesting the possibility of a future-academy which would not reject the past, but definitely the burden and skepticism about the past was pronounced. I would like to connect this point with what Geeta Kapur said (" De-nuding formalism") at one point while speaking about Navjot Altaf's community projects. Both the speakers were pointing out at two aspects/positions of Modernity and Nation that become mutually restless while placed next to each other: the commoner and the specialist positions. 'Addressal of the energy spent on speech' and 'omnipresence of formalism' were positioned next to 'the world as a set of events rather than objects' and 'denuding of a favourite mode of visual approach'. This justification seems mysterious, even to me.
Does it mean that it is the positions we take that matters, (only) if it is well articulated?

Shudhabratha (of RAQS Media) 's presentation became more articulate due to his knowledge of the language (that Ramkinker spoke) Bengali. His talk was, along with Irit's presentation, aimed at problematising the historicity of the visual-pedagogic construct of a dialogue or what is given as art historical discourse.
If Irit's position, when she calls the whole world a construct, seemed too 'liberal' or when Shudhabratha's call to make art function like science, deleting the 'boundaries of hierarchies'—what both actually meant was not as important as the question: why did we feel the necessity to an 'alternative' and if so, why do we opt for art and science to be liberal, general and prophetic? That is the kind of 'silent zones' that the overall symposium was construing throughout rather than de-mythify, apart from the outcome of a seminary: the usual insightful fluencies and articulations. It is like Ramkinker Baij's installed sculptures, specific to the site, playing the contemporary game of hide-and-seek between reality and hyper-reality. Santalis walking around the "Santal Family" sculpture has a potential to immediately re-position the art community as intruders and delve into a play between the reality and the hyper-reality of the Santals and their representation.

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This leads us to the third question, the question of Indian English. Would the problem of the refusal to budge out of the defined positions (if it is a problem, that is) be negated if Indian art history was predominantly written in any Indian language!? English, for instance, as the unwritten official language of/for Indian art discourse assigns the role of behaving like a 'pan-national'—artists, critics and curators. No Indian literary giants can claim such a pan-national position, but for the politically incorrect ones, owing to the regional specification of Indian languages. As per today, the colonial discourse is the ink evident in writing the visual cultural map of Indian, by and large. The multifaceted dimensions that English has acquired in the historicity (and historicisation) of Indian visual culture have led to the formation of embarrassments, inferiority complexes, defendable forts. By and large it is a language which refutes to remain passive language in Indian art history! Anybody reading and writing about Indian art in English will only be able to re-represent the visual art, for, his/her initial concern will be focused upon representing English as an apparatus to address the subject. The performatory gesture of 'reading out a paper' is also a self-positioning that only tangentially touches the audience's expectation for clarity. Arguably, the reading-out act of a seminar paper is a desire to say more in a condensed form. This is where the major aspect of 'predictable silence' occupies a hegemonic order through a language in the 'formation of national' in visual arts.
However, the question of historicity, living traditions, the past and its pensive connectivity with the current affairs were rather idealistically waived off in the seminar, like the seemingly predictable fate of the innumerable murals and sculptures in and around Kala Bhavana. All of us know the end of it—very predictable. Paradoxically, the means employed to achieve this is where we find solace and hopes.

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This was a symposium I attended at Santiniketan after one and a half decade. It was homecoming to me in more than one way. I had become more keen to the delivered words, the meanings they 'project' and 'hide' at the same time and sentences like " he could master spontaneously at the cost of coherence" (R.Siva Kumar's words about Ram kinker) immediately would trigger off an idea in me to jot in my notebook as, "Binode Bihari Mukherjee was an exception to this. He could be spontaneous and coherent at the same ". This is just a case in point. Read between these two sentences in italics. And add Geeta Kapur's "Denuding formalism". The whole history of Indian art and hence art writing and (further) hence the 'construct' of our mindset could be laid bare. Not to question anyone of these two main models because then we actually will be positioning ourselves into an innocent, greyer categories that usually is occupied by the unaccountable. Also, there is a specific ironic position that we take in case we outrightly contest these two positions. What is the position from wherein we locate ourselves, while doing so? One or the other of the two models. A third position, a la " literature oriented, subaltern studies, mostly by Brahminical constructs" (in R SivKumar's words) is one of the most radical thing ever said by my teacher, that I have read or heard from him. I need not inform the reader that being radical is no privileged position anymore, at least for Shiv da. All these contain that what is a construct and mindset that framed our ways of thinking and feeling about art in India/n and about Indian art.

Nowhere in the history of Indian modern and contemporary art has the positivist readings of casteism been addressed, till date, again, unlike, say, the bandaya (revolutionary) movement of 1970s Kannada literature. Eddie's writings are deceptively simple, easy to understand but not so very easy to comprehend or negotiate. His arguments are like sharp-knife-like edges at the end of what seems to be expanded soft balloons. Eddie would have definitely been an interventionist, no matter whether he spoke from the audience or speaker's position. The symposium was all about what art pedagogy presumed to be an 'interventionist' position. That would have been the take off point for Eddie and Ramkinker, as well.

“Ramkinker has been identified--almost for the first time in a clear loud voice— as a dalit, in both the seminars that intended to celebrate his centenary. (One at Bhuvaneshwar by Amit Mukhopadhyay in January 2007 and the other at Santiniketan seminar by Anshuman). Nowhere in the history of Indian modern and contemporary art has the positivist readings of casteism been addressed, till date, again, unlike, say, the bandaya (revolutionary) movement of 1970s Kannada literature.”  Writes H.A.Anil Kumar in his ‘Denuding Formalism’ in this world of ‘Constructs’. Somehow the question of a dalit in Santiniketan was never really addressed during the seminar, though some scholars attempted to visit the question.  There was a visible discomfort from the ground every time the Ramkinker’s dalit location was highlighted; it was as if an ‘other’ was being violently imposed on the self.  

Rahul Bhattacharya 

2007

ON PUJA CHAUHAN'S SCULPTURES

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 we usually think of a project of resistance by a single layered subaltern. However the politico-demographical diversity of the Indian nation is wholly mirrored by the diversities in the manner women are dominated and disciplined. The varied nature of patriarchal domination calls a wide range of resistance. Puja’s work is resistance of a particular type, but her resistance speaks of an India which is increasingly being swept under the carpet post Rao-Manmohan era- ever since India has been celebrating its membership into late capitalism. An India which never really had a presense in art galleries unless romanticized.

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

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“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

untitled - V

The unseen hunger for innocence
Could be a calling or a kill
Burning away more sugar than body can take
The brain sings itself an ancient lullaby

Archiving and Interviews

This installation is an archive from the workshop titled “Who will write the history of tears?” The workshop conducted by Vidisha Saini was held at Kathputli Colony(New Delhi) with support from Poornima Sardana , centered at Pearl Academy,Noida. A workshop about social practice and alternate history making had almost thirty student participants, and other co-narrators from the colony. The process followed learning from Vidisha’s previously initiated project “You LikeMr. Shekhar” which was a narrative from a rehabilitation project site in Hampi(Karnataka). Kathputli Colony,a large colony of artists and other migrants, is currently in the process of being rehabilitated. This archive as invited into 3 Sentences on the Curatorial by Prac forum at the initiation of Rahul Bhattacharya.

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The following is a email conversation between a curator and the keeper of a fleeting archive

Addressed to you

Questions presented by Rahul Bhattacharya

R: What does this archive mean to you?

This archive is a way of participating in history, by creating documents of a presence that may be forgotten in the near future. These are not only documents of existence of Kathputli Colony but also their erasure, or movement. What are the possible reasons for these rehabilitation projects: failed government policies?, unforeseen value of now squatted lands?, many other myths presented as reasons, or just greed?

Similar to other archives, this one too might have some fiction. What is important is that it plays a role narrating about communities being obliterated from our collective memories as well as stories beyond their victimhood.

R: What could it possibly mean to me?

In the installation of ‘record objects’[1]there is no guiding text except for location. The archive is performative, it is what every viewer makes out of it, curiosity is how one leaps into it. One might form a relationship through identifying the function of the objects, many we share real-time with or have consumed, and other subjective weaving of stories.

R: Isthis archive a story or a collection of stories?

Both. Many stories here become a single story on the tabletop. The story here doesn’t only have to be story of its previous owner but the ownership you take when you view them, the story you make. So its singularity or plurality depends on how much is one participating in it.

R: How were these objects chosen to represent the larger archive?

This archive is an outcome of a workshop that had almost thirtyparticipants. They worked in groups of 4-5 along with a co-narrator (a resident of the Kathputli Colony). During the workshop the participants chose to understand the community by using art form as their initial categories of engagement. They interacted with puppeteer and magician communities among others. After spending time, learning from each other’s experiences (groups sharing their narratives and correlating) and documenting oral histories, participants were asked to collect objects to speak about their learning.This archive though built as a part of the workshop, is not in isolation from personal biases as well as influence of the relationships participants built with the community and their perception of struggle. And also an outcome of decisions made while installing.

Archives are products of performances, before they start performing. They are also institutions. The restrictions of these institutions may easily be set by how big the bag in which you are carrying things is. Limitations also come with how one gains access: by being welcomed, taking permissions, buying or stealing.

R: What does Kathputli colony mean to you?

Kathputli Colony is a hub of vibrant communities that does not exist on the map of Delhi, like a living lore. This is the biggest artists colony in our country. We as contemporary art practitioners have to see, acknowledge and learn from the practices and social engagements of the artists coming from these age-old art practices, and how they have sustained and transformed over centuries.As our country is a becoming a more capitalist economy Kathputli presents a case of crossover where there is many times conflict in values of tradition vs capitalism. The collectiveness, humility, rhythm of life, co-existence, are among many other things to learn from this community.

R: What could Kathputli colony mean to me?

The first thing one of the workshop participants said about Kathputli was “not happening”; we still don’t know what it means. As they engaged more, they started questioning their own realities. Eventually they said, “these people are more traveled than us”, “Hindu and Muslim communities live together”, “neighbors jump over each others roofs to help and to meet”,“they have many wives”, “they know more languages”, and “they’re more talented then we are”. Initially some also said it’s better to remove such a dirty colony, but over time they humbled to appreciate these livelihoods and participate in them.

The communities that surround us give us our identity. We need to know our neighbor to know more about ourselves. We have to not let institutions of power control our identity, like governments dictating what your nation’s culture or religion is. One has to seek and share. Perhaps you could identify your own skillset on how to tell stories, and then study muted communities and spaces. It’s important for us to make “queerness” visible to challenge the hegemonic narrative.

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[1]Record Objects’ is a vernacular archiving term. Here the record stands for what the archivist claims it’s a record of. Which in this case is of the community where it comes from, and events that surrounded it.