A Magician and his offerings | Notes on Tambulam

Still, I Love You  -  Exhibition View 

I have been visiting Shridhar Iyer's studio over some years now, and every time I realise that it a very different kind of space, a kind we are not used to these days.  Most established artists have a very clear home studio distinction, and in this distinction, their homes have become much-sanitised spaces. However, every time I visit Shridhar Iyer's studio, I feel as if I have walked into a magician's house where life, art and spiritualism come into one melting pot, and a spell is being cooked or being imagined. The studio is an intrinsic part of his practice and his exploration of abstraction.  Over the years, the artist has taken up studios, built them from scratch, lived in them, produced shows, and then just let it all go...moving into a new place with just a suitcase and starting all over again. This reflects an artistic philosophy exploring the journey  between the possibilities of assimilation and letting go.  Over the last decade, Iyer has been working around the disconnect between nature and civilization, a disconnect which for the artist symbolises our inability to understand the forces of the universe and our place inside it. Tambulam, his new body of works is his offering to nature, as well as healing touch to the bonds which are on the verge of being lost forever.  

Shridhar Iyer is one of the rare modern masters whose works have been trendsetters for postmodern and contemporary art practices in India. Known to be one of the greatest living abstractionists in India, Iyer's art practice has always gone beyond pictorial abstraction and he is one of the earliest artists from the subcontinent to embrace installation and video as an integral part of his practice.  The artist explores pure contemplation on a spiritual level, almost as a window to the unknown energy and force of the universe.  His ability to rasp philosophical abstraction is extraordinary and his works show his painterly deftness as he juxtaposes strong and fragile colours in complete harmony.

"The lines and forms of tribal art always play with the idea of meaning and reality; the forms invent their own geometry based on their context, play and rhythm.  I realised that to be an artist, one has to go beyond mirroring reality and only through developing an extremely personal language, and one can generate new forms and meanings for the world.... what tribal art taught me is that through spontaneity and rhythm, lines could be transformed into something magical.  You could say that since then, the 'line' has become key to my artistic practice; it helps me to explore and understand my own imagination. Over the years I have grown to realise that possibilities of new forms and ideas are deeply embedded in the exploration of 'line'."

Shridhar Iyer

In Iyer’s artistic practice, there has always been an attempt to propose an alternative to the contemporary fascination with the spectacular image. Since his early days at Bharat Bhawan, though his paintings, drawings, videos and installations, Iyer has been a part of aesthetic trajectories which nurtured painterly abstraction as a mode to develope languages different from the figurative, data dense visual culture with images that are designed to jump at you, craving for that attention that bounces off into the recesses of your overfed conscious. His works have explored between chaos and calmness with an emphasis on tactility and playfulness.  This life lived in an overdose of spectacles has numbed our senses forever. When we travel we are busy clicking and hardly ever just seeing. Our eyes cannot rest and are constantly bored. In these times Iyer's works have offered us a different mode of seeing. This mode of seeing is not only operational in the viewer, but has had to be first digested by the artist.  The painted surface is not just a residue of pictorial mark making and rendering, it is also a reflection of the artist own gaze, the way he engages with the world, and how images form inside our head.  

                The manner in which he mixes his media, the self-consciousness about the aesthetic values of Form and possibilities of play, and the manner in which he appropriates the spiritual and the political into the ‘painterly’; speak of a deep entrenchment into the history of visual vocabularies. Deeply influenced by modernism and tribal art Iyer extends awareness of the historical/aesthetic frameworks of social consciousness and the subversion of the spectacular. This consciousness is significant it a time when aesthetic consciousness become marginal in the globalised imaginations and desires. The works celebrate a resistance to the homogenization of the human condition. It is this postmodern critique of contemporary, which strongly marks Tambulam as an artistic intervention.

The installations in the show are layered with prayer, wishes, nostalgia and love.  'Still, I Love You' and Ámia and Champa Trees are steeped in a sense of deep loss and endless hope.  This dialogue between hope and loss is a layering of Iyer's relationship with assimilating and letting go. Wood becomes an important metaphor and so do shadows. It is difficult to understand whether they stand in anticipation or in defeat, but both contain prayer and a song.  They are attempts of the artist to remind himself, stretch the envelope of his spirituality to be able to retain hope even as one remains a witness to the Anthropocene.  Yet, for the artist, there are no gaps between the personal, the spiritual and the political, he seeks to negotiate the space through beauty, balance and hope.

Tambulam is a complex body of work, a lot of it is in continuation of the artist's explorations over last five to six years, yet in this body, there are also seeds of the new directions where Iyer's practice is heading towards. His art is becoming more conceptual and one can see a conscious attempt to experiment with pushing the boundaries of drawing and painting as separate forms.  In his paintings, leisure and hints of boredom become fundamental to the experience of time and problems of meaning, creating that hint of tension between notions of existence, consumption and taste. The artist is able to arrive at the visual language that goes beyond exploring the self with the paint and the line as the primary tools, here we see artist trying to communicate the thin, almost invisible state of interdependence and order that guides all transitions of life.

Abstraction, for Iyer is not just a visual language, but a strategy that initiates dialogue compassion and understanding. In this respect, 'Tambulam' is not just a body of works, but a space which the artist offers, pushing us to rethink our relationship with the Anthropocene. The show presents drawings, paintings and installations stylistically ranging from gestural to minimal.  Iyer has always made art as a way of connecting to the cosmos, as an endeavour to expand his spiritual self. Yet nature is an integral part of the cosmos, and as the artist realises how fragile it has become, it brings out of Iyer a mellow, tender reaction, almost like singing a song to an ill parent, sad yet hopeful.  A large set of very fine drawings, largely monochromatic, aesthetically anchor the show. They are like gentle drifting, the marks on paper become a residue of the artist's process of seeing, hiding, masking, and preserving. The exhibition is carefully constructed through interplay of form, colour and media centered on the conceptual metaphors of nature and hope.  

Rahul Bhattacharya

Spring 2019

New Delhi

A Young Girl and the Moth Eaten Fakirs

A young girl, stood under a tree admiring the splendour, as a droopy battalion with an inflated phallus walked past the forest of moth-eaten fakirs. 

The moth-eaten fakirs stayed in the forests to be safe from the golden priests. 

Keeping the phallus on the spirit of the moth-eaten fakirs, the battalion wanted to march on.

The phallus needed to be kept safe as the battalion could not carry it anymore

The moth-eaten fakirs knew that this was the army of the golden priests. but they knew no anger, jealousy or fear. 

Yet, the battalion marched on, the neighbouring villagers feared that they need to learn how to make doors. 

The wars went on for long, raging high, especially on the nights when rains stroked the inflated phallus.

The battalion returned, with slaves and riches, they lost many men but those they will forget 

They wanted to reward the moth-eaten fakirs for keeping the phallus safe and inflated.

But the silken ceremonial shawls pricked their moth-eaten skin; this reward they could not take. 

Trained never to loose, the battalion lost control; 

The fearless moth-eaten fakirs were massacred. 

The forest wilted in shame and in rage, the phallus was swollen and ready to burst

A droopy battalion with an inflated phallus walked away from the forest of moth eating fakirs. 

The phallus had to be carried back home, it had become heavier with all the slaves and riches. 

Carrying the phallus proudly on their backs they marched towards the land of golden priests.

Carelessly plundering on the way, men, women, animals even children

Such stories go far and old, as gold lives longer than moth-eaten skin

But the land and the forest could take it no more

A young girl realized that she needed to learn how to make doors.

Carving a New Language : Indira Purakayastha Ghosh in Conversation with Rahul Bhattacharya

Publised in Art & Deal Magazine, Jan -  Feb 2019 

Over the last twenty years Indira Purkayastha has been practicing and evolving a sculptural language deeply engaged with nostalgia, materials and narration. Through these engagements she has developed a personal articulation of contemporaneity which is alternate to the neoliberal aesthetics which largely defines it. Purkayastha brings into focus our continuing engagement with modernism and its dialouge with the evolving contemporaneity in visual culture. Her works carry a memory of our folk cultures and their visual language without being overtly derivative if those traditions. There seems to be inherent connect with folk traditions and their idea of sympathetic magic. Purkayastha’s forms and their silence speak of an artist who is aware of the forces and memories that inform her work..... Rahul Bhattacharya speaks to her, mapping her practice, artistic journey and future directions.

R B: Could you please share with us your experience of practicing sculpture in the period of first five years after your completing your masters.

I P: After completing my Master from Benaras Hindu University, I moved to Kolkata and joined the Lalit Kala Regional Centre. I got the National scholarship (1994-96), then Junior Fellowship (1997-99) from Minis. of HRD. That helped me to stay and work form Kolkata for five years. These years were very important for me. Limitation of life – in bondages of space and time, of nature, of morality, of society, of tradition, of custom and religion – become imminent, which found a vent through my sculpture For a Place.

These five years was the fore step to shaping my experiences. My focus was towards experiments and learnings. I experimented with mediums. I visited villages of Kolkata & Chhattisgarh and arranged small camps. Fenced In & Cage were two of my works made that time.

In 1997-98, I worked with Vivan Sundaram in his large installation, Journey Towards Freedom at the Victoria Memorial, Kolkata.

R B: What were your early artistic inspirations?

I P: As a child I grew up in the foothills of Chhattisgarh playing with adivasi children.

This the experience grew seeds inside me, which grew to always connect me with the notion of purity and a beautiful sustainable relationship with the environment that comes to as an almost primordial language. My love for the subconscious innocence, the playful, and the narrative took roots within me during my childhood.

When I was fourteen I made my first collage and since then my works continues to be inspired by what I find around me. A defunct piece of furniture in my house was the starting point for my imagination in my quest to give visual form to my life experiences.

R B: Could you elaborate on the effect Banaras Hindu University had on shaping you as an artist.

I P: My ideas of outdoor large scale sculptures focused on skill and craftsmanship are inspired from the time I spent in the Faculty of Visual Arts at the Banaras Hindu University. My constant urge to improvise and narrate deep social stories coupled with the ability to conceptualize and craft the images, which manifest through my sculptures, have been imbibed by my guru, the legendary Balbir Singh Katt. My initial creations Gathering, Mob, Queue and Fenced In have been profoundly influenced by the lanes and the ghats of the mythological river Ganges, where I spent years doing sketches and indulging in addas.

R B: This year you have won the first prize at the Lalit Kala Nationals, sometime before that you had a large solo show – can you tell us a bit about your artistic expression in this period of your journey? Especially in terms of you working as a teacher and based in Raipur.

I P: The show Epiphany is a large body of work produced over seven years after I become an art teacher. Teaching exposed me to the power hierarchies of the knowledge industry, but also to the great power of the sub conscious mind and the vast power in children to explore fantasies, and create narratives, which are sincere and playful at the same time. The works showcased in Epiphany contain many such explorations and stories of power, play, inspirations and fantasies. The show is rich container of an adult’s struggle to imbibe to experience and articulate the emotions of children in a representational form.

Being based out of Raipur gives me an edge; it gives me a new imagination of contemporary life which is difficult to access from the centers of Delhi, Mumbai or Kolkata. Chhattisgarh being a tribal state, has its own aesthetic tradition and visual culture, as a sculptor, I feel anchored by it. Being a teacher keeps me connected with children, playfulness and fantasies. The sculpture on which I got the National award this year is Assembly of Angels shows a factory like building representing an institution. One conveyor belt is goes through the building, on which baby ants are entering into the building from one door and coming out from another door of the building like grown up robotic ants.

The sculpture is a manifestation of my involvement with children. Ants have been used as a metaphor for the future denizens. Each one is endowed with differential abilities, but the education system fails to recognize the same. The result is assembly like production. The wheel with the handle is a depiction of systematic control driven by ideology.

R B: You seem to have a special relation with wood.

I P: When I was in my master some defunct pieces of old furniture brought uniqueness to my work. Wood has been preferred over other mediums because of its different colors, textural quality, monochromic impression and its amenability of space division. I started making shapes with wood pieces, pasting it according to the texture and different colors together, which make me very appealing. Still, I feel there are lot of possibility to work with wood, both as a concept and as a medium.

R B: In terms of how you blend your use of medium and concepts...

I P: In my works, medium and concept develope simultaneously, each exploring the other. I have always been interested in giving aesthetic forms to abandoned objects. I work with wood scraps of different colors and different textured, pasting together according to the shapes and concepts, in playful manner. I use metal scraps, wires, metal dust in many of my works. I blend metal to show strong sentiments and assert my feelings. These are the manifestations of the inherent strengths within all of us, which mostly lie dormant. I depicted the character of bird through Bamboo roots. Sometimes neglected parts of woods arouse in me significant thoughts. With gourd somewhere I tried to show lightness and sometimes i have used it to show heaviness too.

R B: Your works seem to have connection with folk and tribal elements.

I P: As a child I grew up in the hills of Chhattisgarh playing with adivasi children. The pure and fresh environment in all its phase took roots in my sensibilities and perceptions were naturalistic. This experience grew seeds inside me, which grew to always connect me with notion of purity and a beautiful and sustainable relationship with the environment that’s come to as an almost primordial language. Thus my works carry a memory of our folk cultures and their visual language.

The travails of pursuing my work in an alienated rural setting give a tribal impression to my sculpture.

Most of the tribal and folk art forms have been confined locally.I envisage spreading my works of art deep into Chhattisgarh in a contemporary manner. My vision is that, through my sculptures the folk art and tribal art forms of Chhattisgarhmay live ina global phenomena.

------------------------------------------------

Interview Publised in Art & Deal Magazine, Jan -  Feb 2019 

INDIRA PURKAYASTHA : SCULPTURE AS EPIPHANY

SCULPTURE AS EPIPHANY: In this world of contemporary art, when factory-produced sculptures are dominating gallery space and mediatic realism is almost unchallenged in our imagination, Indira Purkayastha’s ‘Epiphany’ is a very important body of work to be showcased. Her works show us tangible alternative ways to imagine and articulate our world, our contemporary life, our anxieties and our nostalgia.  

Will as a Catalyst,  Gourd & Wood

                                                              

At a time when cold conceptualism almost dominates mainstream imagination of visual arts, Indira Purkayastha’s sculptures show engagement with materials and narration. These engagements make these artworks important articulation of a different kind of contemporaneity, bringing into focus our continuing engagement with modernism. Her works carry a memory of our folk cultures and their visual language without being overtly derivative if those traditions. There seems to be inherent connect with folk traditions and their idea of sympathetic magic. Purkayastha’s forms and their silence speak of an artist who is aware of the forces and memories that inform her work and more importantly is in sync with their conscious altering possibilities in the face of contemporaneity.

 ‘Epiphany’ is a large body of work produced over seven years after she became an art teacher; it has been a long journey for the artist. Teaching exposed her to the power hierarchies of the knowledge industry, but also to the great power of the subconscious mind and the vast power in children to explore fantasies and create narratives, which are sincere and playful at the same time. ‘Epiphany’ contains many such explorations and stories of power, play, inspiration and fantasies. The show is a rich container of an adult’s struggle to imbibe to experience and articulate the emotions of children in a representational form.

Purkayastha’s works not only are a response to her relatively new life experience as a teacher, but it also connects her to the nostalgia of her bygone days. As a child, she grew up in the hills of Chhattisgarh playing with adivasi children. This experience grew seeds inside her, which grew to always connect her with notions of purity and a beautiful sustainable relationship with the environment that comes to as an almost primordial language.  Possibly, her love for the subconscious innocence, the playful, the narrative took roots within her during her childhood and her experience in teaching art to children re instigated her memories buried deep within the pressures of a grown-up urban life and art school education. This enables her to develop a critic of contemporary culture.

Picassos words “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.” is something Purkayastha identifies with deeply. Her relationship with Picasso goes beyond their delight at the strong, emotive, pure forms of ‘child art’. One can see a certain knack for geometric formalism in her works, her incorporation of the visual language of tribal masks, paintings and woodwork. Like Picasso, she goes into the world of tribal art and child art in search of a language that will enable her to articulate her critique of the present. 

As an artist, she has always been interested in giving aesthetic forms to abandoned objects and accidents.  She began doing collage at the age of fourteen and since then her works continue to be inspired by what she finds around her. Slowly as a sculptor, she began to use abandoned wood, furniture using them as starting points for her imagination in her quest to give visual form to her life experiences.

 

Detail from 'Fantasy'

Working from a far away rural setting, her connection with primitivism is very strong and it deeply informs the installation oriented, simple, geometrical and bold sculptural language she works with. The work ‘Fantasy’ (2016, Gourd, wood & metal scrap, approx. 50 x 95 x 135 cm  & 50 X 82 x 115 cm each; reflects an artist who is immersed in trying to articulate the intersubjective response through which modernity classifies humans and enforces subjecthood onto them. The sculptures thus form a deliberate alignment with elements in the adivasi imagination, which is at the same time a tool for pushing the constructed boundaries of reality enabling her to create fantasies of altered contemporanity. 

‘Assembly of Angels

Though storytelling, play and improvisation are important to her art practice, yet, that does not limit her worldview and imagination.  She is capable of carefully crafted Kafkaesqe nightmares. ‘Assembly of Angels, (2016, wood & metal scrap, 15 x 3.5 x 3 ft.), shows a factory-like building possibly representing an institution. One conveyor belt goes through the building, on which baby ants are entering into the building from one door and coming out from another door of the building like grown-up robotic ants. The work is deeply disturbing even as it is beautiful forcing us to be engaged in this startling critique of the education system. The work Untitled (2016, wood scrap metal & fibreglass, 33.5 X 4.5 X 8.3 ft.), too is a grim take on how power operates inside education systems, the temptations how power and how it tarnishes young souls that go through its structure. 

The scale and execution of the body of works that show in ‘Epiphany’ speak not just of life experiences, imaginations and deep inspirations, they also contain a deep engagement with skill and sculpture making. The eastern part of India has a long history of working with discarded wood, entering the fantasyland of children; it is a land of wooden dolls and adivasi totems.  Yet, through all this her deep training in sculpture at the Banaras Hindu University comes through the idea of outdoor, the idea of large-scale, focus on skill, execution and craftsmanship all carry the inspiration of the legendary Balbir Singh Katt and the values he instilled in his students. What makes Purkayastha special is her constant urge to improvise and narrate deeply social stories and concerns. Her ability to form her own language of feelings, the ability to conceptualize and craft the images that come out from within, and her constant struggle to manifest into sculpture what is often incomprehensible are the facets that form the cornerstone of her practice.

Rahul Bhattacharya

New Delhi

another night and then another dawn

the greed for their story went on and on

another night and then another dawn

the journey that was up in the air

a monk who could not sit without a chair

remembering faces that knew no fear

i thought of the sheep we always shear

passions ebb as seasons flow

the seeds would live if we would sow

another night and another dawn

the things unknown had begun to spawn 

the curtains burnt in the cigarette fire 

the factory announced that they would not hire

morning prayers and a sleepy meal

weeping for the bread that he did not steal

so many desires and no place to die

had to presume that someone could fly

so many friends love cats so much

and trees are scared of the human touch

on every inch i love to dwell

so many things to always tell

another night and then another dawn

the greed for their story will go on and on

some salt for you

Have sugar with a pinch of salt
Take loneliness with a pinch of salt
Take praise with a pinch of salt
Have your heartbreak with a pinch of salt

Take your friends with a pinch of salt
Have your birthday cake with a pinch of salt
Have a pineapple with a pinch of salt
Take your salary with a pinch of salt

Have your tea with a pinch of salt
Take your lover with a pinch of salt
Take your mother with a pinch of salt
Have your yogurt with a pinch of salt

Take history with a pinch of salt
Have caramel with a pinch of salt
Have your peace with a pinch of salt
Take your nation with a pinch of salt

Have your dinner with a pinch of salt
Take advise with a pinch of salt
Take your teacher with a pinch of salt
Have your revenge with a pinch of salt

Take truth with a pinch of salt
Have your dreams with a pinch of salt
Have your beer with a pinch of salt
Take yourself with a pinch of salt

Mansi Trivedi’s solo ‘Before Crashing To Earth’

Images from the show at Lalit Kala , New Delhi

For a full documentation, see
https://www.facebook.com/evilareve/media_set?set=a.10155133679937498.1073741913.622117497&type=3

'Before Crashing to Earth' can be seen as a proposition by Mansi Trivedi to escape the personal and spatial entrapment of urbanity. We see her stopping by and reworking fragile moments inspired from fungi, insect nests, forgotten barks and such unnoticed marks. One can feel the artist stopping by, watching, composing and preserving these fragile moments of beauty in a personal exploration of the picturesque; possibly an intimate antidote to the contemporary celebration of the spectacular. This body of works can be seen as a collection of moments between such utopias and dystopias. There is a deeply private, sensual exploration that one sees, privacy and sensuality become visual metaphors hinting of her need to find fleeting zones of solace, rooting her own journey. This engagement with organic, fragile beauty that surrounds our everyday life, unnoticed, as we live our urban alienated lives, also capture moments of tension, like pockets of utopia, threatened and on the brink of destruction.

“My works are inventories of found objects and surfaces I stumble upon. For these chosen works inspiration was chiefly drawn from the abstract sense of nature, its unpredictability and the lurking chaos, both of which seem very inviting. Almost as if it is nothing short of a visual poetry screaming to be heard. Entwined in the multitude of scar's and scales, dead cells, pores and scratches, there lies a fascinating story awaiting to be told in the endless cycle of bloom and decay.”

 – Mansi Trivedi

Trivedi, has been dwelling on the connection between humans and their environment, the thin, almost invisible state of interdependence and order that guides all transitions of life. She feels that, these are important symbiotic interconnections that are easily ignored today. In Before Crashing to Earth, she draws on that very perception of the extraordinary in the ordinary, to come up with art that is as reflective, as it is raw.

'Escape' can be a multi edged concept metaphor. It carries meanings of finding alternatives, flying away, looking away, trying to protect one, and finding space. This space is essential not just in the visuality of the moments felt and rendered, but is essential for the studio process of the artist. She likes to construct surfaces slowly, laboriously, sometimes in the same way destroy them. The works in a way become a residue of this process of seeing, hiding, masking, preserving, and destroying. Her interactions with the fragile picturesque, before the world comes crashing to earth.

ON THE SUPREME COURT AND THE NATIONAL FLAG

 Image from  -  Of 2G, illegal mining and the Supreme Court! 2011 http://www.rediff.com/business/slide-show/slide-show-1-yearend-2011-of-2g-illegal-mining-and-the-supreme-court/20111228.htm

Appalled at the aghast being expressed , jamming my facebook newsfeed about the Supreme Court ruling #indiannationalflag , i write this note in some haste and a sense of urgency.
In my opinion, the Supreme Court of India has been the keeper of status quo, rather than the harbinger of change. The landmark judgments, have been towards keeping the 'spirit of the constitution' , rather than alteration , upgradation of that 'spirit' . Also this  'spirit of the constitution' dos not exist in vacuum, it is imagined and embodied by a heteronormative , patriarchal , casteist population; articulated and practiced by their elites.  This judgement of the Supreme Court tells us what the Supreme Court of India imagines 'urban India' would want. I would stress that till now there has not been a single judgement in which the jurisprudence is not framed by that imagination.


Yes, all these years we have fought against this very jurisprudence, I remember the young me and my heart sinking reading about the Sardar Sarobar verdict, before that Bhopal had happened, lately article 377, and so many in between (how does one forget marital rape?) . Lately, reflecting the growing urban citizen activism , the Supreme Court too became 'activistic' . However if one looks at the 2G and Coal Mining scams, no real big politician of the center and business giant is in big shit trouble.

Also , our current ruling party is extremely brash and aggressive. The implementation of the Adhar Card is a case study. The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that the government cannot make Adhar card compulsory for any state benefits. Yet the central government refused to listen and is linking it to every citizenship transaction. We did not bother to stand up and support the court, we all lined up for our Adhar Cards instead. Where are we really investing our ideology?

The first hearing of the demonisation case made me feel that the courts did not want a constitutional stand off. Imagine the consequence if the courts had called demonitisation illegal and the Prime Minister had still implemented it (that is exactly what would have happened) ? The Supreme Court is already faced with a takeover bid, the new regime is pushing hard infringe it completely and change the very structure. At this juncture being 'publicly humiliated' could possibly mean loosing the battle and the war . There has been a sea change in the nature of elites who practice and articulate the imagination of India and this new elite is forcing the judiciary to re consider its (old) imagination.

Either way by now the courts had realised that no matter how much they decree, people not standing up to the National Anthem will be beaten up, and also realising ( by the case study of Maharashtra) most urban people are willing participants, the Supreme Court cant possibly see any wrong in its judgement.

Also we are falling into a trap. Our attack on the systematic destruction of the Indian Constitution by the new government ( as they try to come up with an undated one for 'hindu' , neoliberal India) , is getting distracted every day by a new tamasha. This shower of tamashas  is in fact the systematic attack. We all know it, but suddenly we are like rabbits caught under a headlight.

Anish Kapoor | Death of the Conceptual

AESTHETICIZING POLITICS VERSUS POLITICIZNG AESTHETICS

Anish Kapoor’s “Cloud Gate” (2006) following the artist’s recent recoating in Vantablack (photo courtesy City of Chicago)
via http://hyperallergic.com/287628/anish-kapoor-coats-cloud-gate-in-the-darkest-black-known-to-humanity/

To get to the heart of Kapoor's thinking and making we must register the difference between physicality of void space, and truly made emptiness. Let us use Heidegger 's beautiful parable of the jug for these purposes. What does the potter make when he shapes the jug? Of what material is the jug made? The potter forms the sides and bottom of the jug in clay to provide the means for it to stand, to be vertical; to make the jug a holding vessel, however, he has to shape the void. 'From start to finish the potter takes hold of the impalpable void and brings it forth as the container in the shape of a containing vessel… . The vessel's thingness does not lie at all in the material of which it consists, but in the void that it holds.'

Homi Bhaba, The True Sign of Emptiness
http://anishkapoor.com/185/making-emptiness-by-homi-k-bhabha

Anish Kapoor has been creating lavish, sensual abstract, sculptural forms for over four decades. Over the years he has been rated as one of the best contemporary sculptors, and in a way as the 'master of public art'. Homi Bhaba in his analytical eulogy of Kapoor, offers us Kapoor as the ‘maker of emptiness’. In this short piece stems from my discomfort with how Bhaba gets so lost in the philosophy of emptiness that he becomes completely blind to materiality and its impact on the politics of visual culture. 

The blind spot that Bhaba and Kapoor share for ‘thingness’ and materiality is not new. This is the blind spot shared by the genre of makers and thinkers whom we can call neo liberal conceptual artists. This group that has grown to be rich and powerful, twisted the radical possibilities of conceptual art. Conceptual art as a practice emerged at a time when the authority of the art institution and the preciousness of the unique aesthetic object were being widely challenged and artists felt the need to interrogate the possibilities of art-as-idea or art-as-knowledge. It was a breakaway from formalism, bringing in a new philosophy of materiality. The neo liberal contemporary group has managed to quote  the linguistic, mathematical, and process-oriented dimensions of  conceptual art , yet has gone on to support and buffer the very hegemonic systems, structures, and processes conceptual art poised itself against.

The popularity of conceptual thought in contemporary art practices has created a moment of oxymoron in art history. At one level, bowing to the pressures from corporate and museums that are mediated through gallery practices, artist have to large scale fabrications and have effectively become cultural producers. There is a visual dominance of the large, the phallic, of the archival, of the vaginal and of the spectacular.  Materiality, finish and longevity have become more and more important for artists who claim their art has got nothing to do with the ‘thingness’ and exist purely in conceptual terms.  It is this oxymoron that results in a situation where Anish Kapoor patents the blackest colour, claims that it is the darkest colour, thereby showing a complete lack of conceptual understanding about darkness. Nor does he explore the politics of the concept metaphor called 'black'. Just like the modernist masters for him it is a 'pure aesthectic' engagement.One can forgive Kapoor for this blind spot, but how does one forgive Bhaba?  The coat of Vatablack on the Cloud Gate gives a fantastic sense of a dark void, visually flattening out its voluptuous form.  If anything the ‘thingness’ is the only thing left visible, yet it is the very thing Bhaba and Kapoor deny. 

The collapse of discourse over skill , materiality as art history was run over by literary studies has lead to primarily semiotic , interpretations of art works even though it remains well known that image and objects carry an excess which cannot be reduced to textual interpretations. Questions of ethics and politics got swept away by the neo liberal market economy and a middle class distracted by its manufactured desire. Ethics of course has become unfashionable, but politics has gone on to become a decorative motif. Most of our contemporary masters make work in which the politics of making is in opposition to the political content of the work.  Conceptual art becomes an easy escape door for these artists , by denying the ‘thingness’ they can escape the politics of its making .

best beauty treatment for her

i don't know what to make of the smile they shared

she almost looked away, looked back and the then dropped her gaze

he was so happy to see her that he could not stop looking

could not stop himself from coming close and holding her 

she melted in his arms too

and there was so much heat

maybe they had missed that physical touch

maybe they had still loved each other

maybe they just missed each others body

they made love ,they kissed they spoke through the night 

sharing intimacies only they can share

it seems they missed the softness and the care

they could not sleep that night

their bodies had met after too long

too deeply aware of the other to be able to sleep

when the morning came, they parted

that too was gentle and soft

it was in the parting that the ritual of separation was enacted again

we don't know what each took back that morning 

maybe for her it was the touch the sex and the way he held her

also the comfort of knowing that he still loved

maybe or him it was the words they shared and the heat of her body

also knowing that making love was the best beauty treatment for her 

Cat Lover's Sundays

All night she has been a ghost
Not in the usual sense that cats always are
All night she has been a ghost to herself
She lived with humans
But had not realised that cat lovers are only free on Sundays
She had three children
Three spunky playful kitten
She had gone for a evening prowl
They came in turns and took two away
She did not know that cat lovers were only free on Sundays
They took away her healthiest children
She had no chance to say goodbyes
She has been a ghost all night
Crying looking for her children
Still trying to understand that cat lovers are only free on Sundays
The thinnest weakest one was still there
Lost and lonely
In the evening they were all playing together
Then one by one two were gone
Too young to understand that cat lovers are only free on Sundays
Their dinner is uneaten
Their is a sense of despair in her eyes
Looking for her children in every shadow cast
Crying the night away
Another litter might come and go
But cat lovers are free only on sundays.
All night she has been a ghost
Not in the usual sense that cats always are
All night she has been a ghost to herself
She lived with humans
But had not realised that cat lovers are only free on Sundays
She howls as she cries
One can feel her silently going mad
Little by little as her hopes fade
Sometimes picking her self and going for another search
She is yet to realise that cat lovers are only free on Sundays

#SORROW

Digital reworking on Van Gogh's  'Sorrow'

How did we become like this
Atleast Kafka thought of it as a nightmare
We have reduced it to the mundane
In India you do not need television to see amputated legs on the streets
Or men and women with eyes gouged out 
We see that everyday
On our way to work
On our way to parties
They are there all the time haunting our crossroads
Alienation cannot capture how disconnected we are 
What do these people invoke in us 
Even the ones who patronise build walls of apathy
We know the violent cruel system of human trafficking 
We even ignore them on our way to Jantar Mantar 
Coming together to protest for lands some of these beggars might have migrated from.

Saw something violent on the other day
That day when my facebook wall was lamenting brexit
Screaming and calling democracy stupid
That evening i saw a pregnant beggar
And my mind erupted
People right in front of us
Sucked into the dirty underbelly of urban begging
The levels of greed have become so steep
That they are being sucked straight from the womb
A violent hatred for left liberalism erupted from within
All those people who call democracy dumb
Who hate the urban losers of globalisation
Even as they dream of protecting the landscape and the environment

I cannot relate to people who use politics to judge and enforce their elitism
Nor with people who constantly call people stupid
This they do just to hide themselves  
And their glaring failure to be connected with different aspirations
That is almost all of my facebook feed
And that young pregnant lady begging at our crossroads
She brought out so many things
Waiting and gathering like the monsoon clouds
Again those thoughts raging in my head
Atleast Kafka thought of it as a nightmare
We have reduced it to the mundane
My pain of brexit
And the way we ignore the urban poor (even) on our way to Jantar Mantar 
Coming together to protest for lands some of these beggars might have migrated from