recent works

group show in sweeden

(Published in art views and news)
Preksha Tater’s works are spontaneous scribbling dictated by the need to verbalize/visualize her subconscious. She is comfortable with drawings /colleges/ cutouts, which are done in small formats in size of visiting cards. These drawings are done randomly and have a playful spontaneity in them. Though her works doesn’t have an ambitious aspect, its arrangement together in random permutations and combinations done intuitively creates a visuality which attracts attention. She doesn’t emphasize on the thematic content but meanings meander through the images almost like doodles. This allows the chance for a narrative to build up. Interestingly, there is no emphasis on linear or progressive reading of her work rather its all chance that is emphasized. It is chance that builds up something; some kind of an atmospheric ambience and a psychological topography where the subconscious is let free in a particular moment. The images are absurd and at the same time recognizable and abstract. She doesn’t self consciously select her images and always emphasize on the process which leads to the recognizable forms in her works. Her works are more about formal and visual pleasure. This dependence on automatism and process reduces the physical involvement in the form of labor. The work process involves a gradual realization from simple recognizable forms or hues of colours which slowly builds up in accordance to her instinctive needs and formal pleasures.
Ketan Amin’s sculptures have a consistent recurrence of images. He feels there Is no need to render the whole body rather prefers a strange combination of hands with feet, legs or torso. This gives his work a surreal look. Though he uses classical bodies from Renaissance / Greek sculptures which are of an idealistic type they have a theatrical agility of baroque realism. He prefers talking about varied issues from global warming to contemporary politics by using the same images repeated over and over again almost to the point of exhaustion. This modernist claim for consistency of putting meanings from above leads to the artist’s intentional fallacy and meanings gets locked only in the artist’s dictionary. His skilful rendering of the body and technical expertise stands out strikingly separate in his works. One can also read how high art images are adopted in popular vocabularies. His sculptures can be seen as ‘vernacularisation’ of classical art forms. The peculiar aspect of this vernacularisation (for example the sign boards in India) is the unproblematic use of forms from any historic context and placing in a entirely different unrelated new situation. Can this been seen as a way to negotiate with the high and classical?
Mansoor Ali explores and works on a wide range of images and materials. His sculptures and installations are conceptually framed with a preplanned and premeditated intension. His primary emphasis has been on the question of identity. This emphasis on the subject’s identity formation and its conflict with varied social forces makes him question the system more from a self reflexive and experiential position. His major critique is also on the political and the bureaucratic class of the country. The craze for power and the hypocrisies of policy decision is a major theme of his work. Taking the obvious example of chair as a seat of power he tries to see the ironical meanings attached like comfort and so forth. There is no escape from the great game of power. Every time there are dialogues for bringing about peace, they are always broken and it traps humanity in vicious cycle of violence and uncertainty. The players change but the game remains the same. The minorities are always at the edge, within fragile walls of hope. Their identity is often at flux and is constantly monitored and threatened.
His works “I wanna stenciled God die”,”Black Friday”,” I wasn’t asked to be born”, “I don’t know the blood group”, “dance of democracy” are all about the fragility of ones existence at the margin of society. The symbols like child’s image the eggs, chair, cracks and even blood are important elements for his work in its exploration of a world of fragile borders of violence and faith. The fragmented self is symbolically shown with the fissured cracks. The decentered peripheral “other” is always made to sit dormant and voiceless by large majoritarian forces of the society which also finds a reflection in his works. His present work titled “Jugad” is a commentary on the ugly nature of history which washes its hands in blood. Everything starts and ends in blood shed of the weak and victims and the victory of the totalitarian rich forces. His chairs are generally made dysfunctional but have an aesthetic richness its authority and its presence is immense with surreal dream of coming up in equilibrium by standing (posturing) on the edge which is the condition of any minority in any country. This work talks universally about not only particular country’s communal atmosphere but for the whole world.

Deciphering desires: works of KK Muhamed.

K.Muhamed passed out from shantineketan from the department of Printmaking in 1996. He later continued doing print making for two years in kanoria art center, Ahemedabad. Later he shifted to Baroda and started painting from the year 2001-2. At present he is working on his videos and sculptures which would be part of the solo show he is planning.

“Protest works in different ways. One is direct. You can shout, it works in different level. The other is silently you can do some thing, like the examples of good poetry and texts becoming some very significant protest. So other than going out and shouting, I am thinking about a certain image which speaks more than that. In itself it should have a power to generate an argument. For me that is very important, to generate something as a part of discourse”- K.K.Muhamed during his interview.
Muhamed’s images are about desire. But they are not about his individual desires but are about the very structure in the society which creates conditions for the production of desire itself. Excavating through the historical and mythological archives of knowledge, the images unearth the genealogy of the violence as we experience today.
His work utilizes the stratergy of reversals in myriad ways. They are reversals of the classical vision as well as reversals in the meanings. The painting induces viewer towards a ‘classicism’, but everytime the viewer is pushed back again to the surface or the foreground. This is achieved by either darkening the spaces leading to the depth or by placing images in a manner in the foreground therby pulling back the viwer towards the surface.He uses multiple pictorial spaces and perspectives. He also uses photographic images for flattening the depth and makes everything appear on the surface. He also uses varied tactile decoration inscribed over the body of different objjects and structures. He delibrately keep his viewers away from the trip to transcendence as in renaissance paintings, but each time things bounce back on the ground. This questions the ‘grand’promises of achieving salvation , truth, heaven and thus attacks the very core of spiritualism.
This assist him in deconstructing the very notion of “classicism” and makes his work a site of historical memories and everyday mundane reality. The stratergy of reversals is also apparent in how he deconstructs the images with fixed traditional meanings connected to them. Often images repeat in his paintings. But everytime they are put in different contexts. This enables in dislocating the fixed meaning generation. In the “speaking tree” series and “desire” series he upturns the notion of spiritualism. He shows the calm peaceful tree of knowledge as volatile and aggressive organic matter. It is the haven for dangerous objects of mass destruction and violence. This could also be intrepreted as an allegory of machoism and of the phalliocentric social orders and structures operating at multiple levels. He sees violent aggressive masculinity in the historical and cultural context.
The machostic male body wrapped in a traditional dhoti and wearing boots though immediately refers to the populist style statement of bollywood, dwells further as a representation of our desires. The screen like treatment which can be also read as viewers reflection of of the desire for a perfect body.

The myth of narcisscuss becomes for him the leitmotif and as a major aspect of self centicism in different discourses. In most of his work huge red flower with its overpowering narcisitic expression makes its presence as a major allegory. This flower is seen sometimes sprouting from an unproductive soil or interior or sometimes from a house. Almost all his works underlines the theme of narcissism and self centricism and the connected violence as a consequence. The violence is questioned as nothing but the expression of one’s own guilt.
His paintings are filled with organic- machinistic objects arranged like an archive. The fragmentary bodies –machinations are shown metamorphosing and are always in becoming. They are placed over the landscapes or different architectural spaces. Architecture in his work stands as an immutable grandeur of the state and its power. These structures majorly spatializes the objects by allowing them to interact within themselves and the whole.their meaning is derived more from their spatialization.
In his book series there are about 20 books which are supposed to be displayed on the floor on a traditional stand which is used to keep religious and holy books like Bible, Quran and Gita etc. these books have similar elements as his paintings and more prominent are the objects of violence. Thus he questions the very foundation of religion and the connected human tragedies. He uses Deluzian notion of bodies without organs and desiring machines and his propogation of anti oedipalisation.
His videos can be seen as a continuation of his paintings. Herre the camera moves constantly from one object to another. The objects are viewed microscopically, their textures,pores and the deep shadows. By means of visual mixing he creates a palimpsest of a culture that speaks about violence and failures.Texts like sacred violence, perfect faith, mimetic desire, madness, genesis of violence, the genealogy of violence etc occurs along with the images of fire landscape, clouds and architectural façade and interiors. Often the camera movement starts from an architectural edifice and keep moving as if hovering over a mirage with never ending pathway.often it ceases in darkness or dark shadows at the floors of the architectural structures. Sometimes walls stands as a hurdle and obstruct an access further.
Rollie Mukherjee,
Artist, Art-critic,
Vadodara.
This was published under the section in between- from vadodara in the booklet, 'art views and news' a monthly published by aakruti gallery,kolkota, july 2010, issue

recent works

other works

Interview with vasudha Thozhur

Baroda based artist Vasudha Thozhur has been actively involved in a community art project, The Himmat Workshops, since 2002. The workshops are collaborative in nature and have the support of practitioners from different disciplines. It addresses a range of issues like violence, displacement, personal loss, rehabilitation and relocation. It involves a group of girls who lost members of their families in the carnage at Naroda Patiya, Ahmedabad on February 28, 2002. The community was re-located at Faizal Park, Vatva, and the workshops took place at the community center in Mayur Park, set up by Monica Wahi and Zaid Ahmed Shaikh. The girls made paintings, quilts, wall scrolls and also shot videos which were documentary in nature. They represent an individual story as a collective voice on the one hand and on the other a collective voice as an individual experience. These paintings and videos bring about the possibility of women claiming status as speaking subjects, talking about their lives after a particularly violent upheaval. Often one emphasizes art as a cathartic healer of collective trauma. In the wake of such uncertain and volatile situations like riots these community based projects help people overcome their economic, physical and psychological devastation. The Himmat Workshops, apart from creating political awareness, also opened possibilities of intervention through visual means. These community projects are seen by Vasudha as an ongoing process, and as “the recording of the process through writing, painting, digital media, as an archive against forgetting and creation of a context specific resource”.
The significance of such projects, apart from the support it gives and options it creates is, its stress on mourning and remembering such tragedies. Since there are often attempts by the state and fascist powers to forget such genocides and normalize social thinking, there should be attempts by the people to willfully remember such incidents and disrupt normalizing the systemic violence of the state. Vasudha’s project, seen in such light would be one of those willful acts of remembering which she herself opines as an ‘ongoing project/process’. The following is a recent interview with Vasudha Thozhur on her collaborative projects in particular and her other engagements with society through art.



“The abundance of real suffering tolerates no forgetting” -Adorno

Interview with Vasudha Thozhur

Question: When did you first start such community based art projects or such collaborative ventures?

Vasudha: In 2002, during the right-wing pogroms in Gujarat. It was a situation which needed to be confronted. One couldn’t continue working as if nothing had happened. We took part in rallies and demonstrations against the violence, but one also needed to do things which could actually be effective at ground level. I decided to apply to the IFA (India Foundation for the Arts, Bangalore) for funding because I was entering a new area of functioning and therefore needed a support system.
The project had to be collaborative in nature because it was community-based, and dealt with a complex socio-political predicament. I approached an activist writer, Bina Srinivasan, and worked with her during the first phase of the project. Later, I worked with Himmat, a collective initiated by Monica Wahi and Zaid Ahmed Shaikh.

Question: How do you intervene as an artist activist?

Vasudha: One needs to be able to apply one’s intentions to a workable format - otherwise things will just not happen. There were several aspects that needed to be addressed, and it had to be sustained work. One needed to create a serial workshop situation - it couldn’t have been been done in a week or two.

Question: How do you work out your ideas? Do you approach things with premeditation?

Vasudha: In the initial phase there were a lot of discussions with Bina Srinivasn and also with some NGOs, since we were meeting fairly frequently as concerned citizens. You begin to see what people expect from you. Usually, a very limited role is assigned to the artist – like making posters, etc., and one is told exactly how to do it. There is a lack of trust, or confidence, in the language that we use – it is seen as elitist and not truly communicative. So you see there are a lot of prejudices which one needs to overcome. I saw that as a challenge and I wanted to prove, to myself as well, that art practice is not merely something which happens at an intellectual, individual level in a controlled environment. It is a vital ingredient of the human spirit, has great healing powers and facilitates expression within communities at the collective level. Of course, collaboration can be a very problematic thing when one party begins to dominate the other, and the question arises as how not to do this. How do you retain complete freedom and continue to collaborate at the same time? So within a collaborative space, you create pockets of autonomy. What comes out of it is what comes out of it – one pays attention to the grammar of making as opposed to imposing a pre-meditated form on the outcome. An object that is actually shaped by working together - I don’t look at it critically in terms of aesthetics, in the way that I would look at my own painting.

Question: Often while talking about your project, the cathartic or healing power of art is emphasized.

Vasudha: Healing is just one aspect. The space we created for the workshops was experimental in nature – and involved a lot of research. For instance, we couldn’t have the older members of the community working in that area because it was not going to bring them immediate or significant returns. The economic factor was something which was very much on our minds when we worked out the format. Monica identified the girls for me. Some of them were deeply disturbed by the loss that they had suffered and had dropped out of school for that reason. They were given a small stipend during the time that they worked with us. Some of their mothers were working at the center that Monica and Zaid had set up, at Mayur Park, in Vatwa on the outskirts of Ahmedabad.

Question:

Often it is considered that art and films can really make a difference in society, particularly in such an uncertain situation like riots.

VASUDHA: Yes, but it should not just be within a small circle of concerned people, rather it should directly enhance the life of the affected community. For instance, through the workshops, the girls acquired a range of skills. They learnt screen printing, handled cameras; they learnt to draw and paint, to write, and so on. We made several field trips to art institutions in Ahmedabad, like NID and the School of Architecture. A kind of working model evolves which could be implemented and developed further. The organizations that we work with also begin to understand what can be done via art practice.

Question: Have you ever felt a sense of guilt in response to a situation like this?

Vasudha: Till I did the project I often felt a sense of guilt, but not anymore. I would wonder why I was painting in my studio while people were dying or suffering around me. I think this guilt is all the more acute for artists who live in developing countries with turbulent histories. But having put so much energy into a public project, I know my own limits – and also realize that working with people can happen in very different ways. It is not always necessary to do an art project. One needs nourishment too, as an artist there is a need to paint, to retreat, to go back to the studio. It gives one the strength to go out and work with people again. One can’t hold on to a certain way of doing things for life. Certain abstract questions are also very important, and need to be communicated - like the relationship between a community project and one’s own work.

Question: Where did you display the final outcome of the project and how was it displayed?

Vasudha: Segments of the project were displayed at several places, all within the Vatva area. We also mounted a major exhibition in the beginning of 2007 at the Hutteesingh gallery within the CEPT campus in Ahmedabad, on the 5th anniversary of the carnage. The work had earlier been shown at the Khoj premises in New Delhi in 2006 while I was in residence there to edit video footage which the girls had shot. Six films have so far been edited from this footage. Most of them are of a documentary nature. The longest film, Cutting Chai, is about visiting the girls’ homes in Faizal Park. It has been screened independent of other exhibits by Vikalp in Bombay and at an experimental film festival, Experimenta 2007. Another exhibition that we participated in was “After- images” curated by Ranjit Contractor. Some of the paintings were also shown at the WSF in Delhi, at a social forum in Nairobi and at a peace festival in Mumbai.

Question: Do the paintings and videos done by the girls in the workshops show images of horror or violence?

Vasudha: They don’t. Very few of the images actually depict violence. One of my basic concerns was the consumption of such images, which can be problematic and sometimes counter-productive. There are other ways of working around it, which are more about coming out of the predicament.
For example there are some narrative scrolls which talk about civic problems like lack of water, issues of education etc., and an interesting painting of a news reader speaking about the film ‘Parzania’ being banned in Gujarat.
The girls also chose images from their paintings and translated them into motifs that could be used commercially, as embroidery or block prints on fabric.

Question: Tell us about the books, which were also a kind of collaborative venture?

Vasudha: We have completed four small books using written documentation compiled via the project – ‘The Story of Five Posters’, ‘Mahakali versus Megacity’, ‘The Project’ and ‘Bibi Tere Naam Himmat’, which is in memory of Bibi Banoo. There are also photographs which will be printed as photo essays - ‘Gandhi Ashram to Faizal Park’ and ‘Mahakali versus Megacity’.

Question: On the one hand your painting seems to be autobiographical but when it comes to a public project how do you cope with this highly personalized and autobiographical idiom?

Vasudha: It is all about intersections. At some point our personal lives intersect with the public domain in a very powerful, revealing way. One experiences a very deep connectivity that collapses the difference between the public and the private. My painting, for instance, is not just about myself, it is about ‘being’ and how important it is to actually relate to what is happening outside of yourself from within yourself. Unless the ‘self’ comes into play, nothing is ‘real’, it remains at the level of abstraction. The self is in a way very important and also not important because it is merely a framework through which you can view the world. But it is still unique, and owes its value to being so, like a thumb impression.

Interviewed by Rollie Mukherjee,
Artist and Critic,
Baroda.