Lavanya Mani’s recent show titled “In praise of folly” held in Chemould gallery Mumbai from 4th to 28th September utilizes fragmentation and hybridity as a stratagem. The non linear narrative unfolding and the exploration of wide range of scales are powerful subversion of the late modernism’s principles of sublimatory abstractions. Her main thrust in this show is on the colonial Victorian education system and its repressive power.
The colonial state saw itself as parens patriae i.e. the white man’s burden was constructed as a paternal one – that of looking after those who were civilizationally underdeveloped and of disciplining them into obedience. Along with such a racial discrimination we also see the subjugation of women to the male head of the household. We can get reference to such practices right from the humanist writings. (Ironically the title of the show “In praise of folly” a book by Erasmus was one of the significant catalyst of protestant reformation and an important document of renaissance). In Indian colonial situation the discussions on women’s education reflect these earlier histories but they are also more complex because of the racial and colonial hierarchies ingrained in its mediation and application here. The early 19th century saw mixed responses in Bengal and other regions concerning women’s reform and to the formal English education. The complexity of the situation was characterized by the varying view points. On one hand colonialists claimed to reform women’s status by offering them education, while the nationalists (revivalist) countered it by providing a parallel process of education to protect them from becoming de-cultured. In the 19th century discourses, the educated women are represented as becoming Memsahib’s neglecting their household duties. Thus while talking about women’s education one need to see intersection of westernized colonial education with that of nationalist withdrawal into patriarchal Indian tradition. The colonial nationalism gave rise to a new patriarchal order. There existed a dichotomy of outer and inner and this defined the roles of women anew. Also one need to note how the colonized becomes hybrids of two vastly different cultural systems. Colonial education blurred the distinction between the new enforced ideas of the colonizers and the formerly accepted indigenous native practices. Her works represents these dilemmas of such hybrid subjects caught in the still continuing definitions of colonial order and the repealing upper-caste patriarchal traditionalist ideologies.
Lavanya takes the commentary /instruction mode of the European history paintings but deconstructs it by a feminist undertone. For instance her works “keep within compass” / emperors new machine/ the study for monument of folly/ red labyrinth (Ariadne’s thread), songs of innocence (frogs in well) is an open satire on the colonial Victorian moral lessons in particular and patriarchy in general. The work “study for the monument to folly II” comments on the patriarchal gendering of knowledge in an interesting manner. Seen centrally is a bust of a female whose head is measured by an enormous measuring compass held by a (male?) hand. The work can be read in the light of recent scientific experiments and observations about the capacity of female brain, anatomy and related other physiognomies which are out rightly gendered and rationalize the subservience of female to male domination.
The proposed monument in the work “study for monument to folly I” would stand on the maze carrying the signs of cultural, economic, racial and gendered discourses. Does the donkey refer to our present situation where we willingly accept these hegemonic inscriptions on the edicts we would carry? Incidentally in architecture, a folly is a building constructed strictly as a decoration, having none of the usual purposes of housing or sheltering associated with a conventional structure. In the 18th century English gardens and French landscape gardening often featured Roman temples, which symbolized classical virtues or ideals. Lavanya reconstructs such monuments of folly not just in a lighthearted nerve but also tries to read the political and hegemonic inscriptions they referred to. One can also see the repeated use of the English garden motifs along with the reference to the maze structures and gardens in her works.
Most of her work can be seen in the light of how the colonized and their world is seen as strange and fabulous. Her other work “signs taken for wonders” is a direct commentary on euro-centrisicism. It represents the mi-reading/ misinterpretation of the native signs which has contributed to the exoticization of the colonies by the western powers. She also emphasizes on the Victorian hierarchy – how they saw Indian art as backward /anachronistic and lacking scientific objectivity. Her work “study for the monument to follyI” can be seen with the lens of Edward.Said’s “Orienatalism”. How western imperialists define the “other”. How one with power defines/ represents the other and gives them no rights to (re)present themselves. This politics of knowledge and the power to represent can be read within Gramsci’s notion of hegemony. How the ruling classes achieves domination not by force and coercion alone but by creating subjects who willingly submit to being ruled.
Lavanya’s attempt seems to be a kind of post revivalist in terms of its textual weaving and anti-colonial re-narration. But her subversion lies in her fragmented narratives and the use of techniques which are not “pure” per say. Her techniques never refer to a pristine history but refer always to intersections and intermingling of traditions and practices. She uses a great variety of techniques in her works like appliqué/tie and dye/embroidery//batik/ kalamkri and dyeing and very unapologetically cast her reservation for craft and textile.
Once the most valued cultural form of medieval ecclesiastic culture, textile was progressively depersonalized and domesticated and feminized by patriarchal logic. The feminist have challenged these hierarchies of values. With colonialism and rapid industrial revolution thousands of weavers and potters were forced to give up their workshops and enter factories as laborers. They produced catering to the British taste. Colonialism also eroded many matrilineal or women friendly cultures and practices and intensified women’s subordination in colonized lands. Lavanya brings in the complex relationships between art and social experience of women through textile. She says the imposed Victorian education has the obvious trace in our lives even today. The over crowdedness of her motives decoratively encumbered in fact mocks at the austere classicism of the British art on one hand and on the other it critiques the patriarchal restriction of craft /decoration for female. Her images look comic and there is a distinguished pun and carnivalisation. She uses the strategy of representational excess. She uses a wide range of designs from varied traditions. There is recurrence of English and French motifs called chintz also one can see reference to African quilts which were commissioned by English and also motifs like gaghi (muslim/gujarati fabric) and also colonial fabric motive called “toile de jouy”. One important element in her works is the spilt over letters, numbers in most of her paintings. These letters numbers are stuck arbitrarily on the surface. Though they don’t refer to a certain meaning they always refer to a possibility of a language coming into being and always in the making. Probably we can also read these spilt letters and numbers as those nebulous free floating objects in the universe of language which can make infinite combinations and possibilities for utterance. Like her intermingling of varied techniques these letters too never allow us towards a “pure” already existent meaning, but makes us face the reality of the reading these surfaces through our own subjective combinations. Her technique and particularly the coloring also perform an anachronistic reading by making the contemporary (objects) look old and by making the old perform the contemporary.
With such a vast array of motifs and illustrations she brings in discussions about eroticization /hybridization and also how hegemony affects not only our political /economic domain but also our cultural life.
She also uses motives placed as fragments from common everyday objects to some identical colonial history book illustrations and also textile motives which were in vogue in colonial times. Thus these fragments create micro narratives which help in fracturing the meta-narratives or teleology. Such approach blurs the boundaries between private and public, past and present, personal and political. Her works are most of textual narrative rather a descriptive one. She attempts at a rereading of the archives and text from varied literary traditions and cultures- Indian Greek etc.
Thus one can say when women turn to writing history, the conventionally a-historic marginal is placed at the centre. Feminization of history doesn’t indicate a personal subjective response to history but it endeavors to liberate history from purely masculine pursuits and from hegemonic structures to intimate actual happenings which operates at varied levels. Lavanya’s pursuit also doesn’t necessarily personalize the reading of history, but instead she tries to unearth the various hegemonic layers and intersections which are part of these cultural practices by referring to the actual historical signs and the structures/ practices through which these objects and symbols are viewed. Her unearthing of such intersections breaks the traditionalist anxiety for a pure past and liberates history from these narrow masculine coding.
Rollie Mukherjee
Artist and critic, Vadodara.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Monday, October 13, 2008
art and deal magazine,april/june2008
Of Being and Nothingness
The representational world of Babu Eswar Prasad is an ambiguous site of unending tropes. Ambiguity shrouds the paintings via images/ objects drawn from varied sources like historical, popular, art historical and photographic. The viewers are made to respite for a moment from one image to another which leads to a stillness which is not silent. The sound is but not audible. This inaudibility is due to the flatness he thrusts upon the images along with their meanings. The flatness is an imprisonment of not just the objects but also their associate meanings. It moves you to a claustrophobic nothingness. The poetic space of clouds and sky which are referents themselves (drawn from Tibetan tangas or Buddhist scrolls) gives a hint of nature. But it seems a fake promise. The simulated environ though looks real is but a deception. The deception of it is felt when we are trapped in the vortex of interior with a fake exit. This is profligated by its opaque flatness that rejects your flight into the exterior. The moment you imagine to step out you are thrown inside. The paintings head nowhere. Existence is in captivity with meaninglessness or what can be said as overpopulation of tropes. There is an eerie chaotic noise that fractures the sublimity which the huge flat interior is supposed to create. This eerie sound is created by the human absence and the use of fragments. There is an antithesis between the simultaneous presence of stillness formally and technically constructed and the chaos of overlapping permutation of meanings.
His earlier landscapes had a joyous sublimity that takes the viewer to something beyond into the unknown fantastic world. But the present works creates a counterfit promise of this. It exists for a while but soon brings the viewer to the same place. In his earlier works one meandered from inside to outside and vice versa into the surreal world of impossibilities. The impossible architectures open up the space for free speculation. The images were like floating sensations. But now it is a trap. One wanders inside along with the objects which create a world of esoteric enclave. The historical gets trapped in the social, the social in the existential and the existential in the most basic of meanings. Space is trapped in time and the time within time and space within space. Meaning is not created as a whole but lies in its details. It brings different realities.
There is a constant play with meanings. Sometimes it’s in the analogy or in the interaction. Sometimes in isolation and sometimes get trapped in esotericism. It works like a “koan”. It never settles in a particular meaning making and always remains unconcluded and ceaseless and dispersed. Even the titles of his paintings highlight this contradiction and mystery. It’s the strategy of closure which Babu effectively utilizes to create an existential duality and its meaninglessness, its absurdities and illogicality. Everything returns to the now and here. There is no promise or possibility of moving out. It’s an empty fictitious beauty all around with simultaneous concrete existence of alienation and the claustrophobic boredom.
Rolliemukherjee
Videos
As a cinephile Babu’s engagement with the medium of cinema has maturely sourced out in his videos. A big collector of both parallel and popular movies his engagement with these videos has brought another fun loving and simple personality of Babu to the fore.
Notes from my diary is the first video by Babu done in a workshop conducted in Max Muller Bhavan in Bangalore in 1997. The video can be seen as an extension of his painterly language in motion picture. The presence of the being is relegated to the background sounds of noisy city life and other activities. What is seen is only the empty landscape devoid of any human activity. The shadows themselves speak for the life portrayed. The video is a montage of clippings from various films which are now historical classics. The play of shadows and light, the use of sound and silence, the absence of human are all the original sensibilities he has nurtured all through his artistic ovure.
“Splice” and “Dus ka bees” are two other videos which are strikingly in contrast with his painterly personality. Taking visuals from the popular cinematic imageries the videos are more a spoofs of the commercial genre of Hollywood and regional films. “dus ka Bees” is a take on the stereotypical representations in the regional and national films in India. The excess of sex, violence is brought within this short video by using the palimpsest of the cinema posters which adore the walls of the city. Cinema posters are generally aimed at generating the desire through clippings from the films. Machoism, titillating song sequences, romance and excessive violence are the basic scripts/ texts over which the most of the popular film genre dwell. This spoof replays the whole “filmi” with a background which is wonderfully collaged from various regional and bollywood films.
“Splice” is also a spoof of the Hollywood action thriller. It’s a trailer of the never to be made film. This mocks at the hypocrisy of the Hollywood which uses all strategies and technologies for marketing the desire. Here again the themes of sex, violence suspense are made fun of by using the same strategies. The anxiety generated here is a false one or it is about a film which is never made.
V.Divakar
The representational world of Babu Eswar Prasad is an ambiguous site of unending tropes. Ambiguity shrouds the paintings via images/ objects drawn from varied sources like historical, popular, art historical and photographic. The viewers are made to respite for a moment from one image to another which leads to a stillness which is not silent. The sound is but not audible. This inaudibility is due to the flatness he thrusts upon the images along with their meanings. The flatness is an imprisonment of not just the objects but also their associate meanings. It moves you to a claustrophobic nothingness. The poetic space of clouds and sky which are referents themselves (drawn from Tibetan tangas or Buddhist scrolls) gives a hint of nature. But it seems a fake promise. The simulated environ though looks real is but a deception. The deception of it is felt when we are trapped in the vortex of interior with a fake exit. This is profligated by its opaque flatness that rejects your flight into the exterior. The moment you imagine to step out you are thrown inside. The paintings head nowhere. Existence is in captivity with meaninglessness or what can be said as overpopulation of tropes. There is an eerie chaotic noise that fractures the sublimity which the huge flat interior is supposed to create. This eerie sound is created by the human absence and the use of fragments. There is an antithesis between the simultaneous presence of stillness formally and technically constructed and the chaos of overlapping permutation of meanings.
His earlier landscapes had a joyous sublimity that takes the viewer to something beyond into the unknown fantastic world. But the present works creates a counterfit promise of this. It exists for a while but soon brings the viewer to the same place. In his earlier works one meandered from inside to outside and vice versa into the surreal world of impossibilities. The impossible architectures open up the space for free speculation. The images were like floating sensations. But now it is a trap. One wanders inside along with the objects which create a world of esoteric enclave. The historical gets trapped in the social, the social in the existential and the existential in the most basic of meanings. Space is trapped in time and the time within time and space within space. Meaning is not created as a whole but lies in its details. It brings different realities.
There is a constant play with meanings. Sometimes it’s in the analogy or in the interaction. Sometimes in isolation and sometimes get trapped in esotericism. It works like a “koan”. It never settles in a particular meaning making and always remains unconcluded and ceaseless and dispersed. Even the titles of his paintings highlight this contradiction and mystery. It’s the strategy of closure which Babu effectively utilizes to create an existential duality and its meaninglessness, its absurdities and illogicality. Everything returns to the now and here. There is no promise or possibility of moving out. It’s an empty fictitious beauty all around with simultaneous concrete existence of alienation and the claustrophobic boredom.
Rolliemukherjee
Videos
As a cinephile Babu’s engagement with the medium of cinema has maturely sourced out in his videos. A big collector of both parallel and popular movies his engagement with these videos has brought another fun loving and simple personality of Babu to the fore.
Notes from my diary is the first video by Babu done in a workshop conducted in Max Muller Bhavan in Bangalore in 1997. The video can be seen as an extension of his painterly language in motion picture. The presence of the being is relegated to the background sounds of noisy city life and other activities. What is seen is only the empty landscape devoid of any human activity. The shadows themselves speak for the life portrayed. The video is a montage of clippings from various films which are now historical classics. The play of shadows and light, the use of sound and silence, the absence of human are all the original sensibilities he has nurtured all through his artistic ovure.
“Splice” and “Dus ka bees” are two other videos which are strikingly in contrast with his painterly personality. Taking visuals from the popular cinematic imageries the videos are more a spoofs of the commercial genre of Hollywood and regional films. “dus ka Bees” is a take on the stereotypical representations in the regional and national films in India. The excess of sex, violence is brought within this short video by using the palimpsest of the cinema posters which adore the walls of the city. Cinema posters are generally aimed at generating the desire through clippings from the films. Machoism, titillating song sequences, romance and excessive violence are the basic scripts/ texts over which the most of the popular film genre dwell. This spoof replays the whole “filmi” with a background which is wonderfully collaged from various regional and bollywood films.
“Splice” is also a spoof of the Hollywood action thriller. It’s a trailer of the never to be made film. This mocks at the hypocrisy of the Hollywood which uses all strategies and technologies for marketing the desire. Here again the themes of sex, violence suspense are made fun of by using the same strategies. The anxiety generated here is a false one or it is about a film which is never made.
V.Divakar
catalouge for shyam Prasad, july2008
No Exit
“One cannot be free unless all are free”- Jean Paul Sartre
Though this quote by Sartre appears an impossible utopic vision, it actually brings forth the guilt every one of us has to live with. When I first saw Shyamprasad’s paintings and prints, what intrigued me is the feminine subjectivity in him. The female figure in his work is always the mother rendered as a faceless figure. What is significant is that she doesn’t become a personification or metaphor, rather stands as an ambiguity. She neither shows a negative nor positive force. His idiom is in between expressionism and realism. This makes his work open and closeted at the same time. Thus his works communicates neither information nor emotional sentimentality. Rather it brings forth the trapped human condition. One can easily connect it with Sartre’s titles of his plays like “The flies”, “No exit”, and “Dirty hands”. His works doesn’t promise any positive deterministic answer for the ‘man’ made atrocities where victims are made vulnerable and powerless.
His early works were generally either mask like figures or self portraits with some floral decorations filling the negative spaces. The way he handles his paint and motifs is very unattractive,* when we try to see his works from the specter of the gallery oriented art world. This haunting specter has left no option for the artists but be carried in its awe. The failures of radical alternatives outside the systemic structures have taught that confrontational aesthetics would be secluded and isolated and in the long run loose its own force against this giant machine of capitalism. The artists now have embarked upon the possibilities of working ‘within the given credos’ yet at the same time finding subversive extensions of their creative productions. This staying within the beasts belly can be seen as yet another strategy to survive the onslaught of the market forces. So this aestheticisation is nothing but strategies of survival.
Shyam’s work doesn’t permit any kind of such aestheticisation. It’s unattractive* ordinariness in rendering makes his work inconsumable and doesn’t end up becoming sensation bound. His loosely flowing lines particularly in his execution of flowers or sprouting branches are so flimsy* that it doesn’t define it and interestingly it works in an abstract level and creates a contradiction between the flower and blood stains. This is more evident in his etching “Rodin’s thinker with my flower seller”.
This ambiguity between something which is fragile and beautiful and something which is generally connected to violence and pain enhances a precarious space in his works. All his works are done in smudgy dusty tones of green ochre and grey. The only primary colour extensively used is red.
In his work there is always an immanent threat the child is to face. The child is recurring motif who is shown in a foetal position. Sometimes protected by a colacacia leave or is kept inside a jar or a flower pot or sometimes circled by a gigantic worm like form.
The images in his work doesn’t synthesis in a harmonic whole rather exist as fragments. This in fact works well in thrusting on an inexplicable fragmented existence. In most of his works he uses direct symbols of violence. The female and child are the victims and the pawn s of belligerent, phallocentric forces which is parochial and never permits a safe existence in a democracy.
His titles never talks about the tragedy [except one work which is titled as “lamentations”] but works as a mock at the upper and middle class aspirations for an unproblematic and optimistic world view and our unawareness about the societal ills and the lack of care for female gender. The thinker of Rodin is another leitmotif in his work which works as a symbol of an intellectual/artist and the failure to bring about any radical changes in majoritarian mental make up.
Rollie Mukherjee,
Art Historian,
Bangalore.
*Words like flimsy and unattractive are used in a positive connotation in his work.
“One cannot be free unless all are free”- Jean Paul Sartre
Though this quote by Sartre appears an impossible utopic vision, it actually brings forth the guilt every one of us has to live with. When I first saw Shyamprasad’s paintings and prints, what intrigued me is the feminine subjectivity in him. The female figure in his work is always the mother rendered as a faceless figure. What is significant is that she doesn’t become a personification or metaphor, rather stands as an ambiguity. She neither shows a negative nor positive force. His idiom is in between expressionism and realism. This makes his work open and closeted at the same time. Thus his works communicates neither information nor emotional sentimentality. Rather it brings forth the trapped human condition. One can easily connect it with Sartre’s titles of his plays like “The flies”, “No exit”, and “Dirty hands”. His works doesn’t promise any positive deterministic answer for the ‘man’ made atrocities where victims are made vulnerable and powerless.
His early works were generally either mask like figures or self portraits with some floral decorations filling the negative spaces. The way he handles his paint and motifs is very unattractive,* when we try to see his works from the specter of the gallery oriented art world. This haunting specter has left no option for the artists but be carried in its awe. The failures of radical alternatives outside the systemic structures have taught that confrontational aesthetics would be secluded and isolated and in the long run loose its own force against this giant machine of capitalism. The artists now have embarked upon the possibilities of working ‘within the given credos’ yet at the same time finding subversive extensions of their creative productions. This staying within the beasts belly can be seen as yet another strategy to survive the onslaught of the market forces. So this aestheticisation is nothing but strategies of survival.
Shyam’s work doesn’t permit any kind of such aestheticisation. It’s unattractive* ordinariness in rendering makes his work inconsumable and doesn’t end up becoming sensation bound. His loosely flowing lines particularly in his execution of flowers or sprouting branches are so flimsy* that it doesn’t define it and interestingly it works in an abstract level and creates a contradiction between the flower and blood stains. This is more evident in his etching “Rodin’s thinker with my flower seller”.
This ambiguity between something which is fragile and beautiful and something which is generally connected to violence and pain enhances a precarious space in his works. All his works are done in smudgy dusty tones of green ochre and grey. The only primary colour extensively used is red.
In his work there is always an immanent threat the child is to face. The child is recurring motif who is shown in a foetal position. Sometimes protected by a colacacia leave or is kept inside a jar or a flower pot or sometimes circled by a gigantic worm like form.
The images in his work doesn’t synthesis in a harmonic whole rather exist as fragments. This in fact works well in thrusting on an inexplicable fragmented existence. In most of his works he uses direct symbols of violence. The female and child are the victims and the pawn s of belligerent, phallocentric forces which is parochial and never permits a safe existence in a democracy.
His titles never talks about the tragedy [except one work which is titled as “lamentations”] but works as a mock at the upper and middle class aspirations for an unproblematic and optimistic world view and our unawareness about the societal ills and the lack of care for female gender. The thinker of Rodin is another leitmotif in his work which works as a symbol of an intellectual/artist and the failure to bring about any radical changes in majoritarian mental make up.
Rollie Mukherjee,
Art Historian,
Bangalore.
*Words like flimsy and unattractive are used in a positive connotation in his work.
august 2008,artconcerns.com
Primitively Modern Artist
Shreyas Karle is the winner of Bodhi Art Award 2008. A post graduate in painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts, MS University, Baroda, Shreyas work with several mediums including video and photography. Interested in public art projects, he would like to see himself as a nomad who moves from place to place, ideas to ideas. Rollie Mukherjee speaks to Shreyas to know more about his art and views. Excerpts:
Rollie Mukherjee: Tell us something about your early works.
Shreyas Karle: The works I did during my bachelors were figurative and done in mixed media. I was dealing more with daily subjects and experiences, very mundane things around me. Right from the beginning there was some kind of narration that has continued in the works I am doing right now. When I look at those works, I feel they are like telling stories. Earlier it was more on the subjects around me.
RM: How did you happen to shift your works from paintings to public art?
SK: While in Mumbai I always wanted to do three dimensional works, but because of the space constrains I couldn’t. The whole transformation happened after coming to Baroda during my masters. In my earlier works and my recent works there are similarities in the sensibilities. Though the medium and approach has changed but the sensibilities I feel have remained the same. In Baroda I got a larger space and understanding faculty which gave way to convert almost all my works. The video on lizard which was titled as “rukavat ke liye khedh hai” are all part of our mundane experience.
I generally start with an idea and that leads to implementing it in different mediums. Like I did a graphical representation of an installation. These were rubber shoes of 5 feet which were hung above the eye of the viewers. Whatever I think I put it on paper and visualise how it will look if I make it an installation. There are a series of 13 episodes, which are compiled in a book format. It talks about certain visual narrative. Two classes in a society, they metamorphosis as shoes and how a man wants to conquer a shoe and the shoe in turn puts him down. The series goes in 13 episodes. There is another work called the number game.
At Sandarbh, (Chintan’s workshop) in Rajasthan I did bolta pahad. This is a huge hillock almost 100 ft. basically the importance of this work is that the site is on the highway. So people, who generally pass through stop there to relax, look at the site. So something you are looking at is looking back at you. Even if you see the deities in Rajasthan look very raw with huge eyes attached to them. So it was something kind of someone watching you. It remained for 6 months.
It was part of a residency in SANDARBH, Rajasthan last December. I was in this village called Partapur in Vagad district of Rajasthan. In this village there is a practice of eating pohas. So there are 60 to 70 kinds of pohas available. They have pohas for breakfast, lunch... They served these pohas on paper. Simultaneously I was also working in a different project in Rajasthan. One was also a collaborative project with another artist from Baroda (Hemali Bhuta), where we made metal painted boards which contained the information about the villages we were working in and placed them at the entrance of those villages. The other I was working was on the stories on the names of villages. I found some of the names of the villages very exciting, so I made an enquiry into why certain villages are named in a particular manner. So I got a story behind one village, I started hunting for the stories and asked different people. So I got other stories also related with the villages. What I wanted was to advertise my work. I wanted more people to come to me and tell all these stories. So I did this work so as to reach more masses. I made sun signs and there is very interesting matter written for every sun sign. I xeroxed it and distributed to the poha walas and told them to serve poha on this paper. It was interesting to see people how they would read it or somebody would only throw it the message was like after eating please throw it in the dustbin. Sometime there was no dustbin. Zodiac is something, which everyone is interested to know. The very first thing every one of us would read when we pick up the morning paper. Whether the person ids from a rural or an urban setup every one of us is interested to know about the future. So I wanted them to read it.
Another time what I did was I had printed the stories of the villages giving them the image of a stamp paper, where it kind of authenticates the stories. There is a kind of advertisement saying that if you are aware…
There are videos on the pohawalas and I documented them and interviewed how their business is and why they chose to do that.
RM: Most of your works has a tendency of mythologies and have primitive quality?
SK: I always was like being primitive. I feel that era was much better compared to today. I use generally the term that you should be primitively modern” I like to be primitively modern person i.e. are staying in contemporary times but with a primitive thought, the primitiveness within you which is very raw because it is raw it gives more possibilities of exploration. Because primitive age was something when everything started when you see in historical terms people had so many things to explore now we have come to point when everything has been contaminated.
RM: The work you did on identity, you seem to want to get into the skin of the other. You are going to different locations and trying to be like them. There is where in the public projects one can feel an identity crisis.
SK: Trying to be like them is not about my personal identity crisis. It’s like something where I don’t want to keep my identity as a kind of supreme thing. I mean I am not someone who is different from them. Here I enjoy two positions- one is an outsider, I become a third person so I look at the situation through a different angle. Second is because I am with them at that place I also enjoy being in the position of being one of them. When I am in Bombay, I never see Bombay as an outsider may look at it. Traveling in train is problematic for an outsider. But as a Bombaite I feel it as part and parcel of my daily routine. Probably for an outsider it may look very interesting; he may work on a project. That’s how the whole train culture in Bombay come out with a work. I may but not really but would pressurize myself to work on it because I am part of it. Because when you are part of the crowd you don’t realize what happen, you just move with the crowd. But the moment you stand apart from the crowd, you can see which way the crowd is moving so as I am in Bangalore I am trying to see things in different light.
RM: I feel when we are with the crowd we become more auto critical about the community and the people we are trying to study. Different kinds of things like sociological structures; studying different cultural habits come into question. This is the whole problem in some kind of interactive public projects, i.e., this is the whole problem of getting into the other culture. Like what happens when you enter into other cultural space as an outsider always we tend to maintain a kind of distance and we just try to neglect in getting into the complexities which otherwise we do when we see things within our culture or as an insider we view the community or culture.
SK: I don’t need to get into the complexities because I am not engaging myself as a person who has come there with a particular intension to do a kind of social activity or I am trying to convey some message.
RM: How you position yourself as an artist who is into public projects because we know generally public art is connected to activism?
SK: I really don’t want to position myself. I like the position of a nomad who doesn’t have to say that this is my identity and this is my position. I like toy around with an idea may lead to different things. I am just spilling the beans. So it depends on the viewers to analyze the situation in which manner how and where why. I am not sitting here to analyze why I have done these projects.
RM: One thing one can sense that you are taking a public project but ultimately it is becoming somewhere formalistic or becoming visual oriented which art has always been. Now how you see this take of public art, which has always been connected to sociology and economics. A lot of artist have taken this further and have done some developmental projects and some kind of activism they have worked over. How you feel you are moving because you are bringing at the end the aesthetic of it?
SK: I don’t really want to get into the intricacies of developing something for the society. I don’t start with that intension. My basic intension is to work with something, which I find it very amazing something that tickling my senses. That thing when it develops it may or may not involve social activism or certain social messages. I am not pressurizing anything. I am not getting involved in society. So I am kind of open to everything. I want to flow with how the involvement is going like. If you see the sign boards made they were made not with the intension to help those people and tell them that you are deprived of this so we have come as a messiah to help you out from this. It was an interaction with them. We became so close to them that they started seeing us as their family members they used to invite us for tea etc. we have to somewhere our role as artist and role as a human being. You can’t separate these two positions. If you are involving with something as an artist you need to involve with all your human qualities. Art is not something, which you can separate from your daily living that art becomes mundane activity then you enjoy something on day-to-day basis.
RM: You went to one village and recorded the whole oral tradition and oral history behind the naming of particular villages. As in one way you are working as a documenter like how earlier photographers and artist went to some cultural site and they documented the entire thing and write it down and this become part of a sealed history. Its not just a living history which oral tradition other wise permits like something fades with time and something gets molded itself with new age and comes in new form according to the contemporary demand. So it is always living. This is how oral tradition functions. So In a way don’t you think you also acted as the earlier documenters?
SK: If you want to put me in that position I don’t mind. Then I would say that yes I like to play the role of documenter. I like to play that role of an historian but that doesn’t make me a historian or a documenter because my approach with what I started is totally different. I have taken these roles to kind of reach a particular stand but I don’t know even by taking these roles where it is taking me. That I do not know point how the work going to be completed, which formats it, is going to come into what it will look like. I am totally clueless about this. What is more enjoyable for me is that process itself that I am going to some place talking to some people and getting feed back. When you imagine then you force something what you want to see, so it’s very mental thing. I think we need not make ourselves so saturated much that by positioning it somewhere or even questioning the artist somewhere how he is as social activist. If you are interested in activism then don’t stand in two positions you work as social activist not as an artist. You can’t be an artist and a social activist at the sometime. When you say that the project one has done is a contribution to the society then it is a manipulation of your own work.
RM: So how you see this new avatar of artist who is interacting constantly with the society and enjoying the process of such making?
SK: I see it more as a flexible position. Since you are coming as an artist for the third person you are a harmless person, you are not attached to any party or you aren’t attached to any particular school of thought. So he welcomes you. He opens up in front of you and because for him you are just going to depict certain things which he is giving then you can say. Those roles are time specific, those role are there because certain situations needs those roles. That situation demand a role of a person who is enquiring who is documenting things otherwise, I couldn’t have got what I have got from that.
RM: When art becomes interactive and social we come to know the criticality of certain area or community. We somewhere try to criticize some of the things. How you see this non reactive ness of your approach because if art is not connected to activism I am not saying a very hard edge activism, if it is not activism then it is better that we sit at home and do some sculptures and paintings i.e. what art in modernist period was. It was insulated. But when art decided to go outside it was with that intension of social criticism and it is not similar thing as we go somewhere and romanticize people of other culture.
SK: There is difference between of being a medium and being something, which is more rigid than medium for example a flowing river is a medium you put anything into it carries to the ocean. Ocean becomes a more rigid position it takes everything and settles it down and I feel it’s better for an artist to be a medium rather defining his position and also for others not to define him because art has always been a medium. Whether it is confined to a studio space or public space.
RM: Do you think your identity every time stays without problem when you interact with other communities? For example as person belonging to other community you face different regionalism. It is not that in certain situations our identity is not questioned and it is always that there is some pressure to define the identity.
SK: These are some initial public art I have done so probably what ever you are saying I feel right now I am still in the process of knowing. I cleared my position by saying that I don’t want to have any position I don’t want to decide whether I am doing something for the social cause or something related to particular society or a bunch of people. I am enjoying being a nomad not tagging myself with any thing and just being a medium i.e. transformed it into something else. It is more about transformation from one thing to another. It is not that I am only doing public art projects; I come back to studio and work. Many projects I started from my studio and I have gone outside and that accumulation has come in form of different works so why can’t they be called public art. It is not necessary that you should be with a society or outside the studio to do something to do public art. What does a cartoonist do? When he does political cartoons for paper? He is not necessarily part of that politics or part of the daily living of the people but what he does is he experiences all those things come back to his studio and sits at one place and narrates his experiences through the common mans view. I feel rather than making a more serious or jumbled up position for an artist it is better to keep him as a person…
RM: What do you think about the function of art in society?
SK: I am not saying that I am not achieving the function. I am trying to use art to do whatever I can for the society I am living in. Right now I cannot say that I am doing art because I want to solve someone’s problem because I am not in a position that I can do so but the day when I am in apposition I can use it for the betterment of say my immediate society is society of a group of artist. So if I can do something for them then there is larger community outside. Right now I can’t show that art is such a powerful tool for social change etc. everything has a phase you need to pass through. There is politics in larger term.
Right now I am not working for any social cause. But knowingly or unknowingly if there is any social cause conveyed through it I am happy about it. I don’t want to say that I totally want to negate it. I feel the way art plays a very vital role in making a person realize what he actually should be doing. Art guides you through a particular channel to actually show what you are suppose to do. For this you need to pass certain phases of life. Probably I am in those initial phases.
RM: Tell us about your present project?
SK: Few things I am working now but I don’t know whether I am going to take them ahead as works to be done. It is a basic research I am doing a series of informal interviews with different people probably artist/ IT background/ science background. Some people randomly on street. These interviews are not really intended to anything. I am not going to document them, keeping the thing open on what ever they want to talk about their personal view about the city or probably not about the city if I am talking to an artist he might talk about an artwork how it communicates to people etc.
Shreyas Karle is the winner of Bodhi Art Award 2008. A post graduate in painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts, MS University, Baroda, Shreyas work with several mediums including video and photography. Interested in public art projects, he would like to see himself as a nomad who moves from place to place, ideas to ideas. Rollie Mukherjee speaks to Shreyas to know more about his art and views. Excerpts:
Rollie Mukherjee: Tell us something about your early works.
Shreyas Karle: The works I did during my bachelors were figurative and done in mixed media. I was dealing more with daily subjects and experiences, very mundane things around me. Right from the beginning there was some kind of narration that has continued in the works I am doing right now. When I look at those works, I feel they are like telling stories. Earlier it was more on the subjects around me.
RM: How did you happen to shift your works from paintings to public art?
SK: While in Mumbai I always wanted to do three dimensional works, but because of the space constrains I couldn’t. The whole transformation happened after coming to Baroda during my masters. In my earlier works and my recent works there are similarities in the sensibilities. Though the medium and approach has changed but the sensibilities I feel have remained the same. In Baroda I got a larger space and understanding faculty which gave way to convert almost all my works. The video on lizard which was titled as “rukavat ke liye khedh hai” are all part of our mundane experience.
I generally start with an idea and that leads to implementing it in different mediums. Like I did a graphical representation of an installation. These were rubber shoes of 5 feet which were hung above the eye of the viewers. Whatever I think I put it on paper and visualise how it will look if I make it an installation. There are a series of 13 episodes, which are compiled in a book format. It talks about certain visual narrative. Two classes in a society, they metamorphosis as shoes and how a man wants to conquer a shoe and the shoe in turn puts him down. The series goes in 13 episodes. There is another work called the number game.
At Sandarbh, (Chintan’s workshop) in Rajasthan I did bolta pahad. This is a huge hillock almost 100 ft. basically the importance of this work is that the site is on the highway. So people, who generally pass through stop there to relax, look at the site. So something you are looking at is looking back at you. Even if you see the deities in Rajasthan look very raw with huge eyes attached to them. So it was something kind of someone watching you. It remained for 6 months.
It was part of a residency in SANDARBH, Rajasthan last December. I was in this village called Partapur in Vagad district of Rajasthan. In this village there is a practice of eating pohas. So there are 60 to 70 kinds of pohas available. They have pohas for breakfast, lunch... They served these pohas on paper. Simultaneously I was also working in a different project in Rajasthan. One was also a collaborative project with another artist from Baroda (Hemali Bhuta), where we made metal painted boards which contained the information about the villages we were working in and placed them at the entrance of those villages. The other I was working was on the stories on the names of villages. I found some of the names of the villages very exciting, so I made an enquiry into why certain villages are named in a particular manner. So I got a story behind one village, I started hunting for the stories and asked different people. So I got other stories also related with the villages. What I wanted was to advertise my work. I wanted more people to come to me and tell all these stories. So I did this work so as to reach more masses. I made sun signs and there is very interesting matter written for every sun sign. I xeroxed it and distributed to the poha walas and told them to serve poha on this paper. It was interesting to see people how they would read it or somebody would only throw it the message was like after eating please throw it in the dustbin. Sometime there was no dustbin. Zodiac is something, which everyone is interested to know. The very first thing every one of us would read when we pick up the morning paper. Whether the person ids from a rural or an urban setup every one of us is interested to know about the future. So I wanted them to read it.
Another time what I did was I had printed the stories of the villages giving them the image of a stamp paper, where it kind of authenticates the stories. There is a kind of advertisement saying that if you are aware…
There are videos on the pohawalas and I documented them and interviewed how their business is and why they chose to do that.
RM: Most of your works has a tendency of mythologies and have primitive quality?
SK: I always was like being primitive. I feel that era was much better compared to today. I use generally the term that you should be primitively modern” I like to be primitively modern person i.e. are staying in contemporary times but with a primitive thought, the primitiveness within you which is very raw because it is raw it gives more possibilities of exploration. Because primitive age was something when everything started when you see in historical terms people had so many things to explore now we have come to point when everything has been contaminated.
RM: The work you did on identity, you seem to want to get into the skin of the other. You are going to different locations and trying to be like them. There is where in the public projects one can feel an identity crisis.
SK: Trying to be like them is not about my personal identity crisis. It’s like something where I don’t want to keep my identity as a kind of supreme thing. I mean I am not someone who is different from them. Here I enjoy two positions- one is an outsider, I become a third person so I look at the situation through a different angle. Second is because I am with them at that place I also enjoy being in the position of being one of them. When I am in Bombay, I never see Bombay as an outsider may look at it. Traveling in train is problematic for an outsider. But as a Bombaite I feel it as part and parcel of my daily routine. Probably for an outsider it may look very interesting; he may work on a project. That’s how the whole train culture in Bombay come out with a work. I may but not really but would pressurize myself to work on it because I am part of it. Because when you are part of the crowd you don’t realize what happen, you just move with the crowd. But the moment you stand apart from the crowd, you can see which way the crowd is moving so as I am in Bangalore I am trying to see things in different light.
RM: I feel when we are with the crowd we become more auto critical about the community and the people we are trying to study. Different kinds of things like sociological structures; studying different cultural habits come into question. This is the whole problem in some kind of interactive public projects, i.e., this is the whole problem of getting into the other culture. Like what happens when you enter into other cultural space as an outsider always we tend to maintain a kind of distance and we just try to neglect in getting into the complexities which otherwise we do when we see things within our culture or as an insider we view the community or culture.
SK: I don’t need to get into the complexities because I am not engaging myself as a person who has come there with a particular intension to do a kind of social activity or I am trying to convey some message.
RM: How you position yourself as an artist who is into public projects because we know generally public art is connected to activism?
SK: I really don’t want to position myself. I like the position of a nomad who doesn’t have to say that this is my identity and this is my position. I like toy around with an idea may lead to different things. I am just spilling the beans. So it depends on the viewers to analyze the situation in which manner how and where why. I am not sitting here to analyze why I have done these projects.
RM: One thing one can sense that you are taking a public project but ultimately it is becoming somewhere formalistic or becoming visual oriented which art has always been. Now how you see this take of public art, which has always been connected to sociology and economics. A lot of artist have taken this further and have done some developmental projects and some kind of activism they have worked over. How you feel you are moving because you are bringing at the end the aesthetic of it?
SK: I don’t really want to get into the intricacies of developing something for the society. I don’t start with that intension. My basic intension is to work with something, which I find it very amazing something that tickling my senses. That thing when it develops it may or may not involve social activism or certain social messages. I am not pressurizing anything. I am not getting involved in society. So I am kind of open to everything. I want to flow with how the involvement is going like. If you see the sign boards made they were made not with the intension to help those people and tell them that you are deprived of this so we have come as a messiah to help you out from this. It was an interaction with them. We became so close to them that they started seeing us as their family members they used to invite us for tea etc. we have to somewhere our role as artist and role as a human being. You can’t separate these two positions. If you are involving with something as an artist you need to involve with all your human qualities. Art is not something, which you can separate from your daily living that art becomes mundane activity then you enjoy something on day-to-day basis.
RM: You went to one village and recorded the whole oral tradition and oral history behind the naming of particular villages. As in one way you are working as a documenter like how earlier photographers and artist went to some cultural site and they documented the entire thing and write it down and this become part of a sealed history. Its not just a living history which oral tradition other wise permits like something fades with time and something gets molded itself with new age and comes in new form according to the contemporary demand. So it is always living. This is how oral tradition functions. So In a way don’t you think you also acted as the earlier documenters?
SK: If you want to put me in that position I don’t mind. Then I would say that yes I like to play the role of documenter. I like to play that role of an historian but that doesn’t make me a historian or a documenter because my approach with what I started is totally different. I have taken these roles to kind of reach a particular stand but I don’t know even by taking these roles where it is taking me. That I do not know point how the work going to be completed, which formats it, is going to come into what it will look like. I am totally clueless about this. What is more enjoyable for me is that process itself that I am going to some place talking to some people and getting feed back. When you imagine then you force something what you want to see, so it’s very mental thing. I think we need not make ourselves so saturated much that by positioning it somewhere or even questioning the artist somewhere how he is as social activist. If you are interested in activism then don’t stand in two positions you work as social activist not as an artist. You can’t be an artist and a social activist at the sometime. When you say that the project one has done is a contribution to the society then it is a manipulation of your own work.
RM: So how you see this new avatar of artist who is interacting constantly with the society and enjoying the process of such making?
SK: I see it more as a flexible position. Since you are coming as an artist for the third person you are a harmless person, you are not attached to any party or you aren’t attached to any particular school of thought. So he welcomes you. He opens up in front of you and because for him you are just going to depict certain things which he is giving then you can say. Those roles are time specific, those role are there because certain situations needs those roles. That situation demand a role of a person who is enquiring who is documenting things otherwise, I couldn’t have got what I have got from that.
RM: When art becomes interactive and social we come to know the criticality of certain area or community. We somewhere try to criticize some of the things. How you see this non reactive ness of your approach because if art is not connected to activism I am not saying a very hard edge activism, if it is not activism then it is better that we sit at home and do some sculptures and paintings i.e. what art in modernist period was. It was insulated. But when art decided to go outside it was with that intension of social criticism and it is not similar thing as we go somewhere and romanticize people of other culture.
SK: There is difference between of being a medium and being something, which is more rigid than medium for example a flowing river is a medium you put anything into it carries to the ocean. Ocean becomes a more rigid position it takes everything and settles it down and I feel it’s better for an artist to be a medium rather defining his position and also for others not to define him because art has always been a medium. Whether it is confined to a studio space or public space.
RM: Do you think your identity every time stays without problem when you interact with other communities? For example as person belonging to other community you face different regionalism. It is not that in certain situations our identity is not questioned and it is always that there is some pressure to define the identity.
SK: These are some initial public art I have done so probably what ever you are saying I feel right now I am still in the process of knowing. I cleared my position by saying that I don’t want to have any position I don’t want to decide whether I am doing something for the social cause or something related to particular society or a bunch of people. I am enjoying being a nomad not tagging myself with any thing and just being a medium i.e. transformed it into something else. It is more about transformation from one thing to another. It is not that I am only doing public art projects; I come back to studio and work. Many projects I started from my studio and I have gone outside and that accumulation has come in form of different works so why can’t they be called public art. It is not necessary that you should be with a society or outside the studio to do something to do public art. What does a cartoonist do? When he does political cartoons for paper? He is not necessarily part of that politics or part of the daily living of the people but what he does is he experiences all those things come back to his studio and sits at one place and narrates his experiences through the common mans view. I feel rather than making a more serious or jumbled up position for an artist it is better to keep him as a person…
RM: What do you think about the function of art in society?
SK: I am not saying that I am not achieving the function. I am trying to use art to do whatever I can for the society I am living in. Right now I cannot say that I am doing art because I want to solve someone’s problem because I am not in a position that I can do so but the day when I am in apposition I can use it for the betterment of say my immediate society is society of a group of artist. So if I can do something for them then there is larger community outside. Right now I can’t show that art is such a powerful tool for social change etc. everything has a phase you need to pass through. There is politics in larger term.
Right now I am not working for any social cause. But knowingly or unknowingly if there is any social cause conveyed through it I am happy about it. I don’t want to say that I totally want to negate it. I feel the way art plays a very vital role in making a person realize what he actually should be doing. Art guides you through a particular channel to actually show what you are suppose to do. For this you need to pass certain phases of life. Probably I am in those initial phases.
RM: Tell us about your present project?
SK: Few things I am working now but I don’t know whether I am going to take them ahead as works to be done. It is a basic research I am doing a series of informal interviews with different people probably artist/ IT background/ science background. Some people randomly on street. These interviews are not really intended to anything. I am not going to document them, keeping the thing open on what ever they want to talk about their personal view about the city or probably not about the city if I am talking to an artist he might talk about an artwork how it communicates to people etc.
june/july 2008,artconcerns.com
Mistakes are Actions
Aron Johnston, Fulbright Research Grantee, 2007-08 believes in the brilliance than the actual intention of the painting. He tells Rollie Mukherjee about his recent solo show titled “signs unseen” held at Chitra Kala Parishath, April 2008. The conversation sheds light on his early works and the sojourn in India. Excerpts:
Rollie Mukherjee: After seeing your entire oeuvre of works one can observe that from abstraction you have moved to the “pop” approach and again you are heading towards an abstraction but with a difference. Now you tend to focus more on “language” as any other pop artist with greater emphasis on semiotics. Your abstraction seems more to be well planned / calculative (the definition pop artist gave for their works) and imitative of popular images and text.
Aron Johnston: What was common among the abstract expressionist (particularly if you compare De Kooning and with Pollock) was the activation of the body and immediacy of thought with their body into canvas. However, if you talk about my work it is often not about my body. May be it is because of its size that it might have some relation with body or viewers body, but surely its not about my body or my immediate thought either. Whereas De Kooning was doing reactions in his paintings, one stroke led to the next stroke and so on. I kind of set up a situation where strokes create a next action and I am kind of separate from that. Well it’s (for me) a matter of defining or developing a system that creates an action that I feel comfortable in making. Therefore, if there was an artist or a group of artists that I can connect to at least with the systematic physical aspect of art, it would be Jasper Johns or Robert Indiana. For example Robert Indiana created a number system in his work so all his paintings had to do with numbers or numerology.
Therefore, we can say that the system activated his joy of painting. With Jasper Johns, it is with his series of letters. He did not have to think about what he had to paint so he says here is the subject now all that is activated is action or activation in the painting which happens in my paintings also. I found something systematic. So now, I don’t need to think about the subject and now I am part of the system and I am merely the vehicle of its production and that’s where I get my creative joy. That does not necessarily explain why I like to destroy the images.
I don’t know how to categorize myself. I don’t really think myself as an abstract painter and even though I look at abstract artists, they are not the people I put myself with or align with. I think of artists like Kosuth or Baldessari are my real influences and my real favourite is Magritte. Because the way Magritte plays with language, I like him. But if you look, my paintings they have nothing to do with the physicality or representations of Magritte. I am influenced more by Magritte than Pollock (even if they do look like abstractionists).
The work, titled “slick burger,” is my first work where I started intentionally exploring the idea of language. There is the text “slick burger” and the image of a train. It looks like a piece of signage. But it’s all invented. This work came out of an argument I had with an art critic. He said “if your work was “slick” you can sell it in New York or Paris gallery or you could never make it as an artist.” I think my art is more like a cheese burger. It is very hard to handle. When you eat it you enjoy it but it gets all over your hands, face and shirt, its messy and so I came up with the idea of “slick burger” because it’s a phrase which doesn’t really make sense. I used the text with an image which doesn’t really make any sense with the text because that was something I believed and I liked. Art for me is like a slow moving train. It is some thing you can sit and watch.
This is where I started to break away from this kind of linear thinking and stopped putting very distinct meanings to my work. The developing goal was to create an absence of meaning with things that seem meaningful.
RM: You had done a street installation in Bangalore and told that you desire to continue more such public displays like any other sign boards. Also you said you believe “art” is non transient and timeless. So what role do you want your art to play, because knowing popular art like sign boards have a transient quality and ends with fulfillment of its purpose?
AJ: If we think about what Kant said about the idea of disinterestedness, an artist puts all of his interest into painting so that the viewer can come and sit in front of a painting and get relaxed by separating from their own interest. From the artist devotion to interest, from this state disinterestedness develops. I liked that theory.
I like things full of too much information, my passion for colours and my interactions to text as form. So then, I create away. They fuse together so the timeless part you are talking about is not stuck to any one viewer. I hope that theoretically, someone can come up to a work and they can try to explore it. They can’t bring too much of their own interest to it. So the only option to it is that they have to relax and be disinterested but that doesn’t mean they don’t like it but it means that they can’t put too much of themselves in that. Therefore, they relax before it that may be the “aura” of it like the Sistine chapel. It is loaded with so much information and the subject matter is so powerful that all you can do is feel, becoming to it. A person does not have to believe in some thing to understand the AWE. You can create so much information that it creates no information that is when it is bigger than… what ever. That is when it touches the void.
RM: You said that you want to make art out of mistake. How did you arrive at this idea of making art? You generally use mediums which are generally considered antithetical to each other.
AJ: Mistakes are sometimes more brilliant than the actual intention of the painting. Painting exists in many parts. The first part is the idea or concept. Then there is part of the painting that exists in the act of making. When you are making a painting, you don’t think of anything. The act of painting becomes the Art and the third part, and there are many more parts thereafter, is when you can analyze what you have done and start finding out mistakes and in my paintings right at the end these mistakes make the work happen I was trying to control it. I spend weeks with the painting and never saw it and then the minute the paint starts to dry and I start to come out of my activation only then does it started to reveal itself as something else. Therefore, my idea coming into the painting wasn’t what I got when I finished it. Which was perfect, that is exactly what I want. I want my idea or concept to be motivated not just as a definition but by action, mistakes are actions that I can take if they work fix if they don’t. I am the coach and the team; the field is the artwork not the opponent.
The work titled “lessons in knot tying” is about the confusion of being tied up in observation or meaning. When you put this order of ABC together with the other images, its (the artworks) intention is to be confused, you actually need to follow a process. Normally to become less confused you need to follow an order I am trying to reverse that. So, this is the painting. In my work, there is chaos but there is an order to create that chaos. In that piece, I have used so much wax that it’s poring over the sides. It is almost like encaustic. I put wax, then draw with crayon, and keep doing this. I draw, heat and then seal it. I use the hot gun to melt the wax, do the drawing, and repeat. This is a very hard to achieve. If I want the drawing to melt faster or slower, I need to adjust the distance of the heat gun. I need to do this process very fast to keep up with the setting time. I am trying to control the material but I am always out of control. The process inspires mistakes. No body can understand this part, I am not sure whether to do it myself, but hopefully they can feel it.
The train in slick burger was printed on a big piece of paper (48 inches) it was printed with non-archival ink and so the ink will fade. So now, the image hardly exists any more. To me this is part of my work. It is breaking down. Its intricate, its part of its beauty, its ability to fall apart. I really like the idea that my artwork is in a state of entropy when the meaning becomes so obliterated / obscure the concept only grows stronger with decay.
I wrote my manifesto on a piece of corrugated cardboard. I wrote on top of the row then on bottom. I wrote on three different sides of the corrugated ridges. I did it so many times so that it became like a black space. It was called “manifesto of every nothing” to mean that it had everything which means it has nothing. So the idea was that the more information I put in, the more likely I am to gain disinterest. Therefore, what I was constantly doing was that each time adding more and more to achieve less and less, touching the void. It is more like a maximalist than minimalist is.
RM: The other day you talked a lot about geo-centrism, anomalism and Diasporas. Do you deal with such socio political and cultural conflict in your work?
AJ: I always like the idea but intentionally talking about geo-centric thoughts or political ideas, those are in me already. So, the work is going to capture some of that but I don’t want my work to be about that so it is this conflict that I create. That is created between me fighting the intension to say something and my intension to create just the visual. I allow the conflict to exist in the painting. Sometimes it’s more apparent sometimes it is less apparent. When it is less apparent I feel more successful when it is more apparent, it is too easy to read. I want the viewer to feel it not know it. I guess not knowing the absolute meaning in my work creates a feeling or conceptual connection similar to such ideas. Geo centric and diasporatic thoughts are ultimately about not knowing to varied extremes.
RM: Do you suffer in defining your work as a high artist dealing with popular from the so called pressures created by galleries and institutional spaces which constantly compel one for definitiveness/ category?
AJ: I would like to be in a category of art where high art happens but you can’t make Art with the intention of it being High Art. Something else outside of the art defines it as high art. Low art also happens – it’s in fact the consequence of not being high art. The person who defines the highs and lows of art is not me. I can only make it and I think, yes its fun for me if my art is in a gallery but the person who gets to categories what art is, then it is not the maker but the observer, the critic, art historian, it’s the society, its time, all these factors. I have actually no control over it. So I think at one time I dabbled with the high art thing then I realize that for me to attempt to do something which is out of my control, is just silly and really a waste of time on my part. All I can do is make art. If some body recognizes it’s relevant then it gets elevated. With more people liking, it gets elevated more. I can’t control that. Folk art exists as an art form. If we take it out of its context/ situation it starts becoming high art. The part of art that I hate is this but I need to relax too.
RM: Do you think self refrentiality in your work an ego trip?
AJ: All artists are narcissist, if they say they are not they are kidding themselves even they are making artwork and it is because they at some point want to see themselves. Once you recognize (ego) then you say; now I can look back and can make it better. Now the trick is that the only way to look at (yourself in your art) is to see history what are the things in history that define you and you look at other art. Albert Einstein said creativity comes out of covering /masking your influences, so he looked at the different physicist. He was building on the ideas of others to define himself. So once he came up with this defining idea, then he only built on top of it with his own ideas. So as artist, we take part in same thing. We look at history and out of it we choose what we really like. Then you put it together like in a soup and mix; then start building on it to define yourself in your art.
“No longer is the challenge to compare my work to others. No. The idea is to develop a personal history from Art history so that others can compare my work to my work.
It is only at that point when there is a marker for true progression in my development.”
(From the presentation)
This was popular in 70’s with artists like Chuck Close in US. He was looking at other artists but then he got the point when he was doing his large pencil drawings and paintings and then started looking these paintings in comparison to his own paintings then looking back what was their in his mind, He created the identity that nobody else has, even to this day. Nobody can reach him. Only Chuck Close can reach Chuck Close. If you copy it (his method) its still just copy. So the trick is to find a why that the person viewing your work first gives reference to your work.
RM: Some of the works you did before coming to India seem to have direct influence of Jasper Johns and Rausenberg, not only in their use of materials but also the strategy of depersonalisation that is talking about your personal symbolically through objects.
AJ: In some of my works the images are all references to the size of my body like a self-portrait. In “lessons in Knot Tying”, I have shown my pants dropped, which is a vulnerable state. The painting, which is leaning out of the wall, that is a portrait done out of wax and plywood and crayon.
I have used all of my personality in a general way. The self-portrait is reference to my self yet; it can be a reference to viewer as well. It is more of a generalized self-portrait. So at the top you see ABC there are three methods of how to tie a knot and in the middle right at the point where there would be my waist or upper thigh is the text all twisted together and at the bottom are my legs. This is the point hard to think about. With my pants in that situation, I am exposed, but the only thing that you are seeing not my upper torso and my gentiles but it is my artwork. So my art work here is equated to my naked body but you don’t really make that jump right away, even though that is the kind of metaphorically imparts the material I use. It is not an easy material to handle, as is art. It should not always easy to understand and digest. So, the material becomes important.
If you recall Jasper Johns paintings “target.” He has this big target and stations at the top that can be opened to reveal castings of his body. Johns was referring to saint Sebastian. He (Johns) was the target. Johns was a homosexual man who was using this symbolism in his artwork to talk about his identity. However, when we look at his work, identity is the last thing that we think about. We think about this beautiful target, then we open the boxes then we can make connections to different aspects of the self. My work operates in the same way at times. I don’t think any artist can make an artwork, which is not about themselves. Think about it even the attempt to do so would be in its self a selfish endeavor. A person cannot get out of oneself. It would be impossible. The challenge would be to make artwork, which has nothing to do with your self. I don’t think it can be done. I think it’s impossible.
RM: What are the differences you find between Indian and American cultural signs?
AJ: You don’t see these signs in the US. All this type of advertisement disappeared from the US 40-60 years ago. I am generalizing, especially in Texas, billboards were banned in places and many regulations were created over the past years too reduce the visual clutter. It (hand painted signs) slowly disappeared. There are still some signboards but it is not all over the place but before that it happened. Back in the 70’s, you could drive in the city and the first thing you see is the signs all over the city. That started disappearing, and then on top of that sign paintings were replaced not by digital works but offset printings. As a result, companies could print these gigantic prints, which were cheaper than the paintings. So just as here, signboards are being replaced by flex. One of the benefit of doing this comparison and contrast is that as it (painted sign hoarding) is fading here now and you are getting a massive benefit or influx of this is digital pop art, the art of popular culture is changing.
So, in the 1950’s and 60’s Richard Hamilton, Andy Warhol, and Oldenburg pick it up on this idea of popular culture and the creative benefits there to exploit. Here is where the cultural change is happening, when it was observed, felt and exploited. They manipulated these visual images in America and pushed it (POP) to its limits. Now if we think theoretically we feel what was happening in then there should happen in India now. But the same thing is not happening here. If the template of history is true, where is pop art in India? Indian culture has strange yet unique artistic ideas. Why then does pop art not happen in India now? All of the ingredients are here. Theoretically, pop art should be taking off.
In Atul Dodiya’s work – his whole body of work I like. If you open up the shutter what is beneath that shutter is his self. What is outside is the surface of his nationality, that is to say his cultural identity is his own identity. It has all the signs of pop art but India is wonderful in that sense that some Indian artists are not afraid of utilizing a post modern sense. Working all the way back to dada and working a bit of futurism and take a bit of pop and also from their own cultural nationality and they fuse everything together. This makes something unique and distinctly Indian. In a way some artists in India have skipped over pop using only what they need from it to make artwork, that I think, exists in a realm all it own. Where I do not think artwork in US can manage such things. Because it (US Art market) has bastardized the global body and everyone (the world at market) is looking at it but it (US art market) in turn is not looking out to other global and cultural influences, other than to collect and buy. I don’t think that we in the US are leaning and utilizing global ideas to our full potential.
It is only recently that I have being able to understand traditional modern in Indian art. It took me a lot of time to understand it. I feel conflicted because I am not Indian so I would feel odd using traditional Indian modern in my own work. It is like I can put on all the clothing and try to look like an Indian, but I am not and we would all know that I am not. I just cannot mask my identity. Where as if I was an NRI living in the US the opposite is not so true. The opportunity to be seen as global is more likely because they are fortunate to live in both worlds. Their identity is broad it is more of a global mindset. I am not sure how to over come that other than, for me as an American, to try to understand the world out side my own cultural limitations.
RM: Tell us about the project you are handling under the Fulbright Grant?
AJ: I can answer this question in three parts. The program is awarded to different professionals from different fields. The specific award I received was a student Fulbright Grant. The ultimate goal of the grant is that we are coming over here to do research but at the same time we are a sort of cultural ambassador. So, I am representing an aspect of my country. I am not like my own country/state/ government; I am not like the Hollywood stereotype of what an American is. I am like a regular guy who happens to make art. That is the intension of the Fulbright, to introduce the idea that the US is heterogeneous and is not only about policies, politics and popular culture. Every individual in the world can be confused by the three P’s of their own countries.
I came to India to conduct personal research to understand the Indian culture. As a result I have come as well to dispel preconceived perceptions and myths. (Not that I ever thought this, but) No body is riding elephants here. I have yet see any one break out is spontaneous dance or song and at the street corner there is not a man playing music to a cobra. Getting to know the real India is the second part. I have come over here and allowed myself to observe and take part in things that are not cultural norms to me and to be open to new ideas with out bias.
The third part is the actual project. I altered my project after coming here. My initial idea was to study the materials and methods used by different signboard artists. I was more interested in knowing the processes and manipulation of materials by these artists. However, I abandoned the idea after coming here. The artists where all but gone. I took it as a gateway to study the people who had made signs. It helps me in seeing how India is changing. The old India versus the new India and the conflicts that the people deal with every day as a result of globalism, problems which even you and I deal with. So, globalization is something that belongs to all of us. I deal with it in a different way from how a sign artist might deal with it. That’s another aspect. The most important part of Fulbright grant is the interaction. I become part of the community I am studying and I don’t try to make my own norms or American norms, but investigate and discover new norms. That’s what I need to take it back with me. Sometimes it’s a great project and at other times it’s an experience.
Aron Johnston, Fulbright Research Grantee, 2007-08 believes in the brilliance than the actual intention of the painting. He tells Rollie Mukherjee about his recent solo show titled “signs unseen” held at Chitra Kala Parishath, April 2008. The conversation sheds light on his early works and the sojourn in India. Excerpts:
Rollie Mukherjee: After seeing your entire oeuvre of works one can observe that from abstraction you have moved to the “pop” approach and again you are heading towards an abstraction but with a difference. Now you tend to focus more on “language” as any other pop artist with greater emphasis on semiotics. Your abstraction seems more to be well planned / calculative (the definition pop artist gave for their works) and imitative of popular images and text.
Aron Johnston: What was common among the abstract expressionist (particularly if you compare De Kooning and with Pollock) was the activation of the body and immediacy of thought with their body into canvas. However, if you talk about my work it is often not about my body. May be it is because of its size that it might have some relation with body or viewers body, but surely its not about my body or my immediate thought either. Whereas De Kooning was doing reactions in his paintings, one stroke led to the next stroke and so on. I kind of set up a situation where strokes create a next action and I am kind of separate from that. Well it’s (for me) a matter of defining or developing a system that creates an action that I feel comfortable in making. Therefore, if there was an artist or a group of artists that I can connect to at least with the systematic physical aspect of art, it would be Jasper Johns or Robert Indiana. For example Robert Indiana created a number system in his work so all his paintings had to do with numbers or numerology.
Therefore, we can say that the system activated his joy of painting. With Jasper Johns, it is with his series of letters. He did not have to think about what he had to paint so he says here is the subject now all that is activated is action or activation in the painting which happens in my paintings also. I found something systematic. So now, I don’t need to think about the subject and now I am part of the system and I am merely the vehicle of its production and that’s where I get my creative joy. That does not necessarily explain why I like to destroy the images.
I don’t know how to categorize myself. I don’t really think myself as an abstract painter and even though I look at abstract artists, they are not the people I put myself with or align with. I think of artists like Kosuth or Baldessari are my real influences and my real favourite is Magritte. Because the way Magritte plays with language, I like him. But if you look, my paintings they have nothing to do with the physicality or representations of Magritte. I am influenced more by Magritte than Pollock (even if they do look like abstractionists).
The work, titled “slick burger,” is my first work where I started intentionally exploring the idea of language. There is the text “slick burger” and the image of a train. It looks like a piece of signage. But it’s all invented. This work came out of an argument I had with an art critic. He said “if your work was “slick” you can sell it in New York or Paris gallery or you could never make it as an artist.” I think my art is more like a cheese burger. It is very hard to handle. When you eat it you enjoy it but it gets all over your hands, face and shirt, its messy and so I came up with the idea of “slick burger” because it’s a phrase which doesn’t really make sense. I used the text with an image which doesn’t really make any sense with the text because that was something I believed and I liked. Art for me is like a slow moving train. It is some thing you can sit and watch.
This is where I started to break away from this kind of linear thinking and stopped putting very distinct meanings to my work. The developing goal was to create an absence of meaning with things that seem meaningful.
RM: You had done a street installation in Bangalore and told that you desire to continue more such public displays like any other sign boards. Also you said you believe “art” is non transient and timeless. So what role do you want your art to play, because knowing popular art like sign boards have a transient quality and ends with fulfillment of its purpose?
AJ: If we think about what Kant said about the idea of disinterestedness, an artist puts all of his interest into painting so that the viewer can come and sit in front of a painting and get relaxed by separating from their own interest. From the artist devotion to interest, from this state disinterestedness develops. I liked that theory.
I like things full of too much information, my passion for colours and my interactions to text as form. So then, I create away. They fuse together so the timeless part you are talking about is not stuck to any one viewer. I hope that theoretically, someone can come up to a work and they can try to explore it. They can’t bring too much of their own interest to it. So the only option to it is that they have to relax and be disinterested but that doesn’t mean they don’t like it but it means that they can’t put too much of themselves in that. Therefore, they relax before it that may be the “aura” of it like the Sistine chapel. It is loaded with so much information and the subject matter is so powerful that all you can do is feel, becoming to it. A person does not have to believe in some thing to understand the AWE. You can create so much information that it creates no information that is when it is bigger than… what ever. That is when it touches the void.
RM: You said that you want to make art out of mistake. How did you arrive at this idea of making art? You generally use mediums which are generally considered antithetical to each other.
AJ: Mistakes are sometimes more brilliant than the actual intention of the painting. Painting exists in many parts. The first part is the idea or concept. Then there is part of the painting that exists in the act of making. When you are making a painting, you don’t think of anything. The act of painting becomes the Art and the third part, and there are many more parts thereafter, is when you can analyze what you have done and start finding out mistakes and in my paintings right at the end these mistakes make the work happen I was trying to control it. I spend weeks with the painting and never saw it and then the minute the paint starts to dry and I start to come out of my activation only then does it started to reveal itself as something else. Therefore, my idea coming into the painting wasn’t what I got when I finished it. Which was perfect, that is exactly what I want. I want my idea or concept to be motivated not just as a definition but by action, mistakes are actions that I can take if they work fix if they don’t. I am the coach and the team; the field is the artwork not the opponent.
The work titled “lessons in knot tying” is about the confusion of being tied up in observation or meaning. When you put this order of ABC together with the other images, its (the artworks) intention is to be confused, you actually need to follow a process. Normally to become less confused you need to follow an order I am trying to reverse that. So, this is the painting. In my work, there is chaos but there is an order to create that chaos. In that piece, I have used so much wax that it’s poring over the sides. It is almost like encaustic. I put wax, then draw with crayon, and keep doing this. I draw, heat and then seal it. I use the hot gun to melt the wax, do the drawing, and repeat. This is a very hard to achieve. If I want the drawing to melt faster or slower, I need to adjust the distance of the heat gun. I need to do this process very fast to keep up with the setting time. I am trying to control the material but I am always out of control. The process inspires mistakes. No body can understand this part, I am not sure whether to do it myself, but hopefully they can feel it.
The train in slick burger was printed on a big piece of paper (48 inches) it was printed with non-archival ink and so the ink will fade. So now, the image hardly exists any more. To me this is part of my work. It is breaking down. Its intricate, its part of its beauty, its ability to fall apart. I really like the idea that my artwork is in a state of entropy when the meaning becomes so obliterated / obscure the concept only grows stronger with decay.
I wrote my manifesto on a piece of corrugated cardboard. I wrote on top of the row then on bottom. I wrote on three different sides of the corrugated ridges. I did it so many times so that it became like a black space. It was called “manifesto of every nothing” to mean that it had everything which means it has nothing. So the idea was that the more information I put in, the more likely I am to gain disinterest. Therefore, what I was constantly doing was that each time adding more and more to achieve less and less, touching the void. It is more like a maximalist than minimalist is.
RM: The other day you talked a lot about geo-centrism, anomalism and Diasporas. Do you deal with such socio political and cultural conflict in your work?
AJ: I always like the idea but intentionally talking about geo-centric thoughts or political ideas, those are in me already. So, the work is going to capture some of that but I don’t want my work to be about that so it is this conflict that I create. That is created between me fighting the intension to say something and my intension to create just the visual. I allow the conflict to exist in the painting. Sometimes it’s more apparent sometimes it is less apparent. When it is less apparent I feel more successful when it is more apparent, it is too easy to read. I want the viewer to feel it not know it. I guess not knowing the absolute meaning in my work creates a feeling or conceptual connection similar to such ideas. Geo centric and diasporatic thoughts are ultimately about not knowing to varied extremes.
RM: Do you suffer in defining your work as a high artist dealing with popular from the so called pressures created by galleries and institutional spaces which constantly compel one for definitiveness/ category?
AJ: I would like to be in a category of art where high art happens but you can’t make Art with the intention of it being High Art. Something else outside of the art defines it as high art. Low art also happens – it’s in fact the consequence of not being high art. The person who defines the highs and lows of art is not me. I can only make it and I think, yes its fun for me if my art is in a gallery but the person who gets to categories what art is, then it is not the maker but the observer, the critic, art historian, it’s the society, its time, all these factors. I have actually no control over it. So I think at one time I dabbled with the high art thing then I realize that for me to attempt to do something which is out of my control, is just silly and really a waste of time on my part. All I can do is make art. If some body recognizes it’s relevant then it gets elevated. With more people liking, it gets elevated more. I can’t control that. Folk art exists as an art form. If we take it out of its context/ situation it starts becoming high art. The part of art that I hate is this but I need to relax too.
RM: Do you think self refrentiality in your work an ego trip?
AJ: All artists are narcissist, if they say they are not they are kidding themselves even they are making artwork and it is because they at some point want to see themselves. Once you recognize (ego) then you say; now I can look back and can make it better. Now the trick is that the only way to look at (yourself in your art) is to see history what are the things in history that define you and you look at other art. Albert Einstein said creativity comes out of covering /masking your influences, so he looked at the different physicist. He was building on the ideas of others to define himself. So once he came up with this defining idea, then he only built on top of it with his own ideas. So as artist, we take part in same thing. We look at history and out of it we choose what we really like. Then you put it together like in a soup and mix; then start building on it to define yourself in your art.
“No longer is the challenge to compare my work to others. No. The idea is to develop a personal history from Art history so that others can compare my work to my work.
It is only at that point when there is a marker for true progression in my development.”
(From the presentation)
This was popular in 70’s with artists like Chuck Close in US. He was looking at other artists but then he got the point when he was doing his large pencil drawings and paintings and then started looking these paintings in comparison to his own paintings then looking back what was their in his mind, He created the identity that nobody else has, even to this day. Nobody can reach him. Only Chuck Close can reach Chuck Close. If you copy it (his method) its still just copy. So the trick is to find a why that the person viewing your work first gives reference to your work.
RM: Some of the works you did before coming to India seem to have direct influence of Jasper Johns and Rausenberg, not only in their use of materials but also the strategy of depersonalisation that is talking about your personal symbolically through objects.
AJ: In some of my works the images are all references to the size of my body like a self-portrait. In “lessons in Knot Tying”, I have shown my pants dropped, which is a vulnerable state. The painting, which is leaning out of the wall, that is a portrait done out of wax and plywood and crayon.
I have used all of my personality in a general way. The self-portrait is reference to my self yet; it can be a reference to viewer as well. It is more of a generalized self-portrait. So at the top you see ABC there are three methods of how to tie a knot and in the middle right at the point where there would be my waist or upper thigh is the text all twisted together and at the bottom are my legs. This is the point hard to think about. With my pants in that situation, I am exposed, but the only thing that you are seeing not my upper torso and my gentiles but it is my artwork. So my art work here is equated to my naked body but you don’t really make that jump right away, even though that is the kind of metaphorically imparts the material I use. It is not an easy material to handle, as is art. It should not always easy to understand and digest. So, the material becomes important.
If you recall Jasper Johns paintings “target.” He has this big target and stations at the top that can be opened to reveal castings of his body. Johns was referring to saint Sebastian. He (Johns) was the target. Johns was a homosexual man who was using this symbolism in his artwork to talk about his identity. However, when we look at his work, identity is the last thing that we think about. We think about this beautiful target, then we open the boxes then we can make connections to different aspects of the self. My work operates in the same way at times. I don’t think any artist can make an artwork, which is not about themselves. Think about it even the attempt to do so would be in its self a selfish endeavor. A person cannot get out of oneself. It would be impossible. The challenge would be to make artwork, which has nothing to do with your self. I don’t think it can be done. I think it’s impossible.
RM: What are the differences you find between Indian and American cultural signs?
AJ: You don’t see these signs in the US. All this type of advertisement disappeared from the US 40-60 years ago. I am generalizing, especially in Texas, billboards were banned in places and many regulations were created over the past years too reduce the visual clutter. It (hand painted signs) slowly disappeared. There are still some signboards but it is not all over the place but before that it happened. Back in the 70’s, you could drive in the city and the first thing you see is the signs all over the city. That started disappearing, and then on top of that sign paintings were replaced not by digital works but offset printings. As a result, companies could print these gigantic prints, which were cheaper than the paintings. So just as here, signboards are being replaced by flex. One of the benefit of doing this comparison and contrast is that as it (painted sign hoarding) is fading here now and you are getting a massive benefit or influx of this is digital pop art, the art of popular culture is changing.
So, in the 1950’s and 60’s Richard Hamilton, Andy Warhol, and Oldenburg pick it up on this idea of popular culture and the creative benefits there to exploit. Here is where the cultural change is happening, when it was observed, felt and exploited. They manipulated these visual images in America and pushed it (POP) to its limits. Now if we think theoretically we feel what was happening in then there should happen in India now. But the same thing is not happening here. If the template of history is true, where is pop art in India? Indian culture has strange yet unique artistic ideas. Why then does pop art not happen in India now? All of the ingredients are here. Theoretically, pop art should be taking off.
In Atul Dodiya’s work – his whole body of work I like. If you open up the shutter what is beneath that shutter is his self. What is outside is the surface of his nationality, that is to say his cultural identity is his own identity. It has all the signs of pop art but India is wonderful in that sense that some Indian artists are not afraid of utilizing a post modern sense. Working all the way back to dada and working a bit of futurism and take a bit of pop and also from their own cultural nationality and they fuse everything together. This makes something unique and distinctly Indian. In a way some artists in India have skipped over pop using only what they need from it to make artwork, that I think, exists in a realm all it own. Where I do not think artwork in US can manage such things. Because it (US Art market) has bastardized the global body and everyone (the world at market) is looking at it but it (US art market) in turn is not looking out to other global and cultural influences, other than to collect and buy. I don’t think that we in the US are leaning and utilizing global ideas to our full potential.
It is only recently that I have being able to understand traditional modern in Indian art. It took me a lot of time to understand it. I feel conflicted because I am not Indian so I would feel odd using traditional Indian modern in my own work. It is like I can put on all the clothing and try to look like an Indian, but I am not and we would all know that I am not. I just cannot mask my identity. Where as if I was an NRI living in the US the opposite is not so true. The opportunity to be seen as global is more likely because they are fortunate to live in both worlds. Their identity is broad it is more of a global mindset. I am not sure how to over come that other than, for me as an American, to try to understand the world out side my own cultural limitations.
RM: Tell us about the project you are handling under the Fulbright Grant?
AJ: I can answer this question in three parts. The program is awarded to different professionals from different fields. The specific award I received was a student Fulbright Grant. The ultimate goal of the grant is that we are coming over here to do research but at the same time we are a sort of cultural ambassador. So, I am representing an aspect of my country. I am not like my own country/state/ government; I am not like the Hollywood stereotype of what an American is. I am like a regular guy who happens to make art. That is the intension of the Fulbright, to introduce the idea that the US is heterogeneous and is not only about policies, politics and popular culture. Every individual in the world can be confused by the three P’s of their own countries.
I came to India to conduct personal research to understand the Indian culture. As a result I have come as well to dispel preconceived perceptions and myths. (Not that I ever thought this, but) No body is riding elephants here. I have yet see any one break out is spontaneous dance or song and at the street corner there is not a man playing music to a cobra. Getting to know the real India is the second part. I have come over here and allowed myself to observe and take part in things that are not cultural norms to me and to be open to new ideas with out bias.
The third part is the actual project. I altered my project after coming here. My initial idea was to study the materials and methods used by different signboard artists. I was more interested in knowing the processes and manipulation of materials by these artists. However, I abandoned the idea after coming here. The artists where all but gone. I took it as a gateway to study the people who had made signs. It helps me in seeing how India is changing. The old India versus the new India and the conflicts that the people deal with every day as a result of globalism, problems which even you and I deal with. So, globalization is something that belongs to all of us. I deal with it in a different way from how a sign artist might deal with it. That’s another aspect. The most important part of Fulbright grant is the interaction. I become part of the community I am studying and I don’t try to make my own norms or American norms, but investigate and discover new norms. That’s what I need to take it back with me. Sometimes it’s a great project and at other times it’s an experience.
artconcerns.com,feb2008
Mysterium Tremendum*
Young British artist, Barbara Ash recently presented her sculptural installations at Bangalore’s No.1.Shanthi Road. Reminding the human beings of their mortality through the play of sweet kitsch, the artist made a strong statement, says Rollie Mukherjee in her review.
“Dance footloose on the earth” was the title of the show by Barbara Ash at No.1, Shanthi Road, Bangalore from 2nd to 6th January 2008. Barbara Ash is an English sculptor and this sculpture installation was part of her project which was conceived during her artist’s residency at the Bangalore Art centre. The Title is a take from Horace’s Odes which says –“now is the time to drink, now is the time to dance footloose on the earth” which calls for a celebration as life is momentary and it is going to end. The whole of the gallery space was converted into a surreal wonder land, inviting the viewer to embark a playful journey towards the mysterious and serious questions of existence.
At first when you enter, a colossal 7 ½ feet thermo coal Bunny rabbit encounters us, dominating the Fairy world she has created. The flowers done in Polystyrene P.V.A Plasticine, toy cars done in Fiber Glass, simple floral layout on the ground in pink rangoli are done almost with a child like innocence and expressive ends. You are lost in the fantastic world of the ‘twee’ (sweet Kitsch). But under these kitschy layers are deep questions of existence, authority and hegemony.
This kitschy colourful fairy world works at two levels- as sumptuous consumption and also as a wrap. It hides any physical signs of mortality/ decay. The electrified blue coloured foetuses( only 4inches) lying at each regular interval is surrounded by the mandala of flowers which acts as roads and signs of skull over it as a decorative motive is used as memento-mori (an object kept as a reminder that death is inevitable). Thus at one level she makes us celebrate the nature force which is all surpassing and in plentitude and on the other she brings in the issue of death and the fast paced materialistic world. In this dialectical relationship there is a woven oxymoron which creates a disorder in the stability of an otherwise fictional world and engenders moments of ambivalence/ disruption or vulnerability. Thus she combines the pleasurable with something which is terrifying. It’s inherently threatening because the elements of nature which loom large over humans who are oblivious about their death.
Her works demand “readings” as a text. Sometimes the meaning is continuous and at other times intimately discontinuous. It simultaneously operates literally and allegorically; from aesthetic to philosophical. She has perceived a fragmentary/ non linear approach where the meaning lies in zigzagging levels. She titles different pieces separately but put them under the unitary linking title “dance footloose on earth”.
There is a network of interconnected themes. Also there is a constant flux/ play between what is emphasized and what is de-emphasized like the colossal 7’1/2 feet bunny as authoritative or the vacuum cleaner as labour saving device, western dream as a man driving a car, development as turtle. This creates ambivalence.
In her recent installation one also cant avoid the dynamics of inter cultural dialogue where she sees the conflict between the two societies of England and India from the spectre of binary which is fixed. She uses Hoover or the white man driving the open top sports car as a symbol of technocratic, materialistic west and turtle as symbol of slow pace underdeveloped pristine world untouched by so much of modernization. She is of course more critical of her own culture (western) but she sees India as timeless world unaffected by the globalized, commodified and undergoing a neo-liberalization process.
Thus she avoids seeing the “orient” which is far more complex and heterogeneous. She negates to see the orient as untouched by western colonialism and imperialism which has brought in a complex heterogeneous plural world order. There is a denial to see the postcolonial societies where the elements of tradition and modern cultures collide and form a very anachronistic hybridity which could be perplexing for a western eye.
But by pulling all our attention to the world of material and human’s impending mortality one enters into the larger question of power/ authority which rules our life. Is the huge imposing figure of a bunny rabbit shown as an authoritative like state head or patriarchal head? Or is it the power of nature over technology? Thus her work is intense and operates in an open ended manner and gives way to varied interpretations and pulls us in different directions. Again a reversal where one is reminded by her how any time nature can show its vengeance. There is a terror sublime created where the vast nature appears annihilating or threatening mankind who in their race for pleasure accumulation and luxury.
If one sees her entire body of works done between 1998 to 2007 there is a stylistic/ thematic continuity that preoccupied the artist for years. Her deliberate choice of child like form and popular kitschy colors makes her work significant when one sees it in the context of class and gender issue. Clement Greenberg used the term kitsch as derogation and his version of modernism gained universality and strategically this left out the experiences and creation of women/ non-white, non-western cultures. Thus on these lines her work becomes a strong voice against this. Her work whether it is engaging with gender issue or alienation always talks about existentialist alienation and materialism.
By using teddy bear as Eve she refuses to represent female body which calls for male gaze. By making it sit authoritatively and in one work even her size is larger than Adam she fractures successfully the so called stereotypical designation the patriarchy labels women as sexual, fragile and subservient. Eve becomes an irresistible symbol of power and strength in her hand and also by using the teddy bear image as eve she dissatisfies men and refuses to portray woman as objectified /commodified form. The eve looks like a child and is non-sensuous and it is this which makes it looks sweet and lovable.
She also attacks the catholic obsession with virginity. The works ‘Sitting pretty’(2001), ‘All that glitters’(2002) , ‘Play things’(2005) brings in this dilemma of the female existence which is caught up in religiosity and morality norms set by society.
Her use of allegory and the created surreal dreamy world is so open-ended that it always leaves scope for the reader for his meanings. Another interesting thing about her work is that sometimes symbol ceases to operate as a symbol and just stands for itself. The gigantic peacock (Oxbridge Strut,1995), though she connects it to humanity’s pride can also be read as standing for itself ie nature itself which appears to be supreme and acts as a synedoche of its absence/ presence - as nature’s ghost in the age of industrial globalization and seems to threaten mankind with its sublimity. Her language oscillates between something familiar and something fantastic, literal and metaphoric. She breaks the “author” as an authorial owner of his or her meaning and leaves the work as a text which can be read and reread and is free to create a subtext even at times counter text.
* The title of the essay is taken from Rudolf Otto’s concept of Mysterium Tremendum (mystery that makes you tremble)
Young British artist, Barbara Ash recently presented her sculptural installations at Bangalore’s No.1.Shanthi Road. Reminding the human beings of their mortality through the play of sweet kitsch, the artist made a strong statement, says Rollie Mukherjee in her review.
“Dance footloose on the earth” was the title of the show by Barbara Ash at No.1, Shanthi Road, Bangalore from 2nd to 6th January 2008. Barbara Ash is an English sculptor and this sculpture installation was part of her project which was conceived during her artist’s residency at the Bangalore Art centre. The Title is a take from Horace’s Odes which says –“now is the time to drink, now is the time to dance footloose on the earth” which calls for a celebration as life is momentary and it is going to end. The whole of the gallery space was converted into a surreal wonder land, inviting the viewer to embark a playful journey towards the mysterious and serious questions of existence.
At first when you enter, a colossal 7 ½ feet thermo coal Bunny rabbit encounters us, dominating the Fairy world she has created. The flowers done in Polystyrene P.V.A Plasticine, toy cars done in Fiber Glass, simple floral layout on the ground in pink rangoli are done almost with a child like innocence and expressive ends. You are lost in the fantastic world of the ‘twee’ (sweet Kitsch). But under these kitschy layers are deep questions of existence, authority and hegemony.
This kitschy colourful fairy world works at two levels- as sumptuous consumption and also as a wrap. It hides any physical signs of mortality/ decay. The electrified blue coloured foetuses( only 4inches) lying at each regular interval is surrounded by the mandala of flowers which acts as roads and signs of skull over it as a decorative motive is used as memento-mori (an object kept as a reminder that death is inevitable). Thus at one level she makes us celebrate the nature force which is all surpassing and in plentitude and on the other she brings in the issue of death and the fast paced materialistic world. In this dialectical relationship there is a woven oxymoron which creates a disorder in the stability of an otherwise fictional world and engenders moments of ambivalence/ disruption or vulnerability. Thus she combines the pleasurable with something which is terrifying. It’s inherently threatening because the elements of nature which loom large over humans who are oblivious about their death.
Her works demand “readings” as a text. Sometimes the meaning is continuous and at other times intimately discontinuous. It simultaneously operates literally and allegorically; from aesthetic to philosophical. She has perceived a fragmentary/ non linear approach where the meaning lies in zigzagging levels. She titles different pieces separately but put them under the unitary linking title “dance footloose on earth”.
There is a network of interconnected themes. Also there is a constant flux/ play between what is emphasized and what is de-emphasized like the colossal 7’1/2 feet bunny as authoritative or the vacuum cleaner as labour saving device, western dream as a man driving a car, development as turtle. This creates ambivalence.
In her recent installation one also cant avoid the dynamics of inter cultural dialogue where she sees the conflict between the two societies of England and India from the spectre of binary which is fixed. She uses Hoover or the white man driving the open top sports car as a symbol of technocratic, materialistic west and turtle as symbol of slow pace underdeveloped pristine world untouched by so much of modernization. She is of course more critical of her own culture (western) but she sees India as timeless world unaffected by the globalized, commodified and undergoing a neo-liberalization process.
Thus she avoids seeing the “orient” which is far more complex and heterogeneous. She negates to see the orient as untouched by western colonialism and imperialism which has brought in a complex heterogeneous plural world order. There is a denial to see the postcolonial societies where the elements of tradition and modern cultures collide and form a very anachronistic hybridity which could be perplexing for a western eye.
But by pulling all our attention to the world of material and human’s impending mortality one enters into the larger question of power/ authority which rules our life. Is the huge imposing figure of a bunny rabbit shown as an authoritative like state head or patriarchal head? Or is it the power of nature over technology? Thus her work is intense and operates in an open ended manner and gives way to varied interpretations and pulls us in different directions. Again a reversal where one is reminded by her how any time nature can show its vengeance. There is a terror sublime created where the vast nature appears annihilating or threatening mankind who in their race for pleasure accumulation and luxury.
If one sees her entire body of works done between 1998 to 2007 there is a stylistic/ thematic continuity that preoccupied the artist for years. Her deliberate choice of child like form and popular kitschy colors makes her work significant when one sees it in the context of class and gender issue. Clement Greenberg used the term kitsch as derogation and his version of modernism gained universality and strategically this left out the experiences and creation of women/ non-white, non-western cultures. Thus on these lines her work becomes a strong voice against this. Her work whether it is engaging with gender issue or alienation always talks about existentialist alienation and materialism.
By using teddy bear as Eve she refuses to represent female body which calls for male gaze. By making it sit authoritatively and in one work even her size is larger than Adam she fractures successfully the so called stereotypical designation the patriarchy labels women as sexual, fragile and subservient. Eve becomes an irresistible symbol of power and strength in her hand and also by using the teddy bear image as eve she dissatisfies men and refuses to portray woman as objectified /commodified form. The eve looks like a child and is non-sensuous and it is this which makes it looks sweet and lovable.
She also attacks the catholic obsession with virginity. The works ‘Sitting pretty’(2001), ‘All that glitters’(2002) , ‘Play things’(2005) brings in this dilemma of the female existence which is caught up in religiosity and morality norms set by society.
Her use of allegory and the created surreal dreamy world is so open-ended that it always leaves scope for the reader for his meanings. Another interesting thing about her work is that sometimes symbol ceases to operate as a symbol and just stands for itself. The gigantic peacock (Oxbridge Strut,1995), though she connects it to humanity’s pride can also be read as standing for itself ie nature itself which appears to be supreme and acts as a synedoche of its absence/ presence - as nature’s ghost in the age of industrial globalization and seems to threaten mankind with its sublimity. Her language oscillates between something familiar and something fantastic, literal and metaphoric. She breaks the “author” as an authorial owner of his or her meaning and leaves the work as a text which can be read and reread and is free to create a subtext even at times counter text.
* The title of the essay is taken from Rudolf Otto’s concept of Mysterium Tremendum (mystery that makes you tremble)
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