https://www.goethe.de/ins/in/en/kul/art/aus/ind.html

Art is Life: New Beginnings is just 4 days away! Come join us as we celebrate the opening of MAP with a week-long schedule of events dedicated to celebrating art and the community, and exploring new relationships through collaborations and art discourse.  

Art is Life: New Beginnings is our new chapter as an institution which will finally see us interacting with art and each other in person.

You can spend your day at the museum exploring our collection through the different opening exhibitions, installations and digital experiences. We have also curated a range of talks, performances, workshops and screenings for you at the museum through the week.

For those of you who will be unable to join us in person, we have a special film coming up to mark the opening, and to offer curated content for our digital audiences. Here’s a short trailer of Digital Art is Life, coming soon for all of you. Tune in to our website on 18th February at 6pm to watch the film.

Where the human language falls short in communicating a higher idea, ceramic art can present a canvas to express it with eloquence, said Aurovilian ceramic artist Rakhee Kane. 

The artist is showcasing some of her recent ceramic works based on the motifs of seed pods and totems at the Centre d’Art Gallery, Citadines in Auroville, at the “Within/Without” exhibition. It is on till February 11. 

The seed pod has, for long, been a source of fascination, she said. “Seed pods hold an entire universe within them…..; I see them as containers of diverse forms of life,” said the artist, who has established the Aavartan Studio in Auroville.

This concept leads on to the Chinese Taoist philosopher Lao-Tzu’s observation on nihility or nothingness — in essence it is in the emptiness of the earthen pot that its usefulness as a container for holding water is derived, she said. The totem motif, too, ties in with this phase of the artist’s journey. “In tribal cultures across the world, including ancient India, totem poles were a kind of open shrines or reference points where people paused for a moment to perhaps centre themselves.” 

“The totem poles depict various points of my journey; each a place to hold and centre oneself. They act as anchors that, once thrown, allow me to float on these moments. The show is my pause point of reference, a place to which my life has brought me, finally! It is also an offering to my mentors, my teachers, and my inspirations,” she said.

“Sharing this series is my way of taking a pause and evaluating my own journey, allowing myself to touch the core of my experience,” said Rakhee Kane, whose tutelage under the pioneer Ray Meeker, at the Golden Bridge Pottery, in 2005 helped chart a much-needed direction in her work and expanded her artistic vision. 

In drawing motifs from nature, Rakhee Kane’s work utilises a variety of techniques — firing with soda, wood or Raku — and is in constant engagement with a spirit of experimentation. 

The embellishments on each form are enhanced by means of soda firing, cone five terracotta and stoneware. Totem objects and seed pods are, in a way, connected concepts. “Pods being containers of life and the linear totems a reference point to them, complete the idea of the man-made and nature,” Rakhee Kane said.

Lately, the artist has been working on developing new forms that reflect the inner search for a perfect form. “Your inner transformation intersects with your art and reshapes the way you approach it,” she said.

Along this journey, she finds every day objects unlocking their magic in different ways to inspire newer interpretations.

“Clay is an incredibly receptive material. Working with a lump of clay makes one grounded. It is a calming influence at a subconscious level and opens up a connection with one’s spiritual side,” she said.

Read the full article here:

Varma, Dinesh. „Ceramic Art as Expressive Visual Language“. The Hindu, 7. Februar 2023, Puducherry. https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/puducherry/ceramic-art-as-expressive-visual-language/article66481770.ece.

While working at the Indian Embassy, in Paris, Tapas Bhatt met Astad Deboo at an International Dance Competition and invited him to Auroville to perform at the Sri Aurobindo Auditorium. Astad became a regular visiting guest in Auroville and we were fortunate to see his magnificent whirling piece set to Tagore’s poem, a slow, swirling infinity. He also brought his work with the martial arts dancers of Manipur, his work with dancers with hearing impairment from America, quite a feat, produced as a full scale, fun-filled choreography. In Auroville Astad had an appreciative, full house audience for his performances. He also offered dance workshops and got the puppeteer, Padamjee, to show us his craft. Astad loved coming to Auroville, to hang out in Pondicherry, perform at the Lycee and making many friends wherever he was. His awards were many, including the Sangeet Natak Akademi award and the Padmashri. 

Astad (13 July 1947 – 10 December 2020) was an early pioneer, breaking ground to other shores and opening the door of possibility for contemporary dance in India. He came to forge a unique style in Indian Contemporary Dance that carries so many influences in it. Dancers in Auroville were fascinated by his trajectory which included Martha Graham, Pina Bausch, of being commissioned by Pierre Cardin to choreograph for the legendary Maya Plisetskaya, plus his assimilation of Kathak, Kathakali, Bharatanatyam, its abhinaya, the  different Indian martial art forms, poetry, a sufi spirit, as well as his attention to stage design, play with costumes, the eclectic music, all melded into something now easily recognizable as the School of Astad. This was also in evidence in the choreography he created, long distance, for Anita R Ratnam’s lockdown initiative, just a few months ago – simple, sparse, yet full of Astad’s original complexity, rigour and grace – a delight to watch. His last works show a tendency to start deep, unfurl slowly and open wings to fly.

It was great knowing you Astad. Thanks for passing by Auroville. Keep flying with the Light.

Contemporary Indian dancer Astad Deboo passed away in Mumbai on December 10. Born in 1947, Deboo was trained in Kathak and Kathakali and went on to marry the two classical forms to create a fusion dance form. With a career spanning over 50 years, Deboo — a recipient of Padma Shri in 2007 — also choreographed for directors like Mani Ratnam and Vishal Bhardwaj. (Photo: Express Archive/ Designed by Gargi Singh)

See the full Pictorial Tribute online >

Deboo employed his training in Indian classical dance forms of kathak as well as kathakali to create a unique fusion dance form.

Mumbai, December 10

Contemporary Indian dancer Astad Deboo, known for amalgamating Indian and western dance techniques, died here on Thursday, his family said. He was 73.

Deboo employed his training in Indian classical dance forms of kathak as well as kathakali to create a unique fusion dance form.

“He left us in the early hours of December 10, at his home in Mumbai, after a brief illness, bravely borne,” the family announced on social media.

“He leaves behind a formidable legacy of unforgettable performances combined with an unswerving dedication to his art, matched only by his huge, loving heart that gained him thousands of friends and a vast number of admirers,” it said. Read full article >

Sometimes I open the window and the dusk rain touches my face,
a lightness on the edges of knowing
that when this frozen summer fails, children locked
without knowledge of tomorrow’s light
will leap as the sun breaks, molten through their corridors,
night fleeing rapidly from their eyes –
while mothers and fathers hurtling with the hurricane will struggle
to stand still, struggle to let go the darkness.

Continue reading at Live Wire

Maharaj-ji was Gautama’s personal moron, or a shared man-servant, when he chose to think otherwise. It was a regular job, nine to five, perks and bonus. But there were times when he tired of it. On such days he turned to Ero Nus, Gautama’s flat mate, for solace and random wisdom.

‘Maharaj-ji,’ Ero Nus obliged from his desk, ‘times have changed. Life is changing faster than salt peanuts. Tell your erstwhile master that.’

‘What’s so erst about Gautama? Maharaj-ji grumbled. ‘I thought he was just for a while anyway, like the job you once got.’

Continue reading >https://thebombayreview.com/an-inside-story-by-anuradha-majumdar/

            In terms of speaking for itself, Dominique Jacques’ latest exhibition at Centre D’Art was one of the best-equipped I’ve ever seen. The relation between the 3D pieces, or ‘U.F.O.’s’ (Unidentified Found Objects) and their large canvas counterparts created a curiously airless atmosphere that was all too refreshing- finally, the eye of the artist, on view for all to see! The nature of the objects, too- a table fan studded with decomposed leaves, roller skates topped with a feather duster, a microscope mired in cement- suggested a strong link to Duchamp and the more impatient side of the 20th-century avant-garde. Ideas about chance operation in art reach their logical postmodern conclusion here, where the ‘found object’ is not found in the same way as Rauschenberg ‘finding’ a painting in John Cage’s tire tracks, but through complete apprehension of the ordinary until it takes on alien qualities.

            The background story behind the ‘U.F.O.’s’ is an interesting one. Jacques was inspired by the idea of “a small group of spiritual seekers in the early 80’s secretly transforming certain everyday objects of the period…and after having…imbued them with a specific power, concealing them in strategic locations with the aim of protecting and helping humankind…to face the growing challenges of the future.” Part of this fascinating and far-reaching concept is a close attention to situational detail, even including a map detailing the places around Auroville where the objects were ‘found’ in the year 2030, as well as an accompanying film featuring the supposed finders marveling at their discoveries and the connection they feel to them.

            It’s a wonderfully put-together exhibition, yet this very quality contributed to a feeling of crampedness while viewing it. While Jacques says that the most interesting element for her was interacting with the individuals who discover the objects and seeing how they “engage with the narrative”, these intense video backstories don’t feel all that connected to the central narrative expressed by the physical structures. Both the sculptures and paintings have a surrealist, magnetic quality that makes them strong enough to stand alone; taken together, they meld into one visual experience that carries all necessary and possible implications within it. For me, this invitation to see was the focal point of the exhibition. #3: Table Fan, for example- dirty bronze, covered with wire and dead leaves, looks like it’s about to suddenly fall apart, even though it’s made of metal. Yet its painted incarnation emanates sheer strength in every way, from its bold red lines of glass to the collage of (seemingly) silkscreen imagery that animates the rotors, to the uneven, swirling light blue wash behind that appears to move with the air currents of the fan. A similar change occurs in #2: Transformer, where an iron transformer is perched on a wooden platform and outfitted with a brass bell. The symbolic possibilities here are endless- the transformer could be anything, from a metaphor for human greed, all the way into religious connotations. The painting then completes the thought- the object itself becomes a rust-coloured square divided into vertical rectangles. Placed directly in the middle of a gorgeously wounded, multi-hued decalcomania, the bars indicate a sense of shifting perspective, appearing at once as a prison cell and a window.

            This process-based view of the object is on fullest display in #9 and #10- Microscope and Speaker. The latter is highly opaque in its style, yet displays perhaps the greatest harmony between its separate parts. The speaker itself is housed in a brass box, which is mounted on a block of wood and flanked by a pair of traditional wooden statues depicting a pair of women, each on one knee and blowing a trumpet. This evocation of an ancient fanfare, combined with both the brightness and cheapness of modernity (the crinkled, polished brass; the flares of rust on the speaker) creates a mini-environment that draws the viewer in, spurring one to meditate on the structure and eventually break it down to its basic materials. We are left then with a meditation on medium, rather than on the subject, or combination of subjects. This idea might be buried and lost under other associations, were it not for the canvas that accompanies it; here, the speaker itself is reduced to the pulsing center of the canvas, with the rest being taken up by a vivid yet abstract dynamism. Movement here is the main focus, with uneven blue oblongs representing the motion of sound traveling through space-time, symbolized by the éclaboussure of the background.

            The range of this exhibition was stunning both in its breadth and its unity. Jacques has managed to offer complimentary reflections on different forms by recognizing their innate qualities and matching  them with her artistic materials of choice. Her unusual integration of glass within her paintings creates a starkness and power that brings to mind both the Pop-ier rudeness of urban artists such as Keith Haring and the more self-consciously primitive ideas of Dubuffet and the Art Brut movement, yet the core of ‘U.F.O.’s’ is unabashedly contemporary, both in its triumphs and its shortcomings. Rarely can one see such a complete expression of human vision in such a direct, stripped-down setting. That the expression itself was weighed down with a few layers of subjectivism and speculative fiction seems to me more like proof of its real and true existence- in a story balanced between the 1980’s and 2030, how else could we recognize our own space and time, if not by a determined excess of stimuli?

Down, To The Crossroads- Adil Writer’s Hunt for The Good Stuff

​“If I said anything sacrilegious, please quote me.” This was Adil Writer’s sign-off to me as I took off on foot out of Dana Community in the dusty afternoon light, after an interview that shed more light than I’d ever hoped on the creative process of one of India’s most interesting and innovative artists. Within an art scene that is all too often mired in the self-consciously provincial, Writer’s work ethic and ‘outsider’ personality offers both a refreshing change of pace and a sense of clarity that is often lacking elsewhere.

​Adil’s latest work is a fifteen feet-tall ceramic mural/installation at a private residence in Bangalore. Entitled Treasure Hunt, it spotlights jars, vases and other creations embedded- some ready to fly off, some drowned- in a cubist sea of blue-green tile. Quite monolithic in scale, it strongly evokes his origins in architecture, yet the flavor of the work lies in its intimacy- its ability to sectionalise itself under scruple, isolating small parts to communicate directly with the viewer before bringing them back to the ‘surface’. It’s a fascinating effect, but these are not snapshots in time and space like Rauschenberg’s ‘combines’ or Cornell’s boxed assemblages, where each individual element has its specific meaning (often more than one). For Writer, the name was arbitrary; the assortment of materials scattered in all directions at the site led him to the title naturally. The installation started with a celebrated interior designer in Bangalore, Shernavaz Bharucha, showing him a pixelated photo of a small assemblage and saying she’d like “something similar but more dense, only magnified to cover a large wall”. With this to work from, he created a work made up of modules, individual pieces which together would form the mural. “It’s not just ceramics, it’s also about architecture,” he muses. “With this monumental scale, we decided to break up the wall into modules- ‘we’ being me and my colleague, Tosha Parmar, who also has a recent past-life in architecture. When I was an architect in Bombay, I had several issues with artists who were supplying murals & installations to me, because many didn’t know how to install something that they had made… and now that I am on the other side of the fence, I know what the architects face, so I make it easier for them!”

​Writer’s architectural background drives this utilitarian side of his work, and it’s this side that makes it so unique and multifaceted. Upon first viewing the mural, my initial reaction was both deep and rather specific. In its name, its peculiarly fragmented quality and the way its flatness is betrayed by the ‘depth’ implicit in the submerged pottery, I found it brought me very close to the feeling of raw memory, of those recollections that are called up from seemingly nowhere and often barely scrape the surface of the conscious mind. Adil considers this before making himself clear.

​“Thing is, in most of my work, I’ll give it a title that’s really very ambiguous. I don’t want to lead you into something, I don’t want to call something ‘Sunset’ or ‘Meditation’ or some corny thing like that, you know what I’m saying? I leave it to you to decide, you work it out. Everyone has their own way of seeing, and it’s not for me to lead them there. It’s up to me to see where they are and get them to tell me about it. I like that feedback.” This is the architectural side of Writer’s work, the feeling of concrete, physical reality. Sure, there’s abstraction here, there’s symbolism, there’s pure ideas aplenty- but at the end of the day, the essence is in the object itself, in its form, its scale, and the natural Dadaist bent of clay as a medium.

​“I don’t think I have stopped being an architect. I’ve just stopped doing those kinds of jobs and moved to ceramic work which is very architectural. So many of these smaller things…” He sweeps his hand around the studio impatiently. “This is still architecture. You blow it up and it could be a monument… So, you never really give up something you’ve studied and worked on for so long, it’s always there inside you. It just has to manifest in different ways.” For Adil, these different ways include his unfired-clay paintings, as well as both functional and architectural ceramics. I personally first discovered his work in the form of a painting in Sante Clinic while waiting to get blood drawn; the way the early afternoon sunlight hit the speckled canvas and altered the colours from every angle produced a remarkable centering effect on the senses, even driving my fear of needles (temporarily) out of my head. Now, talking to the man behind the canvas, I can see where that wave of serenity came from; here is an artist who does not distinguish between ‘high’ and ‘low’ art, functional or sculptural ceramics. This disregard for both archaic and contemporary boundaries within the arts is one of the factors that makes Writer’s work feel so constantly fresh.

​“In Sanskrit, there’s no separate word for ‘art’ and ‘craft’. It’s the same word, kala. This ‘arts and crafts’ nonsense came to India with the British. They had ‘art’ classes and ‘craft’ classes. If you did something pretty in an art class, the teacher put it up on the notice board. But if you made a really nice paper boat, it’s going nowhere besides the rubbish bin! From that point on, as a kid, you’re led to think that art is ‘ART’ and crafts are just …crafts, which is ridiculous.”

​Writer’s chess move against this persistently dogmatic mindset, is his ‘Crusade’ series, where he makes “ceramic panels- two-dimensional, very painterly- then I fire them, and match the sizes with canvases. Then I paint the canvases to compliment the fired clay, and combine the two as collages. So, until you touch it, you don’t know what it is. That’s my crusade. People will pay exorbitant amounts for a painting on a wall, but for the same thing in clay they’ll say ‘this is just mud.’ That attitude is just so wrong.”

​As for Treasure Hunt, like most of Adil’s work, it blurs the line between art and craft, architecture and utility; there is something ancient in this aesthetic, one that revels in its own existence without caring for the reason why. The ‘raw memory’ impression is bolstered by fitted blocks of ceramic colour and the bits and pieces of pottery that are integrated in its surface. Much like his clay paintings, the textural aspect of the work is created by a mixture of chance and composition. “I can never just sit down and sketch something and say ‘I’m gonna make this today,’” he says. “What happens, happens. There’s always something in your mind which you are working towards, but I can’t sit and plan that out. It should just happen.” The size of the installation itself required a rearrangement of both conception and technique, and one that I found particularly inspiring.

​“It had to fit together; I didn’t want a connected mural, where it’s just one tile connected to another, but I also wasn’t interested in going completely random… Think of it like a mosaic- if one piece is broken in the middle, you can fix it if it’s a painting, but you can’t always make a matching piece with clay.” Writer’s modular answer to this dilemma gives his work a musical sense of mobility that is very unexpected from a piece of such magnitude, with the varying shades and surface heights interacting with its sheer scale to create a strangely intimate effect that is incredibly appealing- in both a traditional aesthetic sense, as well as on a more guttural level. It’s something you can touch and feel, even if you’re not right in front of it.

​In his intensely provocative commentary on the state of postmodern art, The Painted Word, writer Tom Wolfe described the end goal of late-twentieth-century art as “to become nothing less than Literature plain and simple.” This goal has persisted and grown into our millennium. A great deal of art takes this approach- interminable chains of associations from different avenues of life, linked together to create a commentary; whether it be a celebration of diversity, a statement on inequality, or an argument detailing the absurdity of trying to create something as inane and subjective as ‘beauty’ within a global capitalist dystopia. The keyproblem here then becomes a spatial one. The three main branches of art each lay claim to a particular way of dealing with space that the other two can only approximate- music creates it, literature occupies it, and the visual arts are it. A painting or sculpture cannot make a dingy storefront church into a cathedral, as some of Bach’s organ works can, nor is it able to set up shop in one’s brain in the same way that the ghosts of Rimbaud and Burroughs could. It is however, the most divine and productive form that physical space can take while in the hands of mankind. In Treasure Hunt, as in much of his work, Adil Writer shows that his architectural background is key to his dizzying conception; this is not art that is self-referential or that requires a ‘trained eye’ to look at. Our world now turns more and more to art as a societal tool, vacillating between using it as a mirror and an antidote for Life and our increasingly cyclic, repetitive existences. Yet here, at the crossroads of sculpture, painting and architecture- of ‘art’ and ‘craft’- we find a secret third option; using our surroundings to simply bring Life and Art a little closer together. With that in mind, we may be dealing with some glorious sacrilege after all.

MINT LOUNGE FEATURES MEDICLOWN

How clowns bring cheer to dementia patients:

https://lifestyle.livemint.com/health/wellness/how-clowns-bring-cheer-to-dementia-patients-111603099593496.html

InKo Centre, in association with K-Art International Exchange Association, Busan, invited entries from middle/high and higher secondary school students from Chennai for the 2020 International Teenage Design & Art Award. Students from 11 countries including South Korea, India, Japan, U.S.A., U.K., China, Vietnam, Singapore, Philippines, Ukraine and Canada, participated in the competition this year.

We received 127 paintings from students in Chennai for the preliminary level of this contest, Following further vetting and selection, 20 entries from India were selected and sent to Korea for the final stage of the competition. To view the winning entries, please click the view button below.

View 

A FILLIP TO ANALOGUE PHOTOGRAPHY

A new darkroom attached to Centre d’Art, Citadines was inaugurated on Friday 8th August.

The darkroom is to be used for the processing of film and for printing of analogue photographs. It is primarily funded by Centre d’Art, which was founded by Dominic Darr, herself an analogue photographer, who spent a large chunk of her life in Auroville documenting the development and evolution of the city, especially the construction of the Matrimandir. Hence this darkroom is also to help preserve her legacy and also that of Giorgio Molinari who also spent an inordinate amount of time documenting the important happenings in Auroville, initially through analogue and later and through digital photography. He, along with several other Aurovilians, were instrumental in donating a lot of equipment and chemicals for this darkroom.

Analogue photography is fading fast due to the advent of digital cameras and mobile phone cameras. However, any photographer who has done any analogue photography will attest to the importance and beauty of this process. There is a whole generation born during the digital era that are discovering this form of image-making and are fascinated and curious to learn more. For them this darkroom will hopefully kindle interest in this wondrous process and help create a solid foundation in this medium. 

Thanks to the Centre d’Art team for holding onto and prolonging yet another medium from disappearing from the face of this earth.

By Sasikant Somu

https://www.telegraphindia.com/entertainment/architect-anupama-kundoo-on-her-creation-wall-house-which-is-now-being-celebrated-on-the-apple-tv-series-home/cid/1766260

https://publicdomainreview.org/blog/2020/03/free-colouring-book

https://daily.jstor.org/pompeii-mania-in-the-era-of-romanticism/?utm_term=Pompeii%20Mania%20in%20the%20Era%20of%20Romanticism&utm_campaign=jstordaily_04022020&utm_content=email&utm_source=Act-On+Software&utm_medium=email

African Pavilion presents the fundraising Exhibition USO VERA
masks by @centocani
photos by @sri_kolari, Elisa & Igor
venue: International Space at Bharat Nivas
31st Jan- 6th Mar
Mon – Fri 10 am-12pm / 2 pm-4 pm

The 2^nd National Painting Exhibition at Bharat Nivas was one of the times that I again had to blink and again remind myself of what Auroville actually is- a city, not a town spread too thin. It takes the magnitude of a city to attract exhibitions of this kind, where the aim is to give the locals a real overview of what’s happening, rather than simply giving the townsfolk some pretty pictures to look at. For this, we have to thank Sridalaadevi G, who organized the event and took some time one day to show me around. Her stated idea behind the exhibition was an excellent one- to “help upcoming artists to learn from the legends”, while the legends can take a peek at what the younger generation is up to. After all, it’s not often that up-and-coming talent is showcased right next to perceived masters, so such happenings are always a big deal. In this particular case however, I think the exhibition may have fulfilled its purpose almost too well.

The downfall of modern Indian painting could be said to be its love of the literal. Compare it, for argument’s sake, to the great black American painters of the twentieth century- Norman Lewis, Aaron Douglas, Jacob Lawrence, William H. Johnson- what is now known as the Harlem Renaissance school. Faced with seemingly endless social and economic struggles, they represented the world around them with a shrewd, discerning eye and a knack for celebrating the iconic with both irony and innocence; witness Lawrence’s Panel 28 from his Frederick Douglas series (about a bloody Civil War-era lynch-mob riot in the streets of New York, by whites who refused a draft to fight for slaves, and so decided to kill them instead). This is a subject of mythic importance to African-American history, yet Lawrence’s painting deals with it so subtly, so symbolically, it is almost imperceptible- what is left is the residue of pain, a sense of doom that is wholly impersonal but serves the picture far better than any explicit references would. This is the crucial point that not many Indian artists seem to agree on. Modern Indian art is a tidier affair, based on formal recontextualization of traditional imagery until the artist arrives at a point where they only have to fill in the blanks- a sort of reconstruction of memory, aided by art. While this can invite some fascinating crossovers, they stop short at being crossovers; much like the vast majority of Indo-European fusion music, these experiments don’t blossom into a fully formed idea or expression because they try to simply bridge two worlds without actually attempting to harmonize them- the visual equivalent of hard-rock guitar players shredding next to Carnatic violin players over a rock-steady 4/4 beat. The end result is often closer to refined decoration than fully-formed expression.

So how refreshing to see at least a handful of artists leave these ideas behind and reach for something different altogether! Among the older participants, the first to really catch my eye were Chitra N and John Joseph. Joseph’s work in particular had a homegrown tenacity that immediately drew me in, planting me firmly in a delta-like world of fine, winding etchings. He says that all his works depict “frames of mind,” yet it’s hard not to imagine him being very connected to his land when his works could well be abstract aerial landscapes of Kerala backwaters. Chitra, meanwhile, comes from a more formal side, which is visible but not overbearing in the least. Her present series of abstracted cityscapes shows a brilliant way with color, often working in blocks over layered and textured backgrounds in a way that recalls a more organic incarnation of Mondrian- indeed, her canvas Infinity brought the Dutch theosophist’s early Dune series immediately to mind, showcasing some of the wonders of abstract landscape painting; with a tilt of the head, a cityscape can become a seascape, and vice versa. 

Of the older generation of artists exhibited, the three others who stood out were Vidya Sundar and her canvas Denested- The Conquest, Mookkaiya K with his monumental charcoal work Nandi, and two small canvasses by Dr Zaheda Khanam. Sundar’s work seems to glow when one first sees it- a combination of her chosen medium (acrylics and Korean hanji paper) and the amount of space she leaves blank. The reddish capillaries of the paper throw her central figures- the bird and the apple- into exquisite relief, buoyed by a very light touch with her acrylics.  There is a sense of foreboding in the picture, indeed of the ‘helplessness’ she describes feeling when confronted with the confusion and displacement of the postmodern world at large. Meanwhile, Dr Khanam’s pieces are like an interlude unto themselves, with her dabs and scratches of pigment cutting and dripping across the canvas to produce a startling surrealist effect. Her Beautiful Scene is just that, but quite ghostly- simple skeletons of trees poking out of a grey-blue mist, with generous dabs of white and red both acting as foliage and lending a dreamlike sense of depth to the composition. Mookkaiya’s Nandi is a piece that can make you stop in your tracks. Not many mediums can capture movement like charcoal, and Mookkaiya is an obvious master. Here also is the bull, that one fail-safe all-around symbol of India- within its symbolic quotation marks there lies everything that could be said about the country or its philosophies. It is rendered here with an incomparable amount of power, majesty, sheer force- a focus on the ellipse as his stroke of choice makes for a vortex-like density, particularly around the shoulders and the eyes, where the spiraling blackness turns the bull’s sockets into voids. The commonness of the subject does not in any way detract from the work, and here is where Mookkaiya succeeds where so many of his colleagues/contemporaries do not- he doesn’t allow the omnipresence of his subject matter to get in the way of what he himself wishes to make it say.

For me, however, the most refreshing part of the exhibition was getting to see the younger artists’ works next to the previous generation’s. Despite the commonly held notion that young artists are not as serious as their elders, this was precisely the aspect that made me react arguably more favorably toward their work. The best examples of this new generation are largely free from pretension- a watermark in any field, let alone visual art. They seem to make art because they have to, not because it’s their profession or responsibility. Keren Soruba Joseph is an example of one of these. She believes that we must all surround ourselves with what makes us happiest, which is her reason for making art. And it shows- her textured, expressionistic canvases, exemplified here by Floating City, have more than a touch of the surreal and none of the cultural pretension of some of her older peers. One feels as if the canvas is a direct window into her world, not the world of her family or city or religion. It’s a warm breath of personality in a national art world that has lingered far too long on the impersonal, the metaphysical, and the historical.

Vidya Lakshmi continues in the metaphysical direction, but her eye for nature speaks just as clearly; in her thick swirls of impasto, she manages to perfectly capture the relationship of two elements, fire and water. The confluence of elements always brings to mind grandiose imagery, yet her constructions here are imposingly humble, focusing on space and flow of colour to end up with a composition that almost seems to be collapsing on itself.

Iyappan V, meanwhile, nailed a replica of Chagall in his canvas Unity, but his second work changed my mind entirely. An ingeniously conceived abstract, it evoked any number of allusions; for this writer, with its black background and shadowy shapes under a delicate red splatter, it brought to mind the backroads of the American west- North Dakota, Montana, yellow-eyed houses scattered haphazard in blank rolls of night, with radio towers blinking, blinking towers of crimson and electricity  spitting out FM comfort for all the lonely drivers. Iyappan’s way with colour is impressive, as is his eye for the bigger picture- the way he isolates his scene by surrounding the “night” with an uneven white border is a crucial, and brilliant, decision.

Sridalaadevi G herself, the curator of the exhibition, offered up her own works to be displayed as well, and they provided another high point. As constructive abstractions, they again take nature as their starting point and move forward, in her hands becoming first-person scenes from the life of an insect. Her forms are strongly biomorphic and completely unforced, and she tempers their complexity with a childlike, Fauvist palette that lends a sense of both wonder and urgency to her compositions.

These are some of the artists I really enjoyed. But the best thing about an exhibition such as this was to be able to compare the works of different artists, to see what spoke to me and what didn’t, and to figure out why. For example, the majority of the rest were split down the middle between pure abstraction and pure regionalism. The pure abstractionists- Viswam A, Thirunavukarasu S, Ravinath PM, Ravi R- brought to mind many associations, some too close. Pure abstraction in today’s art world is hard to pursue in a wholly formal manner, and Viswam’s evocations of DeKooning and Kline, alongside Thirunavukarasu’s of James Brooks and Baziotes, seems like an unnecessarily low bow to the Cold War abstract masters. In this sense, the curation of the exhibit has played an important part- in a quest to expose the most serious of artists, it has also revealed the downfall of seriousness. On the opposite end, there was banality as well, with the usual smattering of village women with covered heads and bindis, lotuses, sunsets, tigers, Krishnas, Buddhas and other icons all vying to be the national mascot. This is where I find it hard to judge anything, because the painting originates from what is essentially pop culture- it retains no personal meaning for the viewer to interpret or feel. There is a great chance that a lotus or a religious statue will mean the same thing for one person as it does for another, and likewise for a saree-wearing woman carrying a clay pot atop her head. The real meat of what is to be expressed is no longer in these images, for they’ve been milked dry by decades of overuse in a formal setting, in which they are stripped of the real significance they attain in a traditional folk-art setting.

In Claude Levi-Strauss’ autobiographical manifesto of structuralism Triste Tropiques, he compares and contrasts the difference between native craftsmen in Brazil and Bengal, namely the Ganges delta. The inhabitants of the delta had been made to change their lifestyle completely in order to meet European demand for raw jute and woven goods. During the 19^th century they had been banned by British authorities from practicing their traditional weaving in order to leave markets open for cotton goods from Manchester, resulting in the loss of an entire part of their culture. A hundred years later, they were being forced, through destruction of their arable land for jute production, to import most of their food; entire regions were devoted to the production of pearl buttons, with no sign of any other local craft; when independence was achieved and the markets toppled, the entire region almost starved to death overnight. On the other hand, the lazier brand of colonialism practiced by the Portugese in Brazil, perhaps together with some strange cultural twist, resulted in small-town craftsmanship thriving. Many markets were kept local, and craftspeople could still eke out a decent living without bowing to anyone else’s tradition- they continued to be free to express themselves through their work.

I believe a similar problem is applicable here, except symbolically, since modern art is a symbolic venture; the narrowing down of Indian art to a collection of motifs derived from crafts and using them to create multilayered works with many meanings- that is, modern art. In this time of general upheaval, the natural human consensus is to turn to nationalism. But it is and has always been the imperative of the artist to go against the natural consensus, to get at what is underneath, to the reason behind the upheaval itself. This exhibition made it plain to see that both sides are with us in force- all the more reason to believe that the Indian art scene will only keep getting more and more interesting.

~ DHANI

https://www.mid-day.com/articles/planning-a-jungle/22492175