Writing is a sort of making self portrait. When I read the contemporary novelists and writers, I find this unique trait of self portraiture and camouflaged representation of the self through the portrait of others. As Delhi based artist, Sidharth rightly pointed out all art is PORN. Not exactly pornography but for Sidharth PORN is ‘Personal Open References and Notions.’
Sidharth explains it: An artist’s primary tool is his body. The moment his senses function logically, what he perceives first is his own body and it becomes the primary personal open reference and notional point. Everything is seen through this prism or lens of personal body. That defines the world, that colours the world, that becomes the ultimate benchmark to assess the world. One’s own body.
I always wonder why artists paint their self portraits. If any one subject that does not bore and artist to inertia is his/her own body. Modigliani is reported to have painted the portrait of his wife several times. Perhaps hers was the best body that he ever perceived in his life. May be he might have seen his own body reflected in her body. Picasso did the same by portraying his girlfriends. Rembrandt too was obsessed with himself and his wife Saskia.
I do not go into the details of the self portraits done by Van Gogh and Frida Kahlo. Both were PORN artists predominantly.
After a long time I get to see a set of works that are purely self portraits. Here is a young woman artist who has sent the images of her self-portraits. It is a fact that women artists are more PORN than male artists; the reason is that male artists are possessed with the subjecting male gaze while thanks to social mores and codes the women are not gifted with such subjecting gaze. So the gaze that they have in possession, whatever may be the nature of it, could always be redirected to their own bodies.
This explains why most of the women artists paint their own nude bodies than the men artists till date have done the same. Women address the world with their body. Their body itself is a counter gaze. Each and every part of their bodies becomes an important eye. So they use nail, hair, menstrual blood, sanitary napkins, baby diapers, shit, urine and so on in their works. Their PORN is more intimate than the PORN of men.
Anindita Chakraborty is the artist in question. She completed her MFA in painting from the Hyderabad Central University and now she lives and works in Hyderabad. She is originally from Tripura.
I became curious when I saw this string of self portraits; the artist adorning herself in various dresses and create even multiple self portraits within the same pictorial frame. Hailing from Tripura, a Communist ruled North Eastern state in India, Anindita Chakraborty’s interest for self portraiture must have something related to her birth place.
A woman wants to assert her position through metaphorical ways when her position precariously set and viewed in a society. When her speech is cleansed of its rawness and ramifications, she finds ways to articulate the innate rawness of her suppressed tongue. If you remember why the mothers in Manipur decided to come before the army naked, you could connect this idea of articulating the muteness.
Anindita likes to portray herself in different guises. Masquerading is a ploy used by several women artists in order to create the metaphor from/with their own bodies. Right from Cindy Sherman to our own home grown Pushpamala N, have used the same ploy to give tongue to their muted-ness. Anindita operates in the same realm. She presents herself more and more beautiful in different guises and claims her position in the society.
These are affected portraits, I would say. Anindita becomes someone else in these paintings. She parodies historical references in which women are portrayed in certain ways. By mimicking the representational strategies, Anindita opens up a debate; this debate is not about how a woman should be represented in the contemporary society, but about how in an ideal situation a woman should be seen despite the fact that she is no longer seen in that fashion.
These portraits represent the representation of the desire of a society through a covert ploy of ideal self portraiture. It is a political act of sorts because Yinka Shonibare, a Afro-Birtish also has done more less same through photography by representing himself amongst the colonial photographs in the same guise and attire.
Anindita plays between the desired ideal and the artistic critique on this desired ideal. And she uses PORN as her tool and medium.
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