DELHI COLLAGE OF ART: An Art Carnival that could Grow into An Art Fair

 

(Ashwani Kumar Prithviwasi: The Founder Director of Delhi Collage of Art. It is a portrait painted by Piyush Aswal, a first year student at the DCA)

Delhi Collage of Art. The misspelling is conspicuous. Auto-correct soon changes it into ‘College’. You force it back to ‘Collage’. In 2011, I had curated a show at Gallery Ragini, New Delhi with a ‘wrong’ title; A4 Arple. Auto-correct made it ‘Apple’ again, and again. I changed it back into ‘Arple’. My argument was simple; A4 size, which was created for the manual typewriter, later got adopted into the computer parlance, became a standard format not only for the paper but for the writing itself. Such perpetuation of technological jargons is often accepted without questioning. If there is a wrong spelling, our brains auto-correct it. Through the project, I was expecting the viewers to make visual corrections, if there were any, while looking at the works of art.

 

When Delhi Collage of Art was started by Ashwani Kumar Prithviwasi, a young artist in his early thirties at that time, people noticed two things; the spelling ‘mistake’ in the name of his institution and his unusual surname. Later Ashwani revealed that his choices were deliberate. He wanted to start an institution that helped young talents to become professional artists. The name of the institution was to be Delhi College of Art with the right spelling. But he knew he cannot use the name of another institution which was also in the same city. Delhi College of Art is a public sector art institution from where Ashwani himself had graduated. The tribute that he had in mind for his alma mater was ridden with legalities. So, he settled for ‘Collage’ and as the word suggested the institution catered to a variety of people from different social layers, genders and ages. Today, it is a successful institution that gives diplomas and advanced diplomas, officially recognized by international art establishments.

 

(Shridhar Iyer at the DCA Carnival Platform with Ashwani)

Ashwani’s surname too evokes curiosity. Prithviwasi means an earthling. Every being on this earth has equal rights, Ashwani believes. He thinks that he shouldn’t be vain by his religion, caste or social status. Transcending himself beyond all kinds of limitations, a positive thinker and an intelligent entrepreneur, Ashwani started preparing students for gaining admission in the fine art colleges. Soon he could gain acceptance both as a humanist and art educator. Today, students join Delhi Collage of Art not just to prepare themselves for art colleges but to become fulltime art professionals armed with diplomas obtained from Delhi Collage of Art. Ashwani says that in the first year he focuses on skill development and in the following years he lets the students to pursue creating art in the traditional mediums as well as using unconventional and cutting-edge mediums and materials.

 

The success story of Delhi Collage of Art is now indisputably etched in the minds of Delhi’s art people. Every year Ashwani conducts an Art Carnival, a sort of annual exhibition of the Delhi Collage of Art Students. In 2024, he has expanded the scope of this annual carnival by sending open invitations to the established artists in Delhi and elsewhere. The recently concluded DAC Art Carnival saw the participation of DAC students, diploma holders, professional artists and international invitees. The carnival presented a medley of visual practices that expressed the ideas, ideologies, affinities, skillsets and directions of the participants. An overemphasis on naturalistic skills seems to be ‘a thing’ that gives the carnival a predominantly amateurish look. In the naturalistic visual din, the works of the professional artists seemed to have lost their aesthetics and purpose. It calls for two things; one, inclusion of art history in the syllabus of the Delhi Collage of Art. Two, a curatorial intervention in the whole setting up of the show.

 

(Annual fest of Delhi Collage of Art in January 2024)

The salon type display, a sort of visual cacophony, seen from a different perspective looked attractive on the walls of the Lalit Kala Akademi Galleries. Conventionalists among the art lovers may not have liked the jumble of visuals. But getting the viewers overwhelmed by the ‘DAC Aesthetics’ could be one of the aims of the organizers. If so, they have not failed in their attempt. The carnival atmosphere that Ashwani and team had created supplemented the display of art. He also opened the platforms for intellectuals, art critics, poets, designers, educators and professionals from different fields to make formal presentations before an enthusiastic audience. During my presentation on Delhi’s art criticism scene from 1990s to now, upon my suggestion, Ashwani expressed his willingness to create a database of India’s art historians, critics and curators, as an open source for the benefit of the art professionals.

 

Delhi Collage of Art, through its carnival platform has proven its capacity to grow further and become an art fair of a different kind. What the government run agencies have failed to do could be materialized by the efficient team work led by Ashwani. One could only wish him all the best.

White Cube Versus Colorful Walls: Galleries and Changing Visual Experiences

 

(Image courtesy: Net)

White, as far as galleries are concerned, is not a racial index. Ironically, it stands for neutrality. It reflects all lights, all thoughts and all visual engagements. It separates the work of art displayed against it from the surroundings and the possible attributes that enhance or affect the meaning of the work during focused and dispassionate contemplation by the viewer. Perhaps, viewer is exempted from this discourse for he or she is just another attribute to the art galleries and events. The contemplation of art these days, is mostly done by art buyers, dealers, collectors and auction house personalities. That justifies the scheduling of events during an art do; previews before views and VIP previews before the open doors for art ‘people’.

 

The color white and the conventional rectangular spaces have been the reasons for calling the galleries white cubes, though cube is just a euphemism for squares with varying angles. Such designated gallery spaces replicate the idea of modernist grand narratives. The space almost determines the viewers’ attitudes and their kinetic orientations within it. Unlike in the large scale museums where people audibly express their surprise before masterly works, exchange art historical anecdotes, the overlapping narratives of the live guides who conduct the flock of visitors through halls and the gleeful noises that the children make, the white cube galleries hush the people up with their sanitized interiors. Galleries, more than museums become stringent civilizing agents in this way and visiting a gallery becomes a civilizing ritual, if I rephrase Carol Duncan’s argument a bit.

 

(Image courtesy: Net)

Breaking away from the white cubes was a way of the artists who rebelled against the grand narratives of modernism and they thought that these sanitized grand structures were commodifying interfaces. Those artists who went into the making of conceptual art using poor materials, emerging technologies and their own corporeal bodies discarded organized white cube spaces and propped up their interventionist practices in impromptu spaces or in the spaces that were ready to create ruptures in the conventional art making and viewing. Immateriality and temporality became the defining status of the works of art that broke down materiality and object experiences and converted them into conceptual experimentations. Art being an expression through a medium, materiality couldn’t have been wished away completely. Hence, artists went for abject materials that evoked aesthetical revulsion initially followed by intellectual deliberations.

 

However, white cubes are structures that never say die. They are determined spaces with assumed fluidity with the arrival of a vigorous art market. Had it been once a place for dispassionate contemplation without external influences or distractions, later it became a space that could replicate interiors of elite habitats virtually, interestingly, by adding certain distractions to the very viewing space. It was done through certain minimal touches of change and major tweaking of the viewers’ consciousness and conscience. Galleries changed the ambience of their interiors by changing the nature of light, darkening the interiors to create light spots that highlighted the works, drowning the surroundings in utter darkness. It came as an offshoot of video art but became a fad in general display even. The white cubes came masquerading as dark caverns, making the viewing or art an exploration or expedition through an unchartered land.

 

(Image courtesy: Net)

The determined spaces with certain square feet of display area with a familiar layout to the regular visitors suddenly became confusing labyrinths where navigation turned out to be an experience in itself rather than the works of art exhibited on walls or floors or screens. The breaking down of grand narratives became another set of obscure narratives that needed physical and mental unpacking at once. If the white cubes were an offshoot of a colonial discourse, the navigational challenges now posed by the galleries by changing lights, layouts and wall colors became an imperialist offensive that demanded subservience, unquestioned acceptance and never ending awe from the viewers. The white cubes, once the temples of civilizing rituals and grand narratives are now the theme parks with mindboggling roller-coaster rides. The attention of the viewers is taken away from the machine that took them to gut-wrenching movements, instead they are meant to focus on the exhilaration that that the movements impart. Often it turns out to be a para-jumping with a malfunctioning parachute.

 

Colored walls of a gallery, taken positively, are a pleasant distraction from, as one of the artists would put it, ‘the usual drab of ‘the’ white’. They do accentuate the presence of the works on display so long as they remain subdued. But the screaming colors, indiscreet daubing of all what are available in the color chart of a paint-maker, absorb the works the way a cunning croc would do to unsuspecting thirsty lambs. The Poppins candy like walls in a gallery may be a fun thing for the first timers but for the seasoned ones, besides the visual titillation, it offers nothing but a terrible sense of discomfort. Someone wearing gaudy suits may be interesting to look at for once but a pack of such buddies processioning through a narrow street would make one think of a harlequins’ carnival.

 

(Image courtesy: Net)

White cube is old fashioned now, many think so. Adding hues to the walls does make some impact of on the viewing experience. However, thinking of it, a work of art, if it is done in a conventional medium, has to be seen in a neutral space, devoid of particular physical contexts. The neutral spaces function as crucibles for the contexts to flow in virtually. It doesn’t mean that the museums and galleries have to stick to white surfaces. There could be colored walls, heavily decked up frames exuding the glories of royalty. But a gallery space is a space where royalty is an aspiration but not a given reality. It is meant to be a class-less, caste-less and color-less space. Treating adjacent walls in jarring colors doesn’t really enhance the quality of the works.

 

-JohnyML