There was a time in Indian art, especially between 2005 and 2013, when group exhibitions were cited as “ten Malayalis and two artists’ exhibition.” The participation of a minimum of ten contemporaries of Kerala origin was a must, and anything above that could be artists from other parts of India. Nobody took offense. It was a norm.
People used to tell me, “Hey, you promote only Malayali artists.” They were right because the galleries that assigned me to curate shows wanted this particular line-up. So I used to respond with a smile, “Why me alone? Look at all my contemporary curators. They too go by the same list. Only the locations change.”
Trans-artists were coming up then. It was much before Queer and LGBTQ were mainstreamed, and Maina Mukherjee took the lead in curating them in Delhi. We did not know how to address these artists. They were as touchy as the feminist artists. Some blanketed enemies, and some others were selective in choosing their “ideal” enemies. I do not discount the fact that Ram Rahman and Sunil Gupta were here much before. But they moved easily amongst the dicked ones.
Then came the question: how to qualify an artist who belonged to the female gender? Call her “a woman artist” or “artist”—both offended them because they hated being identified as women with feminine qualities. Look at the catalogue essays of feminist artists; it would be difficult to find words like femininity or feminine. It should have been feminist/ic.
Parallelly, actresses became actors. No problem. Personally speaking, I do not have any issues in talking about women artists as “artists” only. But then comes our training in post-colonialism, post-structuralism, and all the other -isms that preceded and followed. You look at a work of art and you see a lot of “gender” things present there. So, to talk about them, you have to say that the artist is a “female” artist! To apply any theory, you have to look at the gender.
You look at the abstraction of Raza and that of any other female artist. You could see the “feminine” thing in their works. How do you overlook that? If nothing is there to take you to the gender qualifications, then the medium, material, and technique scream from the rooftop that they are the handiwork of a woman artist. Look at the works of Subodh Gupta and Bharti Kher. Look at Surendran Nair and Rekha Rodwittiya. Look at Atul Dodiya and Anju Dodiya. How do you talk about them without qualifying the latter group as women artists, not because they are “women” in the biological sense but are “females” in the ideological sense?
But look at the works of the dicked ones. Cool. You don’t know whether they are done by a male or a female. Women critics, at some point, used to go to that extent where anything vertical in a work of art was dubbed as “phallic.” So I prefer to call the male artists “dicked ones.” Bad taste, I know. But what to do? I am a human being with normal follies. I prefer to see people as humans before I see them as gendered beings. But then they are different from me, a dicked one. I understand that.
What to do? When a woman artist insists that she is to be called an “artist,” I do not think that any level-headed human being, with or without a dick, would challenge it. Yes, a woman artist is an ARTIST. No doubt. She should be called an “ARTIST.” But when we talk about the content, medium, material, technique, and intended meaning, how shall we shun the word female?
Brother, I am in a dilemma. I read a lot of literature of my liking, as there is no universal liking for any literature, just as it is with art. I can discern a woman writer’s writing from a dicked one’s writing. Everything about her writing is different. Okay. Now she is not called a “woman writer” but a “writer.” However, both in journalistic and academic parlance, she would eventually be qualified as a “woman writer,” not to underline that she has a vagina but by virtue of having one, she is different from the dicked ones’ output, perhaps much better.
Damien Hirst and Tracy Emin are artists. But they really do male and female art that comes under the general category of art. Critics pick up the pros and cons of both parties and, perhaps due to a lack of jargon, they are qualified as artist and female artist—not always, but whenever such distinctions are demanded. There is no other way. But ah, there is a way: passing a bill in Parliament that bans any mention of gender while writing art criticism.
JohnyML
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