(V V Vinu's 'Noon Rest at Shanghai Biennale)
Biennales and art fairs are neutralizing agents of the
acerbic and acidic cultural critique generated by the visual, audio and textual
forms of art. Though most of the biennales and art fairs claim that they
present the most innovative and critical works of art as a part of their biennial
stock taking and provide some sort of aesthetical direction to the
international art scene, apart from giving a few tips to the trendy
international art collectors to hobnob with the celebrity artists, super powers
of art galleries and dealers in the politically undisturbed cool climes of the state
of the art pavilions in the most exquisite cities with some historical past and
good cuisine culture, they fundamentally de-edge the critical nature of the
works of art and domesticate them for their purpose. Let migration, disposession,
mass exodus, autocracy, political oppression, poverty, religion, caste,
genocide, rape, child abuse and anything be the point of departure for a work
of art, the moment when it is brought into the biennale or art fair circuit, experience
shows that it loses it edge, of course in the process making the artist a
household name and the work of art a familiar aesthetical form at least within
the closed communities.
(V V Vinu aka Vinu Vadakedath)
Vinu V.V, a Kerala based artist is now in news because his work,
‘Noon Rest’ (Uccha vishramam) is in the 11th Shanghai Biennale which
opened on 16th November 2016. Ever since the opening of the Biennale,
Vinu is a much talked about artist in the art circles. In fact this work was
exhibited in a small gallery in Kochi and its fame was contained within Kochi
though there had been newspaper articles and online discussion about the show;
still the artist was not discussed the way he is discussed today. This shows
two facts about our art scene; whatever be the strength of the artist and the
works of art that he produces, the effect of it will be limited and contained until
he is taken to a national or international platform. Period. It also tells us
that in the international platform the work of art and the artist to certain
extent transcend their initial position and become much milder than what they
are originally meant to be. For instance, the title of the work, ‘Noon Rest’
could be dubbed bad English in its original position as the artist had translated
the Malayalam title (Malayalam thinking) Uccha Vishramam into word by word
translation as ‘Noon Rest’. While the word Siesta was available to him, it was
Vinu’s original position to treat it as basic and rustic as possible which the
cultural scene of Kerala that celebrates its own Biennale, thereby curtailing
the possibilities of reaching out within the given cultural scene. However,
when it goes into an international platform, the very title becomes exotic and too
loaded to resist its charm. How does it happen?
(a painting by V V Vinu)
The artist, a fine arts graduate in sculpture from the RLV
College of Fine Arts, Thrippoonithura, does not shy away from the fact that he
belongs to a Dalit family and the inspirations for his works generally come
from his own autobiographical contexts and backgrounds. Being a Dalit or
belonging to a Dalithood is stronger than Dalit positioning and posturing
because of the proximity of the Dalit to discrimination and deprivation of
various kinds. Vinu, in a few artistic statements has reiterated that he is
inspired by Ayyankali, an early 20th century Dalit activist, scholar
and reformer and he details how he had exhorted the agricultural workers who
belonged to the Dalit groups to come together to drop their farming tools as a
protest against the social injustice of not allowing the Dalit students enter
school premises. Dalit discourse however is not a monolith but unlike other
subaltern discourses, there could be a monolithic core for all the Dalit
experiences for the very idea of Dalit itself is about being discriminated,
dispossessed and vandalized. Vinu’s work does not come from the Ayyankali
episode directly but it refers to the ‘tools down’ strike in a different
fashion.
(When V V Vinu was featured in a prominent Malayalam Magazine)
‘Noon Rest’ is a symbolic revisiting of a particular aspect
of the labour/slavery suffered by the Dalits who belonged to the feudal lords
or lived as farmers in the leased out lands. In both these cases the Dalits had
only one possession in their hands; their labour power. Even their bodies were
identified with this aspect of labour. Noon time is the only occasion when
these Dalit workers rested their bodies for a few minutes after sticking their
sickles on the nearest trees. The placing of those tools happened automatically
or naturally that they did not attribute any particular value to that act of ‘resting’
their tool in that way. Interestingly, as an insider what Vinu sees here in
that act is the displaced metaphor of rest not only of bodies but also of their
social role as farmland slaves. I would further say that those were the only
times when they separated labour from their bodies. That means a resting body
is not a labouring body therefore free from its slavery even though
temporarily. Those were the only moments when the Dalit farmers reclaimed their
bodies as social subjects perhaps subconsciously. Hence, Vinu’s accentuation is
on this social subjectivity of the farm slaves in a displaced metaphor of their
resting tools.
(Speaking Stones by N.N.Rimzon)
There could be a huge hiatus between the artistic intention
and the readerly reception of a work of art when it is exhibited in a context
which is far removed from the real context of its origin. One cannot insist
that a work of art could be exhibited only in its contexts of origin or where
the contexts of origin are understood in the right sense. If that is the case
we cannot exhibit any work other than the studio of the artist. While that
being the case, there is a danger of the work of art losing its intention/meaning
and becoming something else in the readerly/viewerly efforts. When the Dalit
discourse or experiences that had given birth to the work is taken away from it
or misunderstood or understood academically within a sanitized zone, the work
of art becomes a formal exercise which gives birth to an interesting form,
especially a rural one, coming from India, from south India, from Kerala, from
Kochi/Trivandrum, from a field, from a Dalit artist. By the time a work of art
like ‘Noon Rest’ is understood in this fashion or as an exotic form, the rest
of the discourse is nullified or become an academic context of the work of art
which would give it some sort of history, which in turn would help the buyers,
future collectors, auction houses or museums to place their provenance and
description.
(Divine Death by Ratheesh T)
What I have said in those many words could be summarised
into one word, which is ‘co-optation’. When the Dalit ideas are co-opted in the
mainstream platforms they lose their resistive edge not because they do not
have to become mainstream but because it is prematurely brought into the mainstream
without a critical or cultural context to find allegiance with (other works of
art). I do not intend to say that Vinu’s inclusion in the Shanghai Biennale is
a wrong thing nor do I say that it would make Vinu dissociate from his Dalit
ideas in future. But the danger that I perceive is a different sort. The mainstream
world is always in the ‘look out’ for something ‘different’; what it wants is
not a different ideology but a form, a hollow form where the mainstream could
fill in its ideology including that of the market economy. As I mentioned
before, Vinu’s Dalit idea infused in the work of art would become a supportive
material for the transactions of it in the market rather than it becoming a
point of departure for many Dalit related aesthetical discourses to start. Once
Vinu is co-opted by the mainstream Biennale circuit more and more opportunities
would come for him and this would make him dig into his Dalit past and present and
find raw materials and narratives to create his works. In this process, he
would slowly exclude the community and its ideological issues from which he
works because the international art circuits are the places, as I have
mentioned at the outset, where ideologies are neutralized for the purpose of
the market.
(Sunilal with his paintings)
Vinu today is selected in the Shanghai Biennale for the ‘difference’
that his work has generated in its form. And the narrative structure that he
has to support it is quite appealing among the international art communities
because they all know the histories and narratives of different kinds of
discrimination and deprivation. Hence, it is not difficult to treat the Dalit
issue as expressed by/in Vinu’s work as an international one cutting across the
borders. However, this early catch is going to be detrimental for Vinu develop
as a worthy reckoning artist not only in India but also in the international
art scene. The reason for this are two folded; first of all it is a one off
work of Vinu (though he has other works) whose aesthetics is still in the
formative stage. Secondly, had it been after a few years with a solid body of
works that made Vinu an important artist in the Dalit visual discourse
primarily in Kerala and then elsewhere, his inclusion in the Biennale would
have created a much bigger impact. Now I would say what is going to happen;
there is will be a scrambling for Vinu’s works from different quarters and if
he does not have the will power to say No, he would be making work on order.
Money is a huge temptation and most of our artists have succumbed to it and I
do not think Vinu is an exception for he is human. Coming to the Indian
galleries, they are all going to hunt for his works and there is not a single
gallery in India which is not Brahminical and absorbing Vinu into their schemes
would finish him as an artist.
(A drawing by Savi Savarkar)
Shanghai Biennale or not, Vinu as the first Kerala artist to
participate in it or not, it is important see the fact that Vinu is not the
first artist who has expressed Dalit issues with such aesthetical finesse from
Kerala. Though, N N Rimzon has not openly made statements about his close allegiance
to the Dalit ideologies or the Dalit discourses in the socio-political fronts,
he has invariably made it clear that his works are about the Dalit discourses
with a Dalit sensibility (I am not taking his personal belongingness to a Dalit
community into consideration here) and many of his works including the ‘Dalit
Gestures’ (Adiyalarude Samjakal), ‘Speaking Stones’, 'Far away from 108 feet' and the innumerable
drawings that show a hamlet in castaway space which is liminal between the
fields of production and the avenues of consumption. Only a proper
retrospective of Rimzon could bring out this aspect of his works. Had he been
included in the Shanghai Biennale for the ‘Dalit’ subject, then it would have
been much more perceptive from the curators’ side. We also have Ratheesh T and
Sunil Lal, who have been dealing with the Dalit subjects in more conventional painterly
forms. Their Dalit-ness was not highlighted in India even by their galleries
because the Brahminical structures prevail in our country. Only Savi Savrakar
in Delhi has openly made his Dalit ideology not only in his personal statements
but also in his works. For this reason Savarkar has been hugely discriminated
and still he does not have any private gallery shows nor is included in major
curatorial projects. When curators become middlemen of art trends, they too
catch artists young because they could finish them off in one go.
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