(Waswo X Waswo and Rajesh Soni. Pic. Firstpost.com)
‘Gauri Dancers’ is an artist’s photographic retake made into
a book apart from limited edition prints of the same, on a traditional religious
performance art confined within the Mewar region of Rajasthan and the book is
also a well-researched documentation of the same. Udaipur based artist, Waswo
X.Waswo is the prime mover of this book and he has not only taken the
photographs as his artistic output but also has contributed a very pivotal
dialogic text that sets the tone and tenor of the aesthetic decisions behind
each photograph. Apart from the artist himself, he has his long term
collaborator Rajesh Soni who hails from a family of traditional hand-colorists
on black and white photographs, now perhaps a redundant art form but amply
revived by conceptual photographic practitioners like Waswo, and Pramod Kumar
G, a researcher on photography as a medium of art and documentation and a
publisher and archivist, who in introduces this book in a crisp academic note.
And finally the main text (that is almost a sub-text or a meta-text of/for the
photographic images) is written by Sonika Soni, an art historian and researcher
who has been interested in the Gauri Dance/rs as she hails from the same region
where this dance is practiced.
Despite the claim of having centuries-long tradition and
practice, Gauri Dance which is also known as Gavri Dance is a limited art form
not in its expressive faculties but in its geographical confinement. Perhaps,
it’s limited reach and fame is the major reason that has goaded Waswo to work
with the practitioners of this rare rural art form though he disputes his
possible role in this project as a documentarian or an anthropologist. Waswo
assumes different personalities in his verbal essay (as a preface to the visual
essay that makes the main body of the book) of which he identifies more with
the ‘artist’ incarnation than the ‘anthropologist’ or the invisible ‘narrator’
who makes all of them speak. These disembodied voices appear as a
representational conflict within the text and the questionable agency that
activates the events inside and outside the book. The apparent conflict is
manifested in the dialogue between the artist Waswo and the anthropologist
Waswo. Sometimes, there is also an archivist Waswo. Ironically, the artist
Waswo is constantly questioned by the other counterpart selves calling him an ‘anthropologist
with no research or an archivist no responsibility.’
(Gauri Dancers by Waswo, Book Cover)
The accusation coming from the anthropologist self of Waswo
and the apparent danger of not having enough research should have intrinsic
reasons in Waswo, the personality and artist whose ‘outsider’ status has been
self-problematized for a long time in his works done together with Rajesh Soni,
R.Vijay and other assistants and also in the graphic novel, ‘Evil Orientalist.’
Waswo has been living in India nearly for two decades and has more or less naturalized
his avuncular status among the villagers in Udaipur, still some questions arise
from certain quarters regarding his worth and authenticity as an ‘Indian’ who
could comment on the ‘Indian’ things. Waswo besides being an artist has been
handling this tender question quite skillfully ever since it was put to him in
various occasions. Hence, in ‘Gauri Dances’ Waswo the artist says that it is
neither the anthropologists nor the archivist sees Gauri Dance but the artistic
eyes, which goes beyond all kinds of extraneous value judgements and stick to
the aesthetic finesse of form and performance.
From Waswo’s narrative preface we come to know that it was a
chance encounter with a couple of young male performers festooned with
ornaments and odd and jarring clothes that made the artist aware of the
existence of a group of people who did Gauri Dance. Asking around he got his
answers soon from the locales and from his own assistants who did the painted
backdrop sceneries for his photography projects. These boys and young men came
from a region called Mewat and they performed this Gauri Dance for forty days from
the very next day of the Raksha Bandhan. As it involves a religious theme (of
Shiva and his consort Parvati who is also called Gauri) the performers abstain
from all kinds of vices for forty days and they are fed vegetarian food by the
host villages. Interestingly, the host villages are where these performers have
their kith and kin through marriage ties. This indicates the closely knit
tribal nature and a sort of exogamy practices prevalent among these tribes
which also explains why this art form is limited within certain geographic
limits.
(Gauri Dancers by Waswo)
Waswo gets interested in these dancers and decides to
photograph them against the backdrop painted by his assistants. He clicks them
in front of different backdrops as they present themselves in cheap but full
regalia; a sort of iconography that decides the characters in the play. At one
point, exasperated by the variety of actors Waswo the artist asks about the
peculiarities of these characters and suddenly the anthropologist comes out
from the wings and grins at Waswo; a hint at the fact that however one tries to
avoid anthropological therefore sociological, political and economic meanings
of an event or image, at some point they have to be addressed even by the staunchest
aesthete among the artists. Rajesh Soni, later hand paints these photographs
and they are presented as limited edition prints apart from this book.
I don’t know whether an exotic gaze is at work when Waswo
clicks the pictures of the Gauri Dancers because in his practices either he
naturalizes everything when he is not exoticizing them. He photographs artists,
friends and causal visitors in his studio in certain costumes suitable to his
fancies and whims of the moment. And his subjects happily oblige to get photographed
(for them a way to immortality through the work of an artist) and even for the
Gauri Dancers, despite their demand for a remuneration thanks to their dire
materialistic conditions they too are eager and willing to get photographed by
a fair skinned ‘chacha’. He turns them into icons unlike some of the other
photography artists who turn their subjects to anthropological specimens as we
have seen in many a documentary photography including the Gotipua Dancers from
Odisha done by an artist namely Birendra Pani.
(Gauri Dancers by Waswo)
Gauri Dance is definitely rooted in folk traditions of
story-telling and performance. Like the Bhopas in Rajasthan and the Patuas in
Bengal and Odisha, these dancers talk, sing and perform. Though the major theme
is devotional, ribaldry and humor play a major role, which interestingly is the
main characteristic of most of the tribal/folk/traditional performance art. The
etymology of Gauri Dance also leads us to its Brahminical roots and it was when
a lower caste person (may be from Gometi or Meena caste who perform Gauri Dance
in the modern times) tried to imitate it, the Brahmins lost interest in the art
form and left it for the lower castes to perform it. It could be read as a
handed down (even if the reason is pollution and irritation) art form, it could
also be seen as a rebellion and snatching away of the right to perform by the
lower castes. Even in Kerala, Ottan Thullal is said to have started when
Nambiar was ridiculed by the Koothu performer. As rebellion Nambiar went on to
start a counter performance involving a lot of ribaldry and humor. The myths
behind the Gauri Dance are interesting; they range from the stereotypical
victory of the good over evil to environmental issues, family ties to nostalgia
and so on. Sonika Soni in her well researched essay delineates a range of myths
and the various categories of performances. The text of Soni appears in this
book more like an epilogue rather than the main text. Even if Waswo, the artist
gains an affirmative victory over Waswo the anthropologist or the documenter,
the book could be read even for the sake of anthropological interest and documentary
purpose, obviously when you are full with its aesthetical nuances.
n
JohnyML
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