Landscape art is the latest fad. It gives an artistic opportunity
to express one’s flair for painting, concern for the environment and above all,
one’s innate need to evade the immediate social crises. Hailed as a safe haven
for many an artist, landscapes otherwise provide a vast vista for visual,
aesthetical and philosophical contemplations. Technically speaking the body of
works that I present here done by Prasad Kumar K.S, does not belong to the landscape
category. At the same time it is not too far away from it either. As I look at
them deeply the central imagery of a tree transforms and transcends into a
symbolic form, a metaphor for a struggling human being as we have seen in the
paintings and sculptures of Michelangelo, Francisco Goya, Auguste Rodin,
Chittoprasad Bhattacharya and Prodosh Dasgupta.
What do you see here? The central imagery, that is a tree
which is weighed down so forcefully by heavy loads and clamps fitted to
concrete blocking, literally choking and blocking its natural growth. But the
tree is as relentless and determined as its oppressors. It has determined to
grow, though misshapen and twisted; but it does grow and finds the sky. At the
tips of the branches lives the freedom and existence that the tree cherishes.
With indomitable spirit it proves to the world that you can defeat but you
cannot destroy a human being because he is driven by the perennial energy to
survive, nourished by hope.
What do I see here in this tree painted by Prasad Kumar? I
see the faces of all those people who walked back to their villages during the
lock down days in India. Daring the brutalities and heartlessness of the State
they braved the hostile distances. Reverse migration was it, said the
sociologists but for the migrants it was their exodus to hope. Once they had
left those barren villages thinking that they could make a life in the
peripheries of urban spaces that they themselves would build. They had lost
hope in their villages. They were oppressed by the caste realities and poverties.
Dr.Ambedkar too had asked the downtrodden people to move to the cities to build
their life in comparatively less oppressive urban spaces. Now they were walking
back, once again showing their indomitable spirit of survival. Now they were
seeing hope in the villages that they still deemed their mother.
What do I see in these paintings by Prasad Kumar? I see the
face of innumerable Dalits in this country who are, at every step, asked to bow
down or rather make way so that the upper castes could move forward. These
trees, the protagonists in Prasad Kumar’s paintings are the metaphorical
representation of the Indian Dalits who are part of the International Black
Communities. Look at the way the trees struggle and look the way the upper
caste rules gleefully pull them down, hold them back and confine them beyond
movement, blocking all the possibilities of free growth. The most surprising thing
about these paintings is the HOPE that they could emanate. And at the same time
they show how the burdens of the past, caste, poverty, discrimination, criminalization
and dispossession for ages weigh them down at each stage of their lives. But
they do live on and flourish though distorted and twisted. One could feel the
pain of such growth.
What do I see in these paintings? I see the face of Geroge
Floyd who had been choked to death by the American Police. He was black and was
his crime. Floyd’s death is the latest in the series of murders committed by
the White state Police with racial superiority consciousness and innate hatred
for the Blacks. ‘I can’t Breath’, the last words uttered by Floyd under the
pressing knees of the policeman have become the refrain of the protesting
people from all over the world, who are now shaking the citadels of the brutal
rulers. Along with Corona, the world has divided into two, before Floyd and
after Floyd. The camps and weights in that you see in Prasad Kumar’s paintings
are the metaphorical knees of oppression and racial hatred prevalent for
centuries.
-JohnyML
No comments:
Post a Comment