Terrace, Balconies and Lockdown Blues in the Works of Neeraj Singh Khandka

(Artist Neeraj Singh Khandka)

Narrative paintings often give an overview of things and places. The narrator places himself at the edge, may be at an advantageous perch and like those great literary geniuses who have beautifully described the topographical varieties of the lands that they have not visited or seen in places, so vividly that none could dispute their authenticity or vividness, they go on to the interiors, exteriors, backyards, back streets, terraces, the woods and skies that line the horizon and so on with so much of clarity and vivacity. At times the painters keep themselves at the eye level or just below it and imagine all what could lie before and beyond. Miniaturists of yester epochs have shown their dexterity in this front and have inspired many who would energize the field of visual art in India and elsewhere later. Neeraj Singh Khandka, a young artist based in Delhi belongs to this category of artists who have deeper visions regarding topographical complexities. Like in the opening wings of an accordion, he opens up the places around him, seen from a window or terrace, in his simple yet complex graphic prints, technically called woodcuts but done on MDF boards sizing three feet by two feet.

(Stories of Walls in the Lockdown by Khandka)

The works of Khandka are interesting on many counts; of which the prime place could be given to his ability to handle narratives within the single pictorial frame or format, for the fine graphic printmakers this is not a highly challenging task though. These works catch the attention of the onlookers not just because of the artistic dexterity but the innate ability of an artist to ‘portray’ hope and his perennial efforts and energies to wriggle out from the forced confinements. The poetic truth of saying that man is born free but he is in chains everywhere is something that makes all the creative human beings to break the chain (an appropriate expression during the Covid days when the governments ask the people to wash hands with soap and break the chain of infection). Like most of the people in any part of the world where Corona Virus have created havoc, Khandka has also been undergoing self-isolation by default. And any creative person in the world is like a sapling in a pot kept in darkness. It would grow towards light whatever pains it might bring in.

(the Escape by Khandka)

Some break into songs, some into drawings, some into dance and some into depression. According to me depression is also an expression that denies all forms of expression. And the ultimate manifestation of depression could be through self-annihilation. But Khandka is an artist, a printmaker primarily and he sees the world manifesting before him through various activities in the terraces of the adjoining buildings. Man is a terrestrial being. But as he lives in high-rises and multi-storied buildings, his real connection with the terra firma is rare. Most of the activities have gone indoors and only during the vacations people see mother earth and nature in its true sense; these days, ironically, people go on vacations, take pictures of the sceneries in their smart phones and admire them as zoomable images than the images right before their eyes. Beauty and relaxations are now externalized and mediated through smartphones. We could call it mediated pleasures of being or existence. The pandemic situation has thrown people in disarray and the only outlet they have in terms of relaxation is their visit to the terraces in their buildings and the simulation of various activities that they once used to do on the firm earth.

(Life in the Lockdown by Khandka)

Videos that have been streaming in from different parts of the world that have gone into lock down show how people make use of balconies and terraces as the new location of their social engagement. Shifting this human engagement from the real spaces to the terraces and balconies has given them a new identity and realization. The new identity is that of a citizen in confinement who craves for freedom and camaraderie; the new realization is that the sprawling houses they have with high walls and securities cameras in fact have been the walls of jails and they too need the windows, terraces and balconies to rebuild connection with their fellow beings. Reducing the space to balconies to terraces or expanding the scope of such narrow spaces to a new vista of freedom has created a new ‘point of view’ and this is the perspective that Khandka uses in his works that shows the images of various spaces and beings (at times surrogate self-portraits) seen from/in the balconies and terraces.

(Quarantine 2 by Khandka)

There is something Bhupenesque about these works, I mean the feeling that the works of Bhupen Khakar evokes in the onlookers. Take the work titled ‘Stories of Walls in the Lockdown’. This is a jumble of balconies and terraces where people do various activities. Interestingly one could see only men on the terraces. What happened to the women in those households?  I think that the artist covertly mentions the fact that the women are forced into perpetual confinement inside the homes as their men folks are perpetually ‘home’ and need to be provided with food and other homely services. For the women, the lockdown is an authorized extension of what they have been going through even before the Covid or a sort of snatching away of their ‘own’ spaces from them for once the women have been the ‘owners’ of the balconies and terraces where they gossiped, watched the world, haggled with the vendors, bought milk and vegetables, dried clothes, watered plants and even on rare occasions used as launching pad to their own self chosen deaths.

(Balconies and Rooftops by Khandka)

Khandka, like the character in O.Henry’s short story last leaf, nourishes hope in each of his lockdown works. There is a plant or tree right in front of him. He is looking at them either in the demure acceptance of the lockdown or his vain effort to escape from the confinement through the terraces. Here one could see a normal citizen becoming a criminal by default. Each of his action is viewed with suspicion. So he becomes the thief in the folklores and legends, who comes by the terrace and goes by it. Seen in a different sense, he is the romantic lover, who stealthily visits his beloved via terrace. Or is he the virus himself that could visit you from the most unexpected yet familiar quarters? There is another work of Khandka titled ‘Quarantine’. It is the portrait of a chair, the real seat of power. Citizens’ woes have been created by the foolish but arrogant decisions of the super king who occupies the single chair of authority. Though the man is missing/absence, the looming presence is threatening and palpable, that makes the critique quite strong and appealing.

(The Mask Seller, Unlocking the Lock by Khandka)

Khandka nails the point in with a work titled ‘the Maks Seller: Unlocking the Lock’. The work has a surrogate self of the artist in the form of a mask seller. He is in a corner perhaps in a street but in fact he is inside the corner of a room itself, unable to go anywhere, which deepens the irony. His movement is curtailed by the thorns coming out from the floor around him. The single stool, a place to rest his tired legs and body, too has nails coming out from its seat. To sum up the picture, the protagonist is frozen and is made to stand still as in a punitive dictum given by the state. He has the saving tool, in the form of masks, but he cannot do anything with that as he is forced to stand in a corner. The irony of lockdown, the inevitability of human loneliness and suffering, and the unavoidable surrendering of human dignity before the iron fists of the state are adequately brought out through various images in this work. At the same time the artist affirms that there still is hope in the world through the single plant glowing against a rising sun just behind him, the artist and the human being. A worth seeing body of works by Neeraj Singh Khandka.

-          JohnyML

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