After an overdose of familiar modernism at the overground galleries of Triveni Complex, I always prefer to have an antidote at the Art Heritage Gallery in the basement, where good shows are often showcased with less glamour and glitter. The latest one, which opened yesterday (where I was an accidental visitor, as I generally avoid openings), is by Avijit Dutta, a young artist from Howrah, Kolkata, with a to-the-face title, Chronicles of (Un)seen Labour(er).
Avijit is a confident young artist whose style reminds the viewer of Mexican murals, a bit of Sudhir Patwardhan and, more so, Vikrant Bhise, the Jai-Bheem-themed-fame artist who prefers to wear upper-class linens and paints in Ambedkarite blues—very close to the sartorial philosophy of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, who retorted to the skeptics with the jibe, “Mr. Gandhi had clothes to shed, my community didn’t have anything.”
Hailing from Howrah, known as the Sheffield of the East during the colonial years, Avijit takes the din of this hub of small-scale industries, where working-class men and women are mired in dust, dirt and sweat. He paints them on paper using locally available materials such as iron dust, brick powder and local mitti (soil), all amply laid on a surface carefully created with acrylic colours. He creates grids with iron dust, showing a rusting landscape and the general dilapidation of hopes. But people still work on these sites, oblivious to the changes taking place all over the world, without even thinking once that they may be rendered redundant in the coming days of technological innovations that would replace them with skilful bots.
Generally, we do not see the milling workers who walk among us, as we are also busy in our own worlds of reels, news, untruths, half-truths, desperations, pains and ambitions. Draped in rag-like scrubs, their existence is so marginalised that even their body odour is no longer felt. In the shrinking locales of small-scale industries, these men and women toil day in and day out, only to eke out a meagre living and endure long-lasting ailments. But Avijit sees them, chronicles their unsung sagas and gives them the dignity of existence through his works.
The choice of paper as his pictorial surface should be much thought about, I should say. There are chances of these works getting oxidised because of the ferric pigment that he amply uses to build the images. It may be a subconscious decision to make the works performative in nature and with nature, through slow deterioration. But the curator assures us that they are well layered with chemical varnish treatment to preserve their initial quality and ensure long-term endurance.
The animals and humans are shown as animated characters, with their limbs in motion through multiple representations, as in a playful take on cubism and kinesthesis-ism, giving them “life” amidst hardships. Avijit must also be thinking about the multi-limbed goddess Durga, made in various parts of Kolkata (primarily in Kumartuli) and displayed, all decked up fabulously, during the Durga Puja days. He transmogrifies the lowly humans into divinities who could perform the impossible in the direst of times.
All these characters of Avijit are seen hoodwinked by a plastic bag called Thonga. It is a sort of autobiographical reference because his father mass-produces these plastic bags for local use and local import. When the heads are not covered with these plastic bags, Avijit deliberately obfuscates the eyes of the protagonists in order to protect their individuality, which otherwise seems insignificant in the eyes of the people around them.
Avijit creates his works amidst the din of these unseen and unsung small-scale industries, which would soon be replaced by sophisticated machinery and robotic workforces. In every industry, there is always a clarion call for upskilling of labourers, but we all forget the fact that there are several skills that have become second nature to many workers through prolonged years of working—skills that cannot simply be upskilled or downskilled.
Caught in the limbo of tumultuous technological changes, these workers would slowly become like floppy disks, handcarts and man-pulled rickshaws. If not in the near future, then in the distant one, perhaps these chronicles will remain only in Avijit’s works.
A show worthy of your weekend outings.
JohnyML
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