Vagina is Out, Breasts are In: I-Object of Megha Joshi

(Poster of Megha Joshi's I: Object solo)

Vagina is out and breasts are in. Judy Chicago’s 1979 work, the Dinner Party had brought in explicit vagina images on plates laid out on a triangular table with the names of highly accomplished women embroidered and etched on them. Megha Joshi, a Gurgaon based artist, creates a body of works based on the image of breasts done in various mediums including ceramics, fibreglass, rubber, prosthetic nipples, digital images of her own self and even a pair of punch bags. This coming of age show, as far as Megha Joshi is concerned, is titled ‘I: Object’ and is currently on view at the Art Konsult Gallery in New Delhi. In a world where a woman receives hundred cat calls in ten hours in public places, Megha Joshi’s ‘breasting’ through is a courageous event in itself. She actively questions the male dominated world’s view of breasts as sexualized objects and when she calls the show, ‘I: Object’, it gets multiple meanings; on the one hand the title explains why ‘I’, the self of a woman is always objectified and on the other hand, it is an emphatic protest, ‘I OBJECT’ you making me a sexual/ized object. Woven completely into the discourse of feminism, this set of works done by Megha, more than mooring itself on feministic arguments, draws its force from the dejection and objection that the artist as a human being feels in the contemporary society where she lives.

(Torso QED by Megha Joshi)

Once upon a time, as mythologies say it, Indra, the king of gods, ogled at a saintly woman with lustful eyes. Cursed by her sagacious husband, Gautama, Indra grew thousand eyes/vaginas all over his body and he had to go in hiding till he was relieved of this gaping burden. Men consider vagina as a curse, but he wants to see the woman only as a vagina. While Indra felt that it was a shame, women do not feel so though the objectification of their physical self as a vagina is always resisted, protested and even contested. In public domain, breasts are seen as an extension of female genitals and in I: Object, Megha Joshi lampoons such a deranged perspective of the male world by overplaying the mammary images in various mediums. Covered in mild sarcasm, Megha Joshi dispassionately displays the violence involved in the breast fetish of men by making permutations and combinations of breasts and nipple images in all the possible shapes and images. ‘Nipple’ becomes the marker here in these works as the moment a prosthetic nipple appears on to any surface, in the male eyes it turns out to be a surrogate breast.

(Droop by Megha Joshi)

Megha Joshi’s tryst with breast forms started when she was literally devastated by the news of Nirbhaya’s rape in December, 2012. In a show titled ‘R.A.P.E’ (Rare Acts of Political Engagement) curated by me in Art Konsult in 2013, Megha for the first time presented a pair of rubber horns used in old buses and trucks, fitted with prosthetic nipples. The bulbous form that resembled a pair of breasts had generated a lot of discussion in the art scene at that time. By picking the line of thought that she had employed in creating that work, she has walked further to problematize gender issues in stark visual terms. Reminding one of Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party, Megha too presents ceramic plates with breast forms embellished by peacock feather images, followed by a series of ceramic forms with ‘nipples’ further beautified by sequins and embroideries. Absolute take away forms, these works could challenge the aesthetically drawn ‘breasts and vaginas’ commonly seen in the modern and contemporary art. In dried gourd shells, when Megha pasts the prosthetic nipples they transform into sagging breasts, literally shaming a male onlooker, in the meanwhile rousing the curiously of a female onlooker. In a series of digital photographs and prints on canvases, Megha proves that fitted anywhere on the body including the open palms and elbows, nipple forms could turn that area into sexually potent breasts. In these works, Megha in a performative act, opens her own body up for public viewing, at the same time cleverly avoids all the traps of generic titillation possible in such kind of works.

(Megha Joshi with Roots and Wings)

In a series of fibre glass sculptures, Megha evokes classical Greek sculpture references from art history. Taking a leaf from the Victory of Samothrace, she detaches the wings from the main body of the forward marching goddess Nike (2^nd c BC) and places them on a breasted root base. The artist seems to say that women want to fly like a goddess but her roots are too deep in tradition, she cannot but remain steady in one place flapping her ineffectual wings. Another classical Greek female torso is cannibalized by Megha through the act of artistic irreverence as she plucks out the nipples from her breasts and places them on her buttocks. The reversal of nipple positions evokes the sad but sharp truth of men gazing at women and turning them as mere sexual objects, as seen in the illustrious work of Barbara Kruger (Your Gaze Hits the Side of My Face). One of the most interesting works is a beautiful conversion of a pair of speed bags/balls used in boxing practice. By pasting a pair of nipples on these speed bags, they suddenly turn into a pair of breasts, open to be punched by the curious onlookers. There is a pair of boxing gloves ready on the table.

 (Sensor/Censor I, II, III, IV by Megha Joshi)

While looking at the works of Megha Joshi, one gets the feeling that she has more to articulate through these breasts images/forms. She wants to use more images, more mediums and more surfaces; a sense of overwhelming that an artist gets when the issue she deals with becomes overwhelming that the artistic outcome itself. Without titillating, the show holds our attention. Unlike other contemporary women artists who get into blood and gore, anatomy and veins, Megha has done a clean job and put her point across the society. May be, some may say they are too prosaic and loud, but to me these works announces the arrival of an artist who could speak about her body and its constant conversion into a sex object in the public domain. Megha’s works belong to protest art and it has to be a bit loud to be heard. But protest art could be beautiful too and Megha’s works are beautiful. They look at you with their nipples/eyes/I-s. And you freeze. Megha holds a mirror at a man’s eyes, quite unexpectedly and the reflection shames him. Megha has arrived with a thud...now what next. That I leave to the artist to decide. 

Megha Joshi: A Lonely Goddess within a Familial Pantheon

(Artist, Megha Joshi)

September 2012. Pragati Maidan, New Delhi. United Art Fair was on at Hall number 12, which has become defunct now. I was the chief curator of the project which had gained a popular acronym, UAF. Artists from all over India came to Delhi; some artists came because they were participating in the mega project. Many other artists made it a point to visit the UAF because they thought that it was their Fair which would grow into one of the historical art fairs in the world. Things did not work out the way I had wanted despite my claim that I could help ‘cross the desert without a camel’ (that was the title of one of the articles that appeared in a mainstream daily); obviously, the desert in question was the art market and camel was the art galleries and middle(wo)men.

(Object by Megha Joshi)

Just outside the magnificent hall of exhibition (where world expos were held annually) there was a conspicuous structure made out of discarded rubber slippers painted in gold; a shrine that we often see in the small towns in North India, but here without an idol inside it. Artists and visitors were paying a serious visit to the small shrine and were returning with a hesitant smile for they could not make out whether the humble structure was a spoof or a serious work of art. It was many years before two young guys spoofed the fashionable conceptual installations by placing a pair of specs on the floor of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2016) and seriously photographing it. Here in Delhi, however the Shrine of Slippers meant some serious business for the artist behind that impermanent piece of art was Megha Joshi, a then little known artist based in Delhi. She would go on to become one of the vocal feminist artists in India in the coming years.

(Works by Megha Joshi)

Megha Joshi studied art at the Fine Arts Faculty, MS University, Baroda. The art market of mid 1990s did not have much to offer a young practicing artist. So after education Megha (I prefer to use her first name in this article) went to Delhi where she was born and brought up and decided to join the television/entertainment industry as an art director. Many artists who took up jobs in other fields than art teaching went into oblivion only to resurface during the art boom that threw palpable money around by 2005. Megha had not left art altogether but was hesitant to make a reentry till she met Mukesh Panika of the Religare Art, who had come back from the US and taken up the top job in the cash rich establishment. For Panika, with the famous Eicher Building at the outer circle of the historical Connaught Place at the heart New Delhi at his disposal, sky was the limit. He initiated a project called ‘Connaught Place/Why not Place’ exploring the urban histories and contemporary stories.

(Torso QED by Megha Joshi)

Considering it as a launch-pad Megha came back to the art scene and the Shrine of Chappal was a defiant art/act emanated from her rebellious self which she unapologetically presented at the UAF, even giving some surprise to me, the chief curator. Megha surprised the art scene of Delhi once again, perhaps capturing the attention of the media and the connoisseurs alike in 2013. I was curating a show titled ‘R.A.P.E’ (pronounced ‘rape’) at the Art Bull gallery in Delhi and the idea of the curatorial venture came as a response to the horrendous rape and murder of Jyoti Singh on 16^th December 2012. Hailed as Nirbhaya, Singh was put through nerve wrecking cruelty by four men in a moving bus and after much uproar and protest raised by the public she was sent to Singapore for treatment where she succumbed to her injuries.

(Attractor and Sensor/Censor by Megha Joshi)

‘Nirbhaya’ had consolidated the middleclass angst, anger and protest. The incident also established beyond doubt that India still lived in middle ages with its chauvinistic attitude towards women in the society. I was the first one to respond to the incident through an exhibition and the abbreviation, R.A.P.E was a stand in for ‘Rare Acts of Political Engagement’. Megha was one of the participating artists and the work that she presented was titled ‘Object.’ A pair of prosthetic areolas pasted on a pair of rubber bulbs of the blow hones used in the motor vehicles, was erected on a pedestal using plated iron rods. The work gave an initial shock to the viewers and someone who couldn’t resist the itch to squeeze it did it and then it was history. Everyone rushed to blow it and the gallery space reverberated with the honking. Megha achieved not only what she wanted as the audience response but also a fair amount of fame for the coming days Delhi could see this work featured in almost all the newspapers and television channels. Megha Joshi happened on that day and it was in April 2013.

(Red Drawing Series by Megha Joshi)

Since then there has been no looking back for Megha. Hailing from a socialist family Megha has rebellion in her blood and the flamboyance in her personality somehow hides her communist leanings and socialist upbringing. As I mentioned elsewhere, Megha is unapologetic in her works and life. Most of the ‘feminist’ artists in India refuse to qualify themselves as ‘feminists’ because of the bad associations that the conventional society in India has been successful in attaching to the word. Megha comes out in a different color; she is often vocal about her feminism and never hides behind the word feminine. The same verve is seen in the choice of her themes and materials. Whenever Megha has a disturbing childhood memory to recollect and say it aloud in public, she does it with force and pathos; and she is never ashamed of shedding tears in public. The cathartic act of recounting and retelling personal tragedies absorbed as a part of historical understanding (therefore not necessarily personal in the strictest sense) is something makes Megha different from the lot of her contemporaries for many have the tendency to hoodwink the substantiating etymologies of their ‘works’ in artificial sophistication.

(Works by Megha Joshi)

Areola or the simulated appearance of it through various mediums is one the major modes of artistic expression that Megha has chosen to explore in her works. There is a series of areola works made of paper pulp in which a simple and upfront representation of it at once focuses and displaces the discourse to and away from the body part that is characterized by an areola in a female body, in other words, a breast. Megha does not attach any sentimental connection to breasts and the mammalian divinity attached to it. Rather Megha looks at them as a pair of abused, misrepresented and misinterpreted human/female organs from which natural functionality is eliminated by the cultural associations of eroticism. Hence, in her works areolas appear as stark representations as if they have gained their own personality and are liable to be portrayed as beings, or as broken ‘subjects’ perhaps due to violation or a deteriorating interface that discards all concepts of beauty, comfort and pleasure. Megha makes one of the biggest subversions of the areola by bringing them on the butt cheeks of a classical Venus like torso, in a quirky displacement of erotic zone. This work is titled ‘Torso QED’. Mutilated by history, the torso of an ideal female nude has lost the subjectivity and has become a mere torso for male appreciation and Megha’s intervention makes that torso lose its historical ‘objectivity’ of appreciation and gain the status of an erotic object.

(Wounds by Megha Joshi)

The displacement of a human organ should generate revulsion and embarrassment in the normal circumstances; or else it should create a sense of bizarre. That’s what happened when the westerners saw the representations of the Indian gods and goddesses in sculpture for the first time. But in the case of a female body, the displacement of an organ however does not make it bizarre but accentuates the male gaze to derive more perverted pleasure. And it is in the eyes of the (male) onlooker that perversion lies, says the artist by creating a series of photographs titled ‘Sensor/Censor’. In this series, Megha sticks the prosthetic areolas on various parts of her body that are generally seen as ‘decent’ upon public exposure. The presence of the areola turns these ‘dignified’ body portions suddenly into erotic zones. This magic of the society and also the framing of her body with a clear intention to catch the male gaze and its perversions add to the simplicity as well as the enigmatic nature of the work.

(Site Specific Installations by Megha Joshi)

Other major mediums that Megha has explored extensively are wicks, incense sticks, clothes and blinds. ‘Red Drawing’ is a series in which Megha skillfully uses red colored wicks that are used along with the drawings of a female torso, a surrogate self-representation in a way, exposing the simulated eroticized body parts in an attempt to demystify the female body and its physical effluences. Without exposing the body, Megha keeps her body on a table of pictorial format for virtually dissecting it in order to understand clinically about the corporeality that does not often ooze the juices of erotica, instead produces tears, sweat, pee and menstrual blood. The incense sticks have a direct connotation regarding the subjection of women within the domestic sphere strictly bound by religious dictums. They are used for expressing female genitalia, physical and mental wounds inflicted by such boundaries. Also red kumkum and hair, the symbols that visibilize the married status of a woman and the atrocities that she has to face by becoming a pawn in the family feuds, become Megha’s artistic mediums. Using the blinds made out of incense sticks and similar materials, she brings out the hanging torsos of women, an entity caught in the liminal spaces of existence; neither outside nor inside but in between the threshold, in a precarious hanging.

(Latest Drawings by Megha Joshi)

Megha has also ventured into ceramics, bronze sculptures and installations in public spaces. Irrespective of the mediums and spaces available for displaying her works, Megha explores the existence of the females within an apparently liberal but horribly restrictive society. There is no self-righteousness attitude in her works nor does one see a sloganeering feminism in her visual expressions. She positions herself as a witness and a medium. She works through memories and moments that could have the capacity to generate histories. The latest series of drawings, which she calls ‘unresolved’ both in terms of working and positioning catches her precarious existence within the home itself where the relationships between herself, her husband, children, pet, books, furniture, fridge, gas stove, vegetables, water in the pipe and so on are brought into focus. She identifies the brittle nature of relationships, the temporality of churning emotions, practicalities involved in wading through the cascading ordinariness, negotiating the emotional landscapes made askew by the intensifying tragedies around and so on and the present series of drawings comes to us an effort to see them in humanistic ways rather than something colored by ideologies. Still there is an effort to denude herself and incarnate as a lonely goddess within a familial pantheon.

-JohnyML

Connaught Place WhyNot Place- Why Not?

Seventy days, twenty five artists, five sessions and a lot of art works- if someone asks me to define ‘Connaught Place WhyNot Place’ project initiated by Religare Arts.i Gallery, I would say so. Perhaps, I would add- it is summer magic. And I pinch myself to know that it is not just a mid-summer night’s dream. No, it is real. On 8th August 2009, Arts.i celebrated the successful culmination of the first season (of the summer residency program) with a show by the resident artists.

‘Connaught Place WhyNot Place’, which is going to be a future brand amongst the summer residency programs in India, originated from the fact that the summers are a ‘lean period’ for art in Delhi. Severe climatic conditions send the artists either away from the city or force them to take recluse in their own cocoons. Booming art market had made some dents in this long held notion about Delhi summers. But this time, with the recession blues around, Arts.i thought of making the summer colorful, meaningful and ‘cool’. They short-listed twenty five artists and provided them with studio spaces for doing conventional as well as experimental works.

Located at the historical site of Connaught Place, Arts.i cannot have chosen a better theme than Connaught Place for its residency program. The tag, WhyNot Place points towards the possibilities this city centre can offer to the artists. Connaught Place gets a new meaning and also it appears as a new challenge when this tag of ‘Why Not’ gets added to it. The artists in residency were supposed to take up this challenge and deal with it. This project then is a sort of art workshop and reality show rolled up into one, with Nicholas Hoffland, the big but benevolent brother as curator and mentor.

Now when you talk about a reality show, you tend to take sides- you like some participants and you don’t like some others. In the case of an art reality show, I too am prone to this human weakness. I cannot like all the twenty five artists and their works alike. I have to make my choices.

‘Connaught Place WhyNot Place’ is successful in bringing a few genuine talents to the limelight. I name them- Megha Joshi, Gagan Singh, Shafi Quraishy, Raj Kumar Mohnaty, Mukesh Sharma and Daina Mohapatra.

Megha Joshi, an alumnus of Fine Arts Faculty, Baroda and not a migrant in Delhi re-invents Connaught Place in her installation titled ‘Rooted in Memory’. She collects a lot of milk bottles from one of the famous dairies in CP and creates a sculpture that almost looks like a stream jutting out from a wall which is framed for the purpose. The fragility of memories, even the fragile relationships one can have in a place like Delhi and the brittleness of history are well indicated through this work. Connaught Place, a place that refuses to become ‘Rajiv Chowk’ has nothing but a modern history as its mainstay. It is an evolving space and Megha has envisioned this place as a haunted area. Using latex surgical gloves, she creates a narrative on the quotidian life that evolves around CP. The satirical streak in her works ensures repeated looking.

A migrant’s fear never subsides however he gets naturalized in his new environs. Gagan Singh and Mukesh Sharma in this way express the secret anxieties of a migrant in their works. They also revel in the secret pleasures that the city offers. Religious and social history comes under the microscopic analysis of Gagan Singh as he creates a series of narratives using ink drawings as his medium. These narratives are quirky critiques on a city- perhaps not about Connaught Place alone. The linearity of drawings, the simplicity of thematic selection and the complexity of conceptualizing the theme are starkly noticeable in Gagan’s works.

There is a surreal mixture of textural, textual and image layers in Mukesh Sharma’s work. The apparent abstract feel of the pictorial surface fades away and the figurative narratives come out one by one as the onlooker keeps looking at the work. It is all about Connaught Place and its latest history. The pathways, the metro, people going around with their daily chores etc are discernable. What makes this work important is Mukesh’s skillful weaving of two contemporary factors- the woman is not safe in this city. A social minority lives under the threat of violence. I am very curious to the redefining of Picasso in Mukesh’s work without showing any trace of cubism. A condensed Guernica? Has CP become another war field; war zone of cultures?

Shafi Quraishy has been dealing with the issues of science, technology and technology induced war/terror/torture methods. According to Shafi, human being is the ultimate machine which can withstand any kind of pressure or terror on him. He becomes the ultimate machine because he has a philosophical mind to understand that human being is the biggest enemy of any other human being. In Connught Place WhyNot Place, Shafi creates a huge painting of a knee, seen from a close perspective, with the bone structure and ligaments visible. Behind it, there is the vast expanse of a city plan, resembling CP, seen from an aerial perspective. Nuclear permutations and combinations are seen in the atmosphere. In this tensed musculature detail one can feel the perennial struggle of David against the gigantic Goliath. Shafi imagines the city as a city of Davids and also of Goliaths.

Daina Mohapatra looks at her own self and creates her own multiple images, tonsured and tortured to calmness. These multiples act out several daily dramas, as if in a pantomime. ‘In the Eye of the Storm’, Daina, paints her self portrait with an open mouth that carries an ocean in it. On the right panel, one witnesses another self of the artist making her reflected self to listen the songs of the sea from a conch shell. The background is Connaught Place as indicated by a map with arrows going helter-skelter. Or are they indicating a way out, a way out of the traps of a city as emblematized by Connaught Place?

Raj Kumar Mohanty’s untitled sculptural installation attracts the viewer as it has a mattress created out of cotton balls and a piece of granite for pillow. On the other end of the mattress, a small monitor plays out the image of a dying cockroach on the same bed. It is an interesting take on Connaught Place, in which an artist wants to see CP/city as a mattress where the beings die the death of a cockroach. Migration is still an interesting artistic theme for Raj Mohanty.

Connaught Place WhyNot Place has several installations. The display looks quite contemporary. I can recall the works of Rajarshi Smart, Avishek Sen Satadru Sovani, Pratibha Sing and so on. At the same time there are some experimental works which are done for the sake of experiments.

(For more pictorial reference and for a better view of the works please visit www.religarearts.com)

Mamallapuram Diary

(Crocodiles can Jump- with my Daughter)

Madan is a pleasant young man and he goes by his first name like many of the South Indian guys. He hardly speaks and smiles a lot. When he speaks he does it in Tamil. Madan drives a taxi. And I have a problem. I landed at the Chennai airport with this confidence that I could handle a Tamil situation in a Tamilian’s way. I know a bit of Tamil which I had learnt while watching Tamil movies inspired by the acting of Kamal Haasan and Rajnikaant, a film parallel to the then Ambassdor and Fiat cars. We had this duality during the pre-global days. When we said Tata we added Birla. Hero and villain were too defined characters. Grey shades were absolutely kept out of heroic characters. Despite the Eastman colours, our way of looking at the world was black and white. I could render Tamil dialogues with some kind of verve. And I thought with the changing times my confidence too had increased.

A hot afternoon in Chennai proves things otherwise. I try to speak to the taxi driver in Tamil and what comes out is a language which is mixed with Hindi, Tamil, English and Malayalam. I try my level best to tune my language skills to Tamil and it just does not happen. But business does not need too many languages. Though I find myself at the tower Babel, the driver understands me. He takes me and my family to Cholamandal artists’ village. I meet Madan on the next day. With Madan I could retrieve my lost pride, I think and I try to speak to him in Tamil. The more I try the more Hindi comes out. The more I try to keep Hindi under check the more English comes out. When I smother both these languages to death something does not sound either like Tamil or Malayalam comes out. I smile at myself after each statement that I make. Madan knows my linguistic emergency. He tells me that he could understand Hindi and English, a little bit, he adds. I tell him as an act of saving my face that I also handle Tamil, a little bit. We are on the same boat. We share the same pain and pleasure of strange languages.

(A croc resting in his pond)

Madan’s pleasant smile and friendly nature make me forget the language problem. And the first destination for the day is to the Crocodile Park in Nemmeni fifteen kilometres away from Cholamandal. People, children and grown-ups alike, throng here. They all want to see the crocodiles who in fact do not want to see so many people. But the crocs don’t care. They just sleep on. There are thousands of them in different cages, ponds and pools. Each section belongs to a different species. But I don’t have the patience to see the difference between one species to another. For me they all look alike, ferocious and dormant for the time being. At each fifty meters there are sign boards that tell the people to abstain from throwing stones at the stone like crocs. They may be looking disinterested. But they can fly like birds and make you lose a limb. So instead of throwing stones and sand at the crocs people take their photographs. I also join the ritual by clicking the pictures of my family. Kids are super excited seeing so many crocs at one go.

In one catchment, amongst the hundreds of crocs in different resting postures we chance upon one croc climbing on another. Instantly I realize that they are making love. But most of the people, perhaps even after knowing that it is a very private moment film them in the act as if they were watching a very steamy scene in an x rated movie. One young girl with her parents shoots the act. Mother shares the excitement by saying that one croc is climbing on the other. The father shies away from the scene after giving it a covert glance. I see one young dark complexioned fat woman in her silk saree and jasmine flowers on hair, sheepishly recording it. After a few moments she runs away from the scene giggling. I think of her sharing the pictures she has just taken with her friends secretively.

(A signboard at the croc park)

Here is a very daring act of a few men and women. In a catchment I see two crocs lying along the walls of the pit. Three men and two women are in the same pit, a few feet away from the ferocious reptiles, cleaning the water and pit. People gather around them and for a moment they all forget that they are there to see the crocs. They wonder at the courage of the men and women who are in the pit. In another area there is a signboard saying that to see the most dangerous animal on the earth open the box. There is box erected on a perch. I know that there is a mirror in it. But I share the enthusiasm of the kids and open the panels of it as if I were mortally frightened. There we see our reflections in a mirror. Perhaps, it is predictable for me as I have seen similar experiments. In the United Art Fair 2012, artist Megha Joshi had done an installation. It was a temple made of chappals. Inside the temple at the shrine you could see a mirror reflecting your own image. I had seen a lot of people taking their pictures at Megha Joshi’s shrine. Also I remember Sree Narayana Guru, the illustrious social reformer of 19^th c Kerala. He also had enshrined a mirror in the place of an idol. Then I think this installation at the croc park in Nemmeni is a better installation than many that we generally seen in art galleries.

From there Madan takes us to Mahabalipuram. It is Mammallapuram in fact. The Pallava King Narasimhavarman II commissioned the making of these monolithic rock temples in 7^th century AD. One could see the craftsmanship and the sculptural understanding of the artists who had carved these temples. There are five of them in one site and are called Five Rathas (Five Chariots). They are also called Pandava Rathas with reference to Mahabharata. Archaeological Survey of India clearly notifies that it does not have anything to do with the Pandavas. But the guides who eke out a living have done the damage by this time. They tell people that these temples are Pandava creations. They point out the enormous rock ball sitting precariously on a rock land and tell people that it was a butter ball kept by young Krishna. None asks when young Krishna came there with a butter ball all the way from Mathura, which in North India. Guides make their own stories in all the archaeological sites.

 (Mahabalipuram rathas)

I remember listening to a story told me by a tourist guide in some rock land in one of my expeditions. He shows me a groove along the rock and tells me that it was the groove created by Bheema who was hauling a chain. None asks him why Bheema was on chain in that particular place. There is a place in Kerala called Chadayamangalam. It is a derivative of Jatayu Mangalam. It was in this place where Jatayu had confronted Ravana who was abducting Sita. Some people show some recessions on rock lands and tell that those are the foot marks of Sita. In Kanyakumari (cape comerin) you see the foot prints of Devi. But they look embossed. How come Devi had such a footstep? Religious belief is something that does not expect logical questions. Sometimes it is always better not to ask questions. The stories told by guides are seriously amusing. Once a guide took me to Fatehpur Sikri and made me to stand in a corner. He made a sound and it echoed. Then he told me that it was how the soldiers communicated with each other when the enemies appeared at a distance. It sounds logical for a moment. Then it is a sham when you think of it. Similarly when you go to Khajuraho, the guides show you where exactly the copulating couples could be found at the outer layer of the temples. I had heard a beautiful story. In Dwapara Yuga, when Bheema was wandering in the forest he found a huge ring. He took it up, raised above his head and then let it go. The ring fell around him without touching his body. Some sage later on told him that it was the finger ring of Sita who had lived in Treta Yuga. When Ravana was abducting her she threw her jewels down. It was her finger ring. Sometimes myths make sense, beautifully. In Kaliyuga we are small people.

(Mrinal explaining a sculpture to Maitreya)

It is always good to have an in-house art historian. It is always convenient. Mrinal knows art history well so she explains the history to my son, who is at that age of understanding history in the form of stories. However, I listen to music of chisels unheard now but heard in a rhythmic pattern for years together in 7^th Century AD. I see the devotion of the artists and craftsmen. They used to work in guilds. The first group of carvers carved cave shapes out of rocks. The second group was more skilful than the former. They chiselled the sculptures. The last group was the finest artists. They gave the detailing to the individual figures. It was a glorious moment in time. And their spirits are still around. If you have a pair of eyes you could see.

(shore temple)

The shore temple is no longer shore temple. The shore has been pushed out through a strategic fencing. I was here three years back. That time the fencing was not so prominent. Now the shore temple is an isolated island. The Tsunami in 2004 had brought a few sculptural works out from the pit of sea. Now they are kept preserved and conserved. We walk along a narrow pathway leading to the beach. On the one side there is a line of shops that sell trinkets to fried fish, carved stones to figurines and statuettes, hats to chappals. Women and children come behind you pleading to buy some beads and malas. At the beach, I could make out those people who have seen sea before and those who have never seen it. I could make out people from North and South. The first timers revel at the sight of water. They throw away their clothes and jump into water, men and women alike. They outdo the waves in their mirth. Horses move around the beach with their tenders. If you are interested you can have a ride.

On the way back to Cholamandal, we visit, Dakshinchitra, a living museum of craft and architecture from different parts of India. It is a site of culture that has been manufactured with the sole purpose of consuming/selling. Still it has a sort of energy in the reproduction of architectural samples. I take a few photographs and pose for a few. Family try their hands at pottery. The potter with a benevolent smile holds the hands of women and helps them to shape pots out of clay. Bangle sellers and pottery teachers could touch women’s hands without asking for permission, I think. Otherwise one should be a palm reader. I am none of the above so I don’t get a chance to hold the hands of women. But I am happy to hold some hands that have invested their complete faith in me.

Crossing the Lakshmana Rekha: Absence of a Curator

(Katharina Kakar)

The role of a curator in an exhibition is many things including being a check point ‘for/of the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings and emotions’ of the artist who at times fails to understand where to draw the line of control. This creative overdrive could be hazardous for a solo show which is neither a retrospective nor a stock taking kind. A solo exhibition is often an exhibition by a single artist who would present his/her works done in a particular period of time, mostly with thematic as well as stylistic coherence. A curator helps the artist to build a coherent narrative which would take the viewer to those zones of understanding from where he/she could take off to a preferred trip of making sub-narratives, meta-narratives and even counter narratives. While both creating as well as interpreting art could be whimsical to certain extent, it is curator’s job to hold the logic tight and in place so that the madness of making and interpreting could be methodical therefore palatable. Absence of an architect or planner could make a city of cancerous edifices and the absence of a curator could make an exhibition metastasizing itself into innumerable artifacts which perhaps say the same thing again and again, like a ‘like a tale told by an idiot’. 

(Crossing the Lakshmana Rekha by Katharina Kakar)

When I stand before the works of Goa based Indo-German artist, Katharina Kakar exhibited in her first solo show ever at the Visual Arts Gallery, IHC, New Delhi, I remember Shakespeare who qualified life as ‘a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.’ That does not mean that my attempt is here to write out Katharina’s first solo show. Titled ‘Crossing the Lakshmana Rekha- Shakti, Sensuality, Sexuality’, this exhibition is curated by Dr.Alka Pande and strangely I have been looking for the touch of the curator throughout the show but in vain. My statement needs qualification and to furnish it before the reading public, I would like to analyze the basic theme of the show and then would like to go on to see how the curator’s hand is absolutely absent in this show which thrives on multiplication of ideas and artifacts. The show, as the title implies is all about the assertion of the takes of the ‘empowered women’, their ability or inability to articulate the sexuality and sensuality, and if at all articulated the ways in which such articulations are handled in the conventional Indian society. Katharina being an anthropologist who has been working amongst Indian women for more than two decades now, has a very good grip over her subject, but I need to add that a complete grip on a subject would not perhaps make one a good artist exactly the way his genius in economics would not make Dr. Amartya Sen a great painter of poverty alleviation.

 

(Connected by Katharina Kakar)

The mediums that Katharina uses range from the traditional to found objects to the industrial products. Except for a few mediums she has touched almost everything that is employed in creating works of art. A cursory survey would bring the following mediums into our ken of attention: bronze, copper, fiber glass, wood, wax, pen, pencil, paper, plastic, digital imaging, resin, iron, steel, flowers, clay, liquids resembling blood, books, video, lettering, light, latex and so on. There are rugged surfaces as well as highly polished ones. There are two dimensional works as well as three dimensional works. Katharina has raked through ideas and mediums like a greedy child in a confectionary shop. She has done a lot of works that would satisfy her non-stoppable flow of ideas. The gallery looks very impressive with all these works but the moment you progress from one work to another, a sense of futility start enveloping you for the simple reason that you get the insatiable urge of the artist to hammer in her ideas into your head and you start slowly resisting it. Result is the rejection of the show after the initial feeling of awe. 

(Circling the Universe by Katharina Kakar)

I know Katharina personally and I had seen her foray into the field of visual art in a collaborative work with the noted artist Subodh Kerkar on the ideas of mortality, vanity of life through the unclaimed bodies in mortuaries. She had recited her sociological and anthropological findings in poetic verses, wearing black clothes before a sculptural rendition of a dead head by Kerkar at the Devi Art Foundation in Gurgaon in 2012. After that not so purely visual start, Katharina had invested her energies in writing a book titled ‘Moving to Goa’ which was a very hearty narrative on Goan life in general and her own life there in particular. In this book Katharina describes how she and her psychoanalyst husband and author Sudhir Kakar bought an old house and turned it into a new abode, redesigning it inch by inch. She gives a graphic description of the working patterns of the Goan laborers who come to the premises to rest rather than work. Katharina’s anthropological and sociological training and experience had fully shown the varieties in this writing. However, I wonder how Katharina has lost that power of narrative and discretion in her first solo exhibition which is under consideration now. 

(Hang out to Dry- Katharina Kakar)

This is exactly where I will pinpoint the absence of a curator. As an artist, Katharina has done her best to bring out her pet themes of sexuality and sensuality, and women empowerment, using very special and personalized metaphors like skull, broken limbs, ears, lit up holes, breast like figures, blood flowing veins, vagina, chilly and so on. ‘Crossing the Lakshmana Rekha’ is a field of red petals encircled by the broken limbs of a woman. ‘December 26, 2012’ commemorates the tragic death of Nirbhaya, the rape victim in a Singapore hospital; Katharina has made a very powerful work by using two found objects to suggest forced penetration. ‘Memory of the Future’ is a set of wax skulls pigmented to show the future death of female infants in the Indian shores. ‘Screw You’ is a set of wax chola bronze like female heads with screws pushed into them. ‘Saptamatrika’ ironically connotes the guardian angels (seven Devis) of the villages but Katharina aesthetically minimalizes them into pregnant pot forms fitted with breast like protrusions. ‘Hung out to Dry’ is a series of resin made emblematic vagina’s hung from wax cover clips. Reduction of women into mere vaginas is suggested poignantly in this works.

 

(work by Megha Joshi)

These powerful works somehow fails in the midst of a group of other works that are deliberately done with some sort of Indian-ness in mind. The patina-ized, pigmented bronze chillies, Shakti piths and so on somehow kill the effect of the other works. Katharina has extensively used verses and images from Kamasutra, the ancient Indian manual of sex, which in a way had liberated women from the male domination. Katharina uses this as a tool (Sudhir Kakar also is very much interested in this text and he has come out with a novel titled ‘The Ascetic of Desire’ too) in order to highlight the possibilities of women’s latent sexual prowess and their ability to express it in ‘heat’. A show with such good intention however goes out of hand of the artist because of the unedited feeling given away by the show. This is where the curator has come to help the artist to pick, choose, edit and display the works. Following the trail of Katharina’s thought, curator Alka Pande also has talked about the artist’s affinities for Marina Abromovic, Louise Bourgeois, Christian Boltanski and so on. In fact Alka Pande uses almost ten names both from India and abroad to substantiate the works of Katharina and forgets to edit the works that have added excessive baggage to the show. Interestingly Chris Deacon, the director of the Tate Modern also has come up with a series of names ranging from Eva Hesse to Yayoi Kusama. Is it because that both these forward writers want to see Katharina in the league of these international names?

(Catalogue of Tentua Dabaa Do-Kill Her by Chintan Upadhyay)

The exhibition proves that simple name dropping will not help any artist to come up with a good show. Katharina’s exhibition could have been really great if she had received curatorial help and edited out fifty per cent of the works from the exhibition. The drawings that she has done do not show any affinity for the cutting edge works that she has done in unconventional mediums. They look as if done by two different artists. The curator has not given any proper reason for including those drawings in this show. Also Katharina has carried away by the idea of Indian-ness. Many works look like three dimensional versions of Raza’s paintings. In my opinion, Katharina could come up with a series of good works if she practices self-restrain. Art is a way of telling things subtly and covertly; art of art is concealing art. But Katharina’s show looks like a protest march rather than a piece of music that makes people think. Though the curator has forgotten certain works that had appeared before Katharina’s exhibition, I need to remind the artist about them for the sake of clarity. In 2007, Chintan Upadhyay had done an exhibition titled ‘Tetua Dabaa Do or Kill Her’. This was a studied result of Chintan’s explorations into the darker arenas of female foeticide prevalent in Rajasthan. In 2013, Megha Joshi had responded to the Nirbhaya issue with a very powerful work that used breast forms as blow horns in a show titled ‘R.A.P.E’ curated by me. If the curator is aware of such exhibits already existing in the Indian art scene, then definitely he/she would find different ways of a presenting a new artist. Katharina Kakar can do good art provided if she works with right curators and in different studios.