Atul Bhalla & the weight of water

“The river in front of her was black. She thought it contained many things.”

— Gisèle Prassinos

Atul Bhalla continues the artist's engagement with environmental issues, specifically those engaging with the eco-politics of water. Featured in his ongoing solo exhibition at Vadehra Art Gallery, "Ya Ki Kuchh Aur!", are three projects documented in three global locations — "Deliverance" in New Delhi, "Inundation" in Hamburg and "Contestation" in Johannesburg. Researched since 2012, the projects suggest the universality of environmental issues, while highlighting associated socio-cultural conventions that hinder or alleviate the problems thereof.

The show begins quite poignantly with the three-channel video titled Deliverance I, which opens with a wide-angle shot of calm open waters. An empty boat floats slowly into the frame of the second screen, and then into the third. There's a moment of blankness before the centre screen lights up again with a visual of the boat at sunset, the city in the background and birds squawking before nightfall. In the quietude, the lonely boat is suddenly ablaze and the video ends. The message is clear and most beautifully executed as one walks to an installation titled Looking for Dvaipayana (island-born), a reference to the Hindu scholar Vyasa and an entry point to Bhalla's research on the laborious boat-making craft of the Mallah community. A tank of water, a pillar standing tall, a table with remnants of rock with the words YA in Hindi laid on the ground presented in an archival manner suggest the inevitability of human usage of water resources. A series of 30 photographs documenting the making of a boat — wood, iron nails, workmen's hands, and the rituals that guide each step of the boat's making — are presented on an adjacent wall in The Wake.

The project is concluded in the last room of the gallery in a painting titled Deliverance, showing the wooden boat suspended in air in the moment before it touches the water, and from where it fulfills its function as a rite of passage. On looking longer, it could also be the moment the boat ends its journeying and is liberated from its function. The title is telling; the viewer is led from the object's inevitable destruction in the video through processes of its making to the moment of dilemma — the wooden boat mid-air, awaiting its release. So, what happens when the river touches the city?

Deliverance, Archival pigment print back mounted on diamond, 42" x 77", 2012

Contestation - I, Archival pigment print, 36" x 54", 2013

The second project, "Inundation", focuses on the acts of immersion and self- meditation referenced through the presence or absence of the physical body near the river Elbe in Hamburg. Through bodily gestures, Bhalla activates the river as a site of memory just as rituals reinforce faith in the series What will be my defeat? On the other hand, the series of three photographs Inundation-I, II, III depicts vast expanses of water, leaving the viewer to meditate on his position — the act of viewing and acting itself.

The viewer is led from the object’s inevitable destruction in the video through processes of its making to the moment of dilemma. So, what happens when the river touches the city? 

The third and final project is "Contestation", researched and shot in Johannesburg, where Bhalla spent three months as part of a residency in 2012. A single white linen jacketed chair amidst the dry grassy landscape appears repeatedly itself in a series of large photographs accenting our role as spectators, while also punctuating racial and patriarchal prescriptions of South Africa through the symbolic use of the "white" high-backed chair. Politics concerning privatisation of land, gold mining and large open deposits of waste bear witness to a country still struggling with archaic laws and a hard-wired racial history.

Atul Bhalla's images of landscapes are poetic in their revelation of engagements and disengagements with urban development. Although his research and documentation cover a number of sites, predominantly rivers, his dialogue with nature is universal and often meditative. The show is but a glimpse into his many years of work but is well worth the visit and remains on view until 20 December 2014.

Balkrishna Doshi and the symphony of architecture

We never notice light, we just assume it, claims Balkrishna Doshi in a short film that is part of a retrospective of his work at the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi. Scribbled along the margins of a sheet of paper that lies in a vitrine containing a scaled model of the exhibition, I read another quote — "This is not the exhibition of an architect but an artist who sees all the stages of a place, building at one glance."

The retrospective is conceived as an experiential exhibit, as a way of simulating our engagement with architecture. Doshi insisted on the spatial design being accessible — for everyone to be able to relate to what was presented and possibly inspire those who visited. The challenge was taken up and successfully addressed by the curator and architect Khushnu Panthaki Hoof, who is also his granddaughter. "Celebrating Habitat: The Real, the Virtual and the Imaginary" is a celebration of our experiences with built spaces witnessed through projects conceived and executed by Doshi over a career spanning six decades.

Doshi's work is, in fact, representative of modern art, but not in an insular way. It is transformative. In his own words, "It is a dialogue with nature, community and building; architecture is a symphony". Doshi also happens to be a great storyteller, and the poetics with which he conveys an organic symbiosis with nature in words and work is truly invigorating. 

“Design is not static and is related to time, place, function, occasions, reasons, concerns and belief of that time. It is also related to economy and sustainability.”

A part of the display (architectural drawings with photographs of Doshi at different sites

Another view of the exhibition/ IIM Bangalore

I enter the exhibition through four columns, representing the manner in which space is organised in any home and also the basis of all Doshi's residential constructions. Alongside are large colour photographs of how the pillars appear in the interior of his home. The four pillars also represent Le Corbusier, whom he trained under in Paris from 1952-1956; Louis Kahn, whom he invited to design IIM Bangalore with him; Rabindranath Tagore, for his conception of Shantiniketan; and Gandhi, whose teachings have guided his personal understanding of life and living. I wonder where to walk next — to my left is a gallery of paintings, to my right I see scaled models of buildings, more photographs and some furniture, right in front is a vaulted space which I then learn is representative of Doshi's office, Sangath Studio in Ahmedabad. Space is designed so as to not be leading, but interconnected. There is no chronology, and I agree that in this case, the non-linearity of spatial design is more effective in discovering and learning as one goes from a project to another. It is true to Doshi's vision of the exhibition being a laboratory. When asked how he imagined the 60 years of his architecture as being reflective of changes in society, he replies, "Design is not static and is related to time, place, function, occasions, reasons, concerns and belief of that time. It is also related to economy and sustainability."

The exhibition recreates not only the spaces he has envisioned and built, but also the impulse to each context and the inhabitants they have been built to house. It is a montage of experiences, in real time and space constructed through scaled models, sketches, interactive pieces, film and fragmented mock-ups. LIC Housing in Ahmedabad, National Institute of Fashion Technology in Delhi, Sawai Gandharva in Pune, City Hall in Toronto, Kanoria Centre for the Arts, as well as the famous Amdavad ni Gufa built in collaboration with M.F. Husain as an exhibition hall in Ahmedabad, are presented as overlapped and evolving into each other, yet they all are complete projects in their own right. Each resonates a certain timelessness.

The skillful play of scales and proportions is an imagined nuance of real space, that make this retrospective highly stimulating. It is a must-see. So, if you haven't already visited, today is the last day!

Ishan Tankha: Storing collective memory from conflict zones

Who documents the lands that are unchartered and inhabitants who haven't as yet fallen under the census grid? I refer to the heavily forested areas of central India comprising a demographic that is a mix of rural and tribal, and remains one of the centres of the Naxal-Maoist ideology in India. Delhi-based photojournalist Ishan Tankha has been photographing these regions since 2008 on assignments for publications such as India Today and Open. His decision to continue his association with the people and the land as a freelance photographer since 2012 reflects a relationship of deeper understanding and a consequential need to draw a similar cognizance from others.

Tankha's first trip to the region was rather dramatic; he ended up falling ill with the potentially fatal falciparum malaria combined with debilitating jaundice and typhoid. He made it back to the city in time and into a hospital, but another photojournalist on assignment did not and neither do most of the villagers living there. As I look through the black-and-white unedited images from his most recent trip made possible by the Danielou grant he won from the Europe Foundation for New Dialogue in 2013 (FIND), Tankha's images appear more as a narration of his experiences of engagement with the people than their cause per se. He enjoys taking portraits and informs me that for "these people" it is a matter of survival, a simple lack of choice. More people die of disease than of bullets.

Photojournalism is a unique hybrid of spot photography and improvised storytelling. It requires both research and the experience to "make" a telling photograph. Photojournalists ostensibly help expand our "vision" of the world. Its origin as a discipline can be traced to the late 1920s, with the advent of smaller, more portable cameras that used the enlargeable film negative to record images. The introduction of the 35 mm Leica camera made it possible for photographers to move with the action, taking shots of events as they unfolded. Multiple frames presented as a narrative created a photo story, a departure from the illustrative manner in which photographs were earlier used with news reportage.

Tankha confesses to liking the quieter, more unexpected moments. Quite often, it's not the gun in the frame of the picture that tells the story but the absence of it. My curiosity gets the better of me and I ask how much of the photojournalist's work is staged and how much does the image feed the context of the predefined story. It's a matter of ethics, both personal and professional. And at the end of the day, are some things not in need of a hint of fiction to have a greater impact?

As I flip through images, I ask him how important titles are in helping understand the context of the photograph. Tankha picks out a picture of a man lying in the grass — drunk? Asleep? Dead? There's no way to tell. And perhaps that's where the photographer's instinct comes into play. What would he want you to believe? And how much does the context of being a "conflict zone" impact our understanding of the frame itself? It is a rather mischievous proposition that quietly and elegantly upsets the already precarious connections between what we presume to know and what is right in front of us.

Tankha picks out a picture of a man lying in the grass — Drunk? Asleep? Dead? There’s no way to tell. And perhaps that’s where the photographer’s instinct comes into play. What would he want you to believe? And how much does the context of being a ‘conflict zone’ impact our understanding of the frame itself? 

But what prescriptions differentiate news from art? With an over-supply of images today, there is a parallel overlap in modes of representation and display. News images are making their way to gallery walls accenting an appeal of being truly contemporary — they represent a dimension of reality that is current and ongoing, and the photograph's placement ensures its longevity relative to when it was only an image in the news.

I question the photograph's potential as a document of history, a way to record the collective memory of the landscape, and ask Tankha, what of the images I was looking at? He says he'd like to compile them as an economically made photo-book to be distributed amongst the people of the region, for them to have an album, a tangible document to share beyond the contrived history of conflict and stories they narrate to journalists and inquisitive others.

Nehru, Nobel and display criteria

What do Jawaharlal Nehru and Alfred Nobel have in common, I wondered, as I stumbled upon the traveling exhibition The Nobel Prize: Ideas Changing the World, on view as a temporary exhibit at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, located in the heart of the city. Both were iconic figures who left a lasting legacy that has redefined our knowledge of history and the ways we choose to "read" it today. Surrounded by much controversy and fanfare, both are remembered and memorialised in very different ways.

Located at the corner of Teen Murti Marg, one enters the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library through the gate to the Planetarium, past a 14th century hunting lodge belonging to the Delhi Sultanate ruler Firoz Shah Tughlaq, finally leading to the sprawling lawns surrounding the former residence and now memorial museum of Jawaharlal Nehru. As I walked in, I was struck by the many timelines of existence: past, present and future, all collapsed into a moment of experience and a site.

Museums were developed to preserve material culture associated with a civilisation, person or event. Memorials and monuments have been built for centuries in the hope of attaining glory and immortality for the persona being memorialised. Re-tracking back to the "frame" of the Nehru Museum, the idea to preserve and foster the history of India's independence through the figure of one of its leaders isn't new, and is not wholly comprehensive. The Nobel Museum, on the other hand, commemorates Alfred Nobel's wish to foster and award innovation in fields he appreciated — physics, chemistry, literature, peace and medicine. Call it philanthropy or a way to redeem himself from a then-notorious reputation as the inventor of dynamite. His name perpetuates because of the one will and wish that ensured universal approval and his continued veneration thereof. While in concept, both museums rely on the personalities from which they derive their name and inspiration, the difference between the two lies in the outlook: NMML looks retrospectively, while the Nobel Museum looks at the "now" and the future.

I find it pertinent to observe what is let in and what is left out. Criteria for inclusion have always played politics in the writing of history and in the collective memory of the public. 

In room after room of the NMML, I see Nehru family albums, documentary photographs of socio-political events that are regarded as critical historical moments and newspaper clippings recording the same. Constructed genealogies of movements are displayed on the wood-panelled walls of the building. Each reveals its own history – recorded in the architecture, the construction, the use, the contents, the customs of visitation and the public's perception.

The Nobel Prize: Ideas Changing the World exhibition is located on the first floor and balcony of the building, somewhat in the middle of India's history of the Satyagraha movement, leading to "Gandhi as Rebel". It is divided into the following sub-categories — "The Nobel Prize and its Inception", "The Prize over the Decades", "The Prize in Everyday Life" and "The Prize in the Future". The first chapter is illustrated with a selection of three winning innovations in each of the five fields, as well as Nobel's own counterpart. For example, in the vitrine for the field of medicine, Nobel's transfusion device is placed alongside Robert Bárány's vestibular apparatus (1915) and Shinya Yamanaka's model of reprogrammed mature cells (2012). The second chapter is illustrated with edited videos clips, marking "defining" events in history — the fall of the Berlin Wall for the decade 1981-'90, the widespread use of the transistor radio in the 1950s, the founding of the Red Cross in the 1920s. The third chapter is an extension of the first two, with a description of how Nobel laureates' innovations affect us. The last chapter is an interactive poll asking the visitors questions about their views on disarmament of nuclear weapons, on climate change and the use of natural resources, medical research and ways of increasing human longevity as well as the importance of storytelling in an age of digital media.

So what does my argument have to do with art per se? Well, for one, I think it is important to note the manner in which we understand museums and the personalities behind each exhibition. It also brings to the fore the reasons and methods behind selection and collecting for display. With private museums in India playing a dynamic role in facilitating new ways of representation and a platform for initiation of open dialogue, I find it increasingly pertinent to observe what is let in and what is left out. Criteria for inclusion have always played politics in the writing of history and in the collective memory of the public. How far are museums and their intent derived from the biographies of their founding personalities, and to what extent have new mutations been formed by presenting certain documents and achievements within the elevated frame of artifacts for museum display?

The exhibition was fittingly inaugurated by Nobel laureates A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, Kailash Satyarthi and George Smoot, and remains on view at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library till 11 December.