The beautiful (Im)permanence of clay

Anindita Dutta uses clay to bring out the impermanence of life. Is it not fitting to see fistfuls of wet earth representing human mortality and our fleeting time on earth? Dig a little deeper and one realises that the material's properties allow for a host of metaphorical assumptions. Clay's tactile malleability and porosity, its availability in different grades and hues everywhere, as well as its range of uses (brick or porcelain) make it a versatile material employed in contemporary living today.

Everything Ends and Everything Matters is the title of the Indian-born, US-based artist Dutta's solo exhibit at Gallery Latitude 28 this season. The gallery supported the artist's project under the same title at the 2014 India Art Fair, where she built a large spiral monument in clay, activated by visceral performances of feeling, beating, and grasping the clay. The performance alluded to the ways in which we live our lives; trying to hold on to moments, perhaps the ones we missed living. How do we live when we know we are to die? The piece serves as a means of both venting the anxiety of impending death as well as imprinting a personal mark that survives for posterity. The spiral echoes the cyclic resilience of life as well as earth's corporeal form.

The title of the show is borrowed from American author Ron Currie Jr's psychological fiction novel Everything Matters. The novel narrates the troubled life of Junior Thibodeau who is born knowing when and how the world will end. While the protagonist struggles with his emotions and attachments to the people he cares for, Currie believes everything ends not in spite of us, but because of us. "Everything is all you've got... and after Everything is nothing".

Trained as a sculptor, Dutta finds the "performative" more attuned to her artistic aim, that of dialoguing with and conquering her state of transience through live installations that are "marked" by the imprints of human touch. For her current solo, she presents a selection of videos, photographs and sculptures of a series of performances, the latest of which were performed and photographed at Sanskriti Kendra in New Delhi where she recently concluded a residency. Crudely scraped and deeply textured with bare hands, spirals and lines emerge in clay as furrowed markings on a backdrop against which one or two individuals stand covered in clay as an incidental part of the surface. Everything merges into the clay; persons, environment, objects. 

Self Portrait, Print on archival paper (Performance: Used Garden Tools, Wet French clay and Myself), 35" x 83”, 2013

Untitled, Digital Print on Archival Paper, 40" x 60", 2015

Maya, 37 x 82", Digital Print on Archival Paper, 2014

​Perhaps Dutta follows in the lineage of earth-body art made popular by Cuban artist Ana Mendieta in the 1970s, where the artist used her performances of merging with the earth as her mark-making process; essentially a way to experiment with the genres of land, body and performance art, but within a feminist language.

Upon entering the gallery, one immediately finds two large photographic stills from Untitled performances in 2015. In one, the male and female clay smothered figures stand facing the camera, and symmetrically fit into either end of a rectangular frame. In the other, they stand back to back, mouths open as though gesturing a scream. The markings behind them here are tumultuous, vigorously drawn spirals that reflect the energy of their frame. The clay in the first frame is patterned into lines and spirals, deep and still, but resonating a far tamer energy. Dutta's metaphors are clear and continue in the same strain through the exhibition. In a triptych titled Self Portrait (2013), she appears holding three different gardening tools to her face, as though wanting to weed out unnecessary thoughts and illusionary ideas.

Dutta has cared for the finer details, ensuring the walls of the gallery weren't painted as they usually would be, but rather plastered with mud, the same colour of the mud in each of the frames. What overwhelms the viewer, then? Everything breathes the same energy and looks the same, save for a few grainy details. Yet, it does not feel like an immersive experience. The spectator remains the spectator. Dutta began her performative practice by using her own body as art object. She now collaborates with young actors and performers, collectively producing work under her direction. It was during her residency at the Fukuoka Art Museum, Japan (2010) that she first attempted a group performance, called A Mazingwith a group of local artists slowly trying to find their way in a maze, in life, often losing direction and resolve.

For the opening night of her solo show, Dutta performed Limitation (2005-15), with her head entrapped inside a slatted crate that was nailed to a clay covered wall. She attempts to move but is limited by the crate that stays firmly in place. The performance is for a duration of three minutes repeated for an hour.

Everything Ends and Everything Matters is an ongoing exhibition at Gallery Latitude 28 until 1 June.

Authenticity in the age of technology

Exhibit 320’s latest show focuses on the figurative language employed by artists to represent a person(a) or action that conjures and manipulates our understanding of past and current history. The gallery presents the works of Dhaka based Firoz Mahmud and Jaipur based Nandan Ghiya in twin solo shows titled “Images Attacked”. 

Mahmud’s solo Ninki: History runs over the Yamuna draws its name from the project, Urgency of Proximate Drawing or Ninki: UoPD. It begun anonymously in 2008 featuring photographs of popular iconic figures engaged in a typical activity associated with their respective professions. Mahmud’s choice of celebrity ranges from those in sport and entertainment to politics, highlighting a certain physicality that he then contrasts with drawn lines that tidily compose the performance of their frozen gestures. His work is inspired by both the fluid politics of his country, and the universality of propaganda and controversy. In the tangle of such worldliness, he redefines what it means to be ‘popular’ or Ninki as is referenced in Japanese.

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The lines drawn on each photograph act as frames that superficially keep the celebrity from falling or failing, successfully mocking the mechanisms that perpetuate that sense of celebrity in an image. Mahmud’s employment of satire is especially admirable considering the ever-growing monster of imposed censorship. 

A series of woodcarvings and mixed media drawings debate the ethics of the factual and fictional in the makings of history and in collective memory. Both Drawing Bengal History and Distance of the Past are the artist’s current preoccupations that explore different cultures through technique and material of places he has lived and experienced, predominantly Bangladesh & Japan.

Nandan Ghiya’s work is rooted in familial bearings- of growing up in a traditional Rajasthan, where ancestral portraits and photographs from family albums adorned the walls of homes. Cosmetically restructured, pixelated or painted over, Ghiya reinterprets ethnographic readings of these images through the device of digital technologies.

In his solo, he presents The Blue Screen Series comprising portraits violated by screens of monochromatic blue. A spatial construct that in my mind echoes opens seas and skies, traversed yet not fully known and that can in an instant overwhelm us. Compared to virtual gangrene that mutates history and chronologies therein, Ghiya explores ways in which our minds are screened from reality. His randomly assembled collections of imperialistic portraits of royals stripped of their power- anonymous as any other in the virtual space, sometimes unrecognizable but for textual labels, conveys the inarticulateness of contemporary communication. Ghiya ultimately questions the number and degree of honest associations amidst technologies that keep us perpetually connected.

Both Firoz Mahmud and Nandan Ghiya work within the lineage of art and history, exploring the blurred lines between real and imagined, information and propaganda, strength and fragility.

Images Attacked seems a rather ironic title when we think of how much we are attacked by images today!

A judicious mix of old and new

The 7th edition of the India Art Fair hosted at the NSIC Grounds in Okhla saw the premier selection of Indian galleries, but very scant participation of both international galleries and artists.

This year, representation of the Indian Modernists was at par with that of the Contemporaries, in both quantity and quality. Most international fairs have separate dedicated sections that make it easier to navigate the fair. An attempt at the same was perhaps the reason why Delhi Art Gallery’s mini-museum was positioned across from the main halls, a curated chronological display of works from Kalighat paintings to those of Shanti Niketan right up to the Indian Moderns of schools based in Baroda, Delhi and Mumbai. A Sculpture Gallery was conceived as an adjunct and a series of presentations including informal discussions with artists on topics of printmaking, collecting and activation of the visual arts through dance were organized within the gallery’s outreach program. At exit, was a bookshop stacked with DAG’s excellent publications on the various periods of art production in India.

In the main hall, of specific interest were some of the gallery supported solo projects that aligned with the spirit of an archive and book making: Sudarshan Shetty’s ‘I know nothing of the end’ presented an accordion styled book with images of film stills from a death ritual in an Indian home facing a blank page with a line of unpunctuated text. The work is a suggestion of the cinematic in our everyday, narrated through setting, lighting and placement of objects. ‘The Museum of Chance Objects’ by Dayannita Singh introduced the idea of the ‘book’ simultaneously being an art object, an exhibition and a catalogue. With 88 different covers, mounted in wooden frames on the wall, the book became more than a compilation of reproduced images. Shilpa Gupta’s research project with Asian Art Archive ‘That photo we never got’ comprises an assemblage of documents that explore the friendships and tensions within the art field in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Fragmented, suggested or starkly said- the letters, photographs and clippings made a rather ironic statement in its positioning within the fair. Similarly, Nandita Kumar’s ‘Emotive Sounds of the Electric Writer’ was a way to stimulate the tradition of letter writing anew. Performed by a typewriter, text from each letter received through an open call was blotted onto paper and then composed as sound, in part inspired by John Cage’s Chance Score. 

The primacy of drawing and explorations of space through interventions on paper resumed an important position within contemporary art language. Ayesha Sultana’s geometric graphite on paper works at Emperimenter, Kolkata investigated the materiality of both graphite and paper, cheating the viewer into perceiving metal instead. Sachin Takade’s architectures on paper at THE LOFT, Mumbai, Parul Gupta’s line drawings at Gallery Lakeeren, Mumbai, Gallery Espace’s ‘Wall of Drawings’ alongside the solo section of works by Nilima Sheikh, Dhruvi Acharya and Chitra Ganesh’s collaborative live drawing that was completed within the four days of the fair were some of the welcome sights.

Photography was represented by Tasveer, India who brought works of Chrispher Taylor and Sebastian Cortes. Photoink, Delhi brought works of Chandan Gomes, Dhruv Malhotra, Ketaki Sheth, Madan Mahatta Madhuban Mitra and Manas Bhattacharya and Raghu Rai. Wonderwall, Delhi presented works by Karan Khanna, Prarthna Modi and Prabuddha Dasgupta amongst others. Pablo Bartholomew’s series ‘A Tale of three cities’ along with a pair of photographs by Gauri Gill from the series ‘Balika Mela and Jannat’ hung at the Thomas Erben, New York booth. I found three absolutely stunning photographs from 1997 titled ‘Notes to the Body’ by Sheba Chhachhi hanging at Volte, Mumbai. Art Heritage, Delhi curated an interesting section on photography called Fictions that highlighted the interplay of performance and social commentary within each frame.

The Speaker’s Forum, although poorly attended threw up critical issues for discussion including Curating Civilizational Histories- a take on how contemporary artists and curators engaged with history, regional cultures and eco-politics.  The session included a brilliant presentation by British artist Jeremy Deller, moderated by Abhay Sardesai, editor of Art India magazine. Another session explored the discipline of Art Writing. Presented by the Courtauld Institute of Art, London and Art Forum International Magazine, the session’s presentations pointed to the increasing agenda of commercial enterprise with respect to art writing, and the overlaps between art history, curatorship, and criticism.

The seventh year of the Art Fair saw a focus specifically on ‘Indian Art’ with a host of works from the South Asian region. The layout was better designed, allowing for ease of movement. A number of collateral events and exhibitions in galleries, cultural centers and museums opened from the beginning of January creating a buzz around the fair and expanding the scope of what the art fair now represents. It is more than simply a fair, it is also a time that necessitates keeping a calendar for the selection of things of interest to see and engage with.

The intuitive art of Masooma Syed

“I don’t paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality.

— Frida Kahlo”

This statement couldn't be more evident than in the practice of artist Masooma Syed. Born in Lahore, Syed's enrollment in art school was quite unplanned and the same strain of spontaneity reflects in most of her art. The ever-so-polite and rather shy artist took an evening out to accommodate my many questions while she ran me through the beginnings of it all. Conservatively raised by her grandmother, Syed's early days in school were spent amidst one of the most successful batches of the National College of Arts, Lahore. Her early works lacked the formalism and finesse of a trained hand, but were pure in their childish abstraction, imagination and freshness. They revealed a curiosity to experiment with diverse mediums like cosmetics and rusted metal — cheap materials that told of a modest living but more so of the inherent charm in inventing and discovering. Why paint with paint? Who prescribed that we do? 

Syed began another phase of self-discovery following her graduation. Doubts shadowed her beliefs, leading to a darker, sombre self and to macabre imagery. The overwhelming emotions translated into a series of works with hair and nails. When she looked at herself, she began with the body, and its outgrowths were examined anew. Like specimens in a laboratory, the clipped nails of her hands were arranged into ornaments of jewellery, a way of trivialising human vanity by decorating parts that were dead. The collected strands of hair belonging to her and her loved ones were cast in the form of feet, or a crown, held together by hairspray and reconfigured as art. The tactility of the form speaks of her painterly sensibilities — like layers of texturing with different strokes of the brush, while covertly conveying a distinct vulnerability. 

Like specimens in a laboratory, the clipped nails of her hands were arranged into ornaments of jewellery, a way of trivialising human vanity by decorating parts that were dead.

L' Chaim ( To Life) Human hair, 4" x 8" x 4" 2008

Untitled, Mixed media on newspaper, 233.5 x 121 cm, 2014

I notice that Syed's art has not evolved linearly, for it is but a reflection of her many moods and thoughts and the delicacy with which she expresses herself — her speech is soft even when powerful. She speaks of a time when her art was unrestrained and free, when it enthralled both the maker and the viewer, and the burden of maturity that brought about a care for archival materials, preservation of forms and a means of livelihood was yet to come. 

Syed is not in the least bit resentful, but she acknowledges the role that chance and opportunity have to play in life. Her recent show titled Sublime West, hosted at Gallery Ske (New Delhi) last October was a solo exhibit presented after a six-year hiatus. Her deliberate shift to the larger scale, of juxtaposing cinema with newsprint displaying news of corruption and violence, and her employment of the theatrical stage was the result of harboured anxiety. It was an outpouring of her everyday struggles — of living between India and Pakistan, of reassembled emotions as well as a manifestation of all her curiosities: cut outs from family albums, film memorabilia, newspapers and magazines.

When asked about her sources of inspiration and choice of subjects, she explains her work is not intellectualised; it is intuitive. Whatever is observed more keenly and felt more strongly creates more palpable imagery, even if small or fragile or degenerative.