EXCLUSIVELY INCLUSIVE! An exhibition at Hyderabad

- Vishal Tondon

Here are details of the art show EXCLUSIVELY INCLUSIVE! held at the Anveshi Research Centre for Women's Studies, Hyderabad

Exclusively Inclusive!

Celebrating diversity through art

5^th - 11^th of October 2012

The art exhibition, ‘Exclusively Inclusive’, highlights the pluralities of gender and sexuality. The show is an initiative of our group, the Wajood LGBT Society. We are proud to have as our hosts the Anveshi Research Center for Women’s Studies.

We decided to bring together for this groundbreaking show an international bouquet of artists.

The impetus of the curatorial effort is to push the philosophy of Wajood Society, which reads, “Exclusively Inclusive.” The word ‘Wajood’ literally means ‘Existence’. Ours is a community-based organization for LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender) people as well as their friends, families and supporters. It is registered with the Office of the Registrar of Societies, Hyderabad. Soon after this art exhibition, we will also be spearheading a major LGBT pride parade at Hyderabad. This art exhibition is one of the pre-pride activities.

This show is one of the many ways in which we are working to sensitize various communities to diversity in the context of gender, sexuality and identity. Our objective also is to take art to academic as well as public spaces, so that the public at large can engage with it.

The exhibition reflects the spirit of Wajood as well as the philosophy of Anveshi; empowerment of minority groups rather than appeal on the basis of victimhood. Most of the artworks here are therefore self-affirmative and celebratory. Not all of the artists in this show identify themselves as queer. Rather, most of the artworks here reflect the fluidity of gender and sexuality. That is the most important point this show attempts to make. There are no fixed identities. We have to appreciate and celebrate differences. Only then will we be able to achieve our full potential as a society.

We are showcasing a spectrum of identities in this show. To begin with there is the artist couple that comprises of Elizabeth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle from the USA. They call themselves “Ecosexuals.” To put it simply, they take the earth as their lover and through a series of performances they get married to its natural resources such as trees, snow, sky and mountains. Then there are artists such as Jehangir Jani and Waswo X Waswo, both from India, who question through the works displayed here the assumption that there are only two natural genders, the male and the female.

The art of Qasim Riza Shaheen of UK is a series of beautiful performances where multiple personalities speak out of the photographed subject. Gender, sexuality as well as identity are in his work curiously twisted to create mystifying self-portraits. In his photographs and performances, the personalities of the people he has known overlap with his own: a comment that our lives and identities are inter-related.

The show also includes two Indian women artists who do not identify themselves as queer, yet admit to queerness in their artworks. Mithu Sen mockingly turns the conventions of feminine beauty on their head by depicting herself as comical, devilish and as genderqueer. Manjari Chakravarti, on her part, uses art as an escape into the forbidden world of erotica. Her work is a soliloquy of hush-hush sex words discussed between women in mofussil towns behind closed doors.

We hope this show reaches out in ways so as to enable a better understanding and acceptance of minorities.

-       Vishal Tondon

        Curator

Artist Biographies

Jehangir Jani is a Mumbai based artist who has consistently tackled caste and class issues in the context of sexuality in his two decades long career. He has had solo shows at Kalakriti Art Gallery, Hyderabad (2012), Gallery Sumukha, Bangalore (2008), Gallery Espace, New Delhi (2006), Guild Art Gallery, Mumbai (2004), Gallery Chemould, Mumbai (2002), NGMA, Mumbai, 2000, and Fine Art Resource, Mumbai (1998). He has participated in major group shows including Iconography in Transient Times, India Habitat Center, New Delhi (2004), Ways of Resisting – 1992-2002, Rabindra Bhavan, New Delhi (2002), The Pink Sun – Making an Entrance, NGMA, Mumbai (2000) and Artists Stamps – Independent India, SAHMAT, New Delhi (1997). He has participated in the Khoj International Workshop (2003) and has curated a show, Conversations, for The LOFT, Mumbai (2009). His short film Make Ups has been screened at Kashish Queer Film Festival, Mumbai (2010), the Uppsala Short Film Festival, Sweden (2005) and IAAC Film Festival, New York (2005).

Waswo X Waswo was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the U.S.A. He studied at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, The Milwaukee Center for Photography, and Studio Marangoni, The Centre for Contemporary Photography in Florence, Italy. His books, India Poems: The Photographs, published by Gallerie Publishers in 2006, and Men of Rajasthan, published by Serindia Contemporary in 2011, have been available worldwide. The artist has lived and travelled in India for over ten years and he has made his home in Udaipur, Rajasthan, for the past seven.  There he collaborates with a variety of local artists including the photo hand-colourist Rajesh Soni. He has also produced a series of autobiographical miniature paintings in collaboration with the artist R. Vijay.  Waswo is represented in India by Gallerie Espace, New Delhi and Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai, and in Thailand by Serindia Gallery, Bangkok.

Qasim Riza Shaheen is a British artist based in Manchester with an international repertoire. His work has been presented at prominent venues and festivals throughout the United Kingdom, including at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the National Review of Live Art, Glasgow; the Liverpool Biennial; and British Dance Edition. Internationally, Shaheen’s work has been programmed as part of several film festivals; British Council’s showcases of Live Art in Denmark, Spain and Belgium; and at numerous art museums and galleries in Pakistan, India and in the USA. His art works have been acquired by museums and collectors internationally. His publications include Only the Moon to Play With (Arts Council England, 2004), Khusra: Stains & Stencils (Shisha, 2007), Liliquoi Blue: God Made Me a Boy (City Arts, 2010) and Nine Acts of Reciprocity (Anokha Laadla, 2010).

Elizabeth M Stephens & Annie M Sprinkle are two ecosexual artists-in-love who have been collaborating with each other, and with various international communities, for 11 years. They created a new field of research, “Sexecology,” exploring the places where sexology and ecology intersect in our culture– in art, theory, practice and activism. Their ecosex performance art weddings have involved thousands of collaborators and participants in eight countries. They also do Sexecological Walking Tours, visual art installations, and are finishing a film about mountain top removal coal mining destruction in Appalachia called Goodbye Gauley Mountain—An Ecosexual Love Story. Stephens is a professor of art at UCSC and a Ph.D. candidate in performance studies at UC Davis. Sprinkle is a popular visiting artist who holds a Ph.D. in human sexuality. They love to collaborate!

Manjari Chakravarti trained in printmaking at Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan. She has worked extensively in diverse media and has had solo shows at Galerie Beatrice Binoche, Saint-Denis, France (2011), Akar Prakar, Kolkata (2010), Art Alive, New Delhi (2008), Gandhara Art Gallery Kolkata (2007), Galerie 88, Calcutta (1999) and Art Heritage, New Delhi (1994). Her installation The Vanishing Wives of Santiniketan was shown at Enduring Legacy, Gallery Neumeister, Munich and Indian Embassy, Berlin in association with Akar Prakar, Kolkata and ICCR, and also at the India Art Summit 2011, New Delhi. She was awarded the Junior Fellowship for Outstanding Artists in the Field of Visual Arts, Ministry of Human Resources Development, Department of Culture, India, in 1996-98.  

Mithu Sen is one of the vibrant faces on the Indian contemporary art scene. An alumnus of Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan, she has had solo exhibitions at Gallery Nature Morte and British Council, New Delhi (2006), Gallery Chemould, Mumbai (2006), Lakeeren Art Gallery, Mumbai (2003), Machintosh Gallery, Glasgow (2001) and Art India Style, New Delhi(2000). She won the Charles Wallace India Trust Award in the UK for 2000-2001 and was nominated for the Magna Young Achievers Award for 2003. She also won the 2010 Skoda Award for Indian contemporary art. Mithu lives and works in New Delhi. 

The show:

 

'Jannis - A Relook' by Jehangir Jani

- Vishal Tondon

Tree of Knowledge. 2012

Jehangir Jani is known in his circle as a multi-talented artist. He has worked in quite a few artistic mediums including sculpture, installations, painting and film. Though he is well known as an accomplished sculptor, his project with the delicate medium of watercolour has been to examine the result of translating tangible objects into a fragile form. For some time now, he has been exploring the possibilities of this very soft yet difficult medium. To Jani’s credit, he has been able to convey, through the flimsy yet willful medium of watercolour subjects that are tough and would otherwise have required the tenacity either of sculpture or oil paint. His new suite of paintings, ‘Jannis – A Relook’, are on view at Kalakriti Art Gallery. These paintings deal with the materiality of objects, rendered in the elusive medium of watercolour.

Jani’s new work exposes the difficult relationship passion and knowledge share. The tortured relationship between the two has been grist for the mill for ages; whole canons of religions, myth and policies have been built around the love-hate equation between passion and knowledge. The philosopher Foucault has mentioned how knowledge is built and sustained through the exclusion and suppression of alternate voices. We see a similar opinion being echoed in Jani’s new work. His new painting speaks of the violence and the use of an iron fist that go into the building of knowledge, including the canon of science which is apparently the foundation of modern thought and society. Jani’s suite of exquisite watercolours sullied with smudged charcoal blotches comment on the parasitic dependence of high knowledge on the blood and the sweat of the common man, the other and the minority, which are all declared as disposable after use. 

High knowledge serves mainly to define and protect the interests only of a powerful few. It adapts and appropriates material from the minor and alternate discourses, which it posits as its own. There is no knowledge other than mainstream knowledge. The engagement of the mainstream discourse with the minor only serves to complete and validate the mainstream. 

Van Gogh, who had earlier equated art with manual labour, questioned hierarchies in Art at the dawn of Modernism. His paintings are like the musings of a Christ for the modern world; “The poor shall inherit the earth.”  His work anticipates the attitude of the art movement of Arte Povera that was to manifest itself in Italy in the 1960s, the latter an outcome of the crisis of Modernity. Two prominent artists of the movement that was Arte Povera, Michelangelo Pistoletto and Jannis Kounellis worked to break down the hierarchies of "Art" and common things. The use of impoverished materials is certainly one aspect of the definition of Arte Povera. It is the interest in underprivileged materials in the work of Kounellis that has moved Jani the most. His recent paintings take off from the works of Jannis Kounellis and Jani invests in the configurations Kounellis suggested the hint of the transgressing desire.

This component of desire enters Jani’s suite of paintings with elements such as sheer slip of cloth and bitten scarlet apples. In these paintings we can see Jani’s quest as a sculptor; the juxtaposition of the fragile and the tough continues to excite him as an artist.  

The apples are of peculiar interest here. They might not be golden, but they do stand for the apple of discord. Also, they stand for knowledge, as is clearly indicated by the title of one of the paintings, ‘The Tree of Knowledge.’ Bitten apples in this suite of paintings recall death by poisoning, as in the story ‘Snow White.’ Bitten apples also recall death by poisoning of Alan Turing, the father of computer science and artificial intelligence. Finally, they recall the original sin and the fall of man. As it turns out in all the three above mentioned cases, mortality was hastened by an unpardonable attribute in each of the protagonist involved; respectively, unique beauty, transgressing desire, and free will.    

Interestingly, the bitten apple as an icon has also been immortalized by Steve Jobs in his company’s logo.

The knowledge of our times is defined by artificial intelligence and scientific information. One would presume that such advances are made possible by the judicious application of rationality and fairness. Recent history proves otherwise. Turing’s suicide by poisoning evidently was brought on by his dissatisfaction at having to live life according to the dictates of the dominant discourse. His contributions to knowledge and human experience could not compensate for his sexual desire for another male, a non-conformism. His death exposes the underbelly of the hegemonic system that built the knowledge of our times. It also is symptomatic of the grimy side of affairs that is the other face of human progress.

Jehangir Jani’s new series, ‘Jannis – A Relook’ revisits, all at once, a complex array of histories relating to sexuality, culture and scientific knowledge. The war between knowledge and passion is a dirty one; each feeding off even while it enriches the other. Jani’s recent work comes at the right time; we have been wondering for some time now about who the real beneficiaries of knowledge are and to what extent free will is possible in an age that boasts of rights to knowledge and communication that are apparently universal and freely available.

Jehangir Jani Show at Hyderabad

- Vishal Tondon

 

An art exhibition, titled ‘Jannis…A Relook’ will be displayed at Kalakriti Art Gallery, Banjara Hills, from the 7^th of September.

The show displays exquisite watercolours by the Mumbai-based senior artist Jehangir Jani. This is Jani’s second solo show with Kalakriti Art Gallery. The last time the artist showed at Kalakriti was in 2006, with his series of sculptures titled ‘Peers’. The current show marks an important turn in the two decades long career of the artist. Jani’s new paintings take a detour from his earlier artistic methods, yet does not abandon his concerns with myths and social norms.

Jani has consistently been fascinated with how myths are created. His art looks for inspiration in the lives of heroes, whether victorious or fallen. Jani comments that today’s political icons are tomorrow’s mythological heroes and anti-heroes. This aspect of myth construction was vividly expressed in many of Jani’s previous shows, the most significant of them being ‘Faerie Tales…A Relook’ (1998, Mumbai), ‘Peers’ (2006, Mumbai and Hyderabad) and ‘Great Expectations’ (2007, Mumbai).

What intrigues Jani about myths is the way in which large numbers of populations structure their lives around these myths, accepting them as absolute truths.

In his long career, Jani has been known for tackling sensitive subjects. But the quest for truth and knowledge has kept Jani going, undeterred. He explains, “I hope that future generations will be more comfortable and accepting of the alternate modes of existence that I have often depicted in my works. I am more curious about how my works will be seen by the future generations.”

Jani’s contribution to contemporary Indian sculpture and installation art is well acknowledged. We ask him about his engagement with a more delicate medium like watercolour. Jani replies, “I have been exploring the possibilities of watercolours for many years now. But I am also toying with the idea of using new media technology in the future. I don’t have the classical sensibility of being faithful to one medium. Like an ever flowing river, I hope technology will carry on inventing new materials, and I will have reason to be in a perpetual state of discovery.” 

 

The present series of paintings, on show at Kalakriti Art Gallery, explores a stimulating theme. These works expose the difficult relationship between passion and knowledge. The theme is best expressed in the painting ‘The Tree of Knowledge’. The bitten apples here represent eroticism and curiosity at the same time. The symbol of the bitten apple, of course, derives from the story of Adam and Eve. The message, apparently, is that one might have to risk tasting the forbidden fruit in order to acquire knowledge. These paintings also suggest that the path to knowledge is a difficult one. It is beset with risks and sacrifices, but the outcome is usually the greater common good of society.

 

Another theme this series of paintings explore is the idea of how, in society, knowledge is built and protected. Usually, the contribution of the laboring classes to the growth of knowledge is not acknowledged. In paintings like ‘Jannis’ Bag 6’, the artist depicts what would be the handbags of a labourer; sacs filled with coal. The idea behind these works is to remind us that there are no menial jobs in the world, as every worker remotely or directly is instrumental in human progress and knowledge.

The paintings in ‘Jannis…A Relook’ are rendered in delicate washes of watercolour and a dexterous use of charcoal drawing. The exhibition at Kalakriti is open to all. Do not miss this great opportunity to interact with the artist and his works. 

“The Dancing Coffee”, Drawings and Paintings by Koeli Mukherjee Ghose at the Truffles Café

- Vishal Tondon

Mixed media on canvas

“The Dancing Coffee”, an exhibition of drawings and paintings by the Hyderabad based artist Koeli Mukherjee Ghose is on at the Truffles Café, Jubilee Hills, Hyderabad from the 20^th of July till the 4^th of August. 

Speaking of the inspiration behind the series of drawings and paintings on view, Koeli muses, “This series is an outcome of a realization while I was at a café in Kolkata, staring away at my glass thoughtfully. The coffee of my life is effervescent and evolving and its sugar is my experiences and all that I have learnt.”

One look at Koeli’s oeuvre, and we know that the line is her tool; she has an admirable command over it and one can feel the creative energy that welled up when the artist’s body, the paint brush or the quill, and the paper became one. Her calligraphic strokes are meditative and frenzied all at once; one can feel the fierce concentration with which these strokes were made, evidently in such a way as to make the endlessly subtle structure and movement clearer. 

Koeli questions with her eyes and seeks out forms with the frenzy of her drawing and painting tools. Even on her canvases, she paints with such verve and such directness that every scribble reminds you of the act of drawing and of the pleasure of the act. She often draws benevolent female faces as part of the composition, but these faces show no servitude. The act of their drawing is, as the great champion of drawing John Berger would put it, “triumphant”. 

And what are the resources that Koeli draws upon for her art? The sprightly dancing line in her work evidently is an influence of her training at Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan, where great masters such as Nandalal Bose and Ramkinkar Baij earlier honed the skill of synthesizing the Far Eastern calligraphic line with Indian aesthetics. Koeli has a refined and strong sense of aesthetics. Under the guidance of her hand, the calligraphic line goes secular in its rendering of female faces and traditional Indian motifs. 

The sensuousness of the arabesque in Koeli’s works creates synesthetic relations with the sensuous aroma afloat in the space that these drawings and paintings are displayed in; the Truffles Café at Jubilee Hills in Hyderabad. The show is a must watch for art enthusiasts and coffee enthusiasts alike; here is the ambiance for a perfect evening out with your loved ones, amidst coffee as fine as the art that it inspired.  

 Mixed media on canvas

 Ink on paper

 Ink on paper

 Mixed media on canvas

 Ink on paper

 Mixed media on canvas

 Ink on paper

 Ink on paper

          Mixed media on canvas

___________________

Koeli Mukherjee Ghose is an art historian and curator. She has done her Bachelors in Fine Arts from Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan, and is a Gold Medalist in Visual Arts from Rabindra Bharati University Kolkata. She is a General Council Member of the Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi.

Koeli has had solo exhibitions in the Birla Academy of Arts and Culture, Kolkata, Lalit Kala Akademi, Delhi, Standard Chartered Bank, Bangalore, and Taj Krishna, Hyderabad, among others.

Her articles have been published in Bombay Art Society Magazine, Bliss of Being, ‘Calligraphic Works by P. Parameshwar Raju’ and she also contributes as a guest writer to the Art Column of Hyderabad Times, Times of India.   

 

‘Le Mashale…’; The Struggle of Irom Sharmila

- Vishal Tondon

‘Le Mashale…’ (‘A Woman with a Torch’), a play on the struggle of Irom Sharmila for human rights, was performed in Hyderabad at Lamakaan, Banjara Hills, on Saturday the 16^th of June. The play has travelled for some time now and has managed a commendable run of over 150 shows at various locations including Manipur. The play reflects the present situation in Manipur; a land under the brutal control of the Indian military forces that stand in for the draconian AFSPA (Armed Forces Special Powers Act). Irom embodies a land which struggles for its democratic right to self-determination. 

‘Le Mashale…’ is a monologue by a sprightly young woman; Ojas S V. Ojas exemplifies the youth of a new India. Her interests are varied and her life experience is not limited to her educational qualifications. Consider the variety of her engagements; theatre, environmental conservation, film, traveling and documentation of local and traditional knowledge and wisdom.

We question Ojas about the efficacy of art in spreading social awareness. Can art fill in for activism? For Ojas, art and activism are not exclusive to each other. On the other hand, they are also not unconditionally dependent on each other. We can see that, for Ojas, the pleasure of performing is as important as the statement she is making. Fathom the scene where she enacts the shootout at Malom bus stop. She is depicting the moments that are just before the cold blooded killings of ten innocent people by the Assam Rifles. Unaware of their impending fate, the innocent victims – here enacted by Ojas – are patiently waiting at the bus stop, some of them smoking a beedi, while some others squat on the floor in a simpleton manner. Ojas has the power of observation, a virtue any theatre artist should benefit from. But more importantly, she has an acute and cynical vision that looks at the tragedy that lies beneath human vulnerability and humor.

Irom Sharmila’s fast that began as a response to the shootout at Malom, has lasted for over ten years now. Irom can take bail and go home; all she has to do is swear that she will not repeat her ‘crime’; her ‘attempt at suicide.’ But the problem is Irom never attempted suicide. Her fasting has not only been misunderstood but misrepresented as ‘attempted suicide’ by the State that is force-feeding her. Sharmila reluctantly submits to force-feeding because she is not seeking martyrdom. In her own words, she is “in no mood for suicide.” She is seeking only to further the people’s cause, push ahead the campaign against AFSPA. Drawing on Irom’s philosophy, Ojas brings to her activism the artist’s body. Her body becomes the conduit through which the trials and tribulations of her character are conveyed. This is especially relevant for a play that hopes to convey the struggles of Irom Sharmila who has fielded her body as a weapon.    

Ojas introduces ‘Le Mashale…’ as a soliloquy. But the format of the play is not that simple after all. Her Irom does think aloud to herself onstage now and then, but a major part of the play endeavors to elicit a response from the audience in a mode typical of Brechtian epic theatre. The influence of Brecht is so often found in Indian theatre with liberal leanings, and Ojas’s play, too, will not allow the audience to passively slip into the comfort zone suspension of disbelief allows. Not for her audience the release of pent up emotions through catharsis. Just when the audience is afforded moments of relief by Irom’s recalling of her granny’s fantastic fables or Manipuri folk song and dance, Ojas brings us back to harsh reality with the crackle of a gun or the cry of a victim being raped.

The difference between dramatic theatre and epic theatre comes to the fore in public performances like ‘Le Mashale…’ Epic theatre is meant to jolt the audience out of their placidity, tweak out their reactions and opinions, and eventually have a positive effect on the minds of the audience and society at large.

Instead of a linear progression of events as is expected in traditional, easy-to-digest story telling, Ojas’s play aims at the episodic narration of events that traverse to and fro across time and location, and change the mode of address often so that the audience is forced to sit up, observe and raise questions at the prevalent situation. The interactive and performative aspects of such theatre compel the audience to function as an active participant rather than a passive spectator. Brechtian Theatre, which is non-Aristotelian in its approach and attitude, works by repeated disruptions in tone and narration and does away with a linear progression of events on stage. In this aspect, it also comes closer to life; the genre is considered to be a more realistic form of theatre.

The play comes at a time when public support for Irom’s cause in mainland India is growing. An influential book on Irom’s struggle has been published by Penguin India now; ‘Burning bright: Irom Sharmila and the Struggle for Peace in Manipur’ by Deepti Priya Mehrotra is a well researched book, and deals with the situation in Manipur very sensitively.

Ojas’s ‘Le Mashale…’ is adapted from an original script by Civic Chandran. The artist’s statement to Ojas’s play includes the following lines:

“Irom Sharmila Chanu…A poet and activist who by her dedication and self-realization has become a living legend. This is her tenth year of fasting in response not only to violence meted out by the Indian Army but also by mainland centric Indian politics. Physically frail but strong in her dedication, she has become an inspiration to the valley as well as non violent struggles all over the country. Her body is her weapon – and this realization has made her a milestone.”

As the eminent writer Mahashweta Devi expresses – “The 21^st century should be known by the dedication and struggle of Irom Sharmila.”