Pin the Donkey

I went to the opening of Everywhere is War (and rumours of war) at Bodhi on Saturday and came away with an observation that I though would be interesting to share .

Openings nights are quite chaotic with the focus being as much on the people in attendance as the art on display. It is a time to meet and congratulate the artist/s, curator/s, gallery for all the work leading up to show and to see the works on display. The fact is that the latter often gets neglected for want of space or undivided attention “excuse me, can you move so we can take a photo of the artist with the work” or “hey let me introduce you to so and so…” are typical attention breakers in most opening extravaganzas and this was no different.

My comment is not so much on the works on display but to highlight the fact that when I first saw the show at the Bodhi space, sans the installation map, I was not quite sure who had done what work (barring a few examples such as Sumedh Rajendran, Riyaz Komu, Baiju Parthan and others whose signature style and use of material were instant giveaways. For example, I thought that the work later identified to be by Anita Dube was conceived by Bose Krishnamachari (or could have been by another artist in the group show whose oeuvre I was not familiar with) and that the sink with the red water flowing from the tap was certainly by Sudershan Shetty. Another work titled ‘The Principle of Creative Destruction (sound of fortune)’ could have been the handiwork of someone like Narendra Yadav, a lesser known but highly talented conceptual artist. It was only much later I discovered that Subodh Gupta was the author of the bloody sink and that Sudershan and Narendra was not even part of the show (Chuckles). There were many artists like Sara Rahbar, Rakesh Sharma, Dieter Lutsch who I had not known before and I seized the opportunity to respond to the work sans the signature. I was so thrilled at the prospect that I gleefully went through the evening without the exhibition guide that most people were clutching on to with dear life - trying to see who made what before an internal response was given a fair chance to fully emerge.

On final tally I found two works really exciting, a few quite engaging and the rest did not hold my attention for too long. The next step of course was to pin the donkey and match the roman numerals pasted on the wall to the artists. This formality happened on a subsequent visit many days later when I went back to see the show undisturbed. The key takeaway is simply that contemporary art is not only constantly contributing to and borrowing from contemporary culture but also expressing itself in so many different ways, using so many different materials, that in the absence of ‘signatures’ it is often difficult (and hardly desirable) to place an artists work in any preset category or style. Furthermore, the language of contemporary art is indeed so universal that a work by an ‘American’ artist can easily pass of as done by an ‘Indian’ (vice-verse) and works by artists from the same region can often be mistaken to be done by someone else (as was the Subodh-Sudershan faux-pas).

I have been making an argument (see latest Art India volume XIII, Issue I, Quarter I, 2008, panel discussion) that the recent spate in interest/prices for Indian contemporary art is largely due to this convergence of artistic expression on one hand, de-contextualization of visual language on the other hand and the unprecedented economic attention that India is currently getting on the world platform. It is much more likely for a banker in NY for example to relate to the visual practice of a contemporary artist from another country like India than art of 50 or 100 years ago which was much more inward looking. Immediate issues like the struggle for an independent India, plight of the working class, life under British rule and similar concerns naturally came through in the art of yester years and except for those with a specific interest in the creative concerns of that era, the woks do not hold the same sway as works that reflect the times we live in.

This is not to say the art of today is devoid of roots but more to bring out the point that the artistic concerns are a lot more universal - be it social and cultural climate, war, political upheaval, environmental issues, medical and technological breakthroughs, etc and the response is also more immediate than was ever possible in times when analog communication and snail mail was the only ways of dissemination and consuming information. So along with roots, contemporary art also has wings and it travels much more easily and further than art of previous times. That is the real trump card that contemporary art has in its favor so embrace it with open arms and fly…