CIMA AWARDS
At a time, when the city of Kolkata is running havoc with demands for social justice, this exhibition organized by CIMA awards programme, displays a stunningly wide range of art objects from paintings, graphics, engravings, sculptures, installations to videography by young artists who uses a huge variety of materials and mediums to create their art work. The themes posit the creative expression, contemplation and imagination of the artists in contemporary world. Their felt experiences indicate an acute crisis of the self and expands towards a critique of the detrimental social, economic, political and environmental problems, the most recent being war and pandemic. The fear and anxiety, the worries and sense of loneliness and despair projected through some paintings, are in direct contrast with the search for the intricacies and spaces for hope, security, understanding, growth and the movement of life itself.
Several motifs like houses, buildings, shanties, slums are emblematic of poverty, crowded existence, and the struggle of life. From this immediacy of the need for better spaces for comfort and safety, one moves onto the ruins of temples or monuments peeping through the pile of earth, symbolizing the lost paradise, the decay of a rich cultural heritage or the inevitable journey of time that marks the passage of lost civilizations. However, from this nostalgia of reclaiming the past, we are jolted back to the present where for example, Skarma Sonam Tashi in her work titled ‘My Homeland’, depicted settlements huddled in a huge cavern in the mountains that give a sense of the bombed out existence, the clusters of houses in the deep recesses of hills emit a sense of perseverance and preservation in the midst of war led desecration. Imageries of shelters and monuments also encompass the psychological and creative spaces of the mind, depicting the need for protection and nurturing. For example, in Avinash Bhardwaj’s work, titled, ‘A Tree of Majestic Thoughts’ the shelters or creative spaces, built on the tree at various levels of branches joined together with stairs of swaying twigs engender emotions of both vulnerability and bonding, balancing and growth, leading to spaces of isolation, catering to creative meditation, reminding us somewhat of Abanindranath Tagore’s definition of the various levels of artistic creativity – the highest level of which he designated as ‘leela’ or the play of the divine.
The structure of language has also become a source of enquiry for the artist. Sanjeetha Manjunath in her installation shows, two monumental blocs carved out of wood progressing to alluminium metal titled as ‘Conversation.’ This marks the growing strength, malleability and lightness of usage of one material over the other, just as one experiences in a discussion often negotiating from one issue to another. The conceptualization of ‘concealing’ in art are a testament to the contemporary layered textures of life. An installation of the threads tied in a knot symbolizes this. The clear short lines creating linear visual and then progressing with folds to make other geometric shapes like triangles and pyramidal structures point to the twists and turns in structured living. The photograph of faces of man and woman placed in a whirl of decoration of floral and foliage designs inside several square blocs, in a painting titled ‘Rear Window’, indicate the celebration of life in seclusion, ending with masks on a face, and the green plants turning to cactus, symbolizing worries, fears and tensions alongside pollution, disease and death as suffered in the backdrop of pandemic.
Moving out from shelters, the imagery of brick walls appear as symptomatic of a base within the barren land. Ananya Halder in her painting with acrylic on canvas, shows the brick walls laden with clothes for drying on a beach. Environmental degradation has been captured in a neo realistic painting where the hills and rivers have dried up and the images of parched birds or their carcasses strewn in the valley marked the imminence of decay. The growing spaces have reduced the skyline which mocks at the impact of urbanization. The other legacy of urbanization and the increasing impact of mechanization can be seen in the installation of three figures of men made of black marbles which are almost like passive dices on a chessboard. Again the hustle and bustle of city life, in Amrita Rudra’s ‘Cityscape – 1’, where the nine o clock, office time, queue of passengers are depicted in direct contrast to the static line of buses, autos and auto-rickshaws, along with the rails, train and the bridge behind, all providing a static linear visual of the city at that rush hour, unfolds a perfect artistic depiction of an urban conundrum.
Some installations and paintings have boldly alluded to the contrasting scales and subversions of power structure or social status. For example, in the immersion of Goddess Kali, the black, bejeweled, monumental image is in stark contrast with the minuscule figures of the men, half immersed in the water attempting to pull down the statue into the river. Though a very common annual religious ritual, the visuals focusing on the differing size and scale tell a deeper story. A more direct image of political subversion lie in the sculpture of a giant elephant brought to the ground by a small figure of a man, the fact that the elephant is made of fibre glass further indicates that power can be toppled or tamed at any time. In another installation, the classical beheaded face resembling that of Medusa of Greek mythology or reminding one of the guillotined French queen Marie Antoinette, emanates the temporality of power, or royalty and the shame and inevitability of a fall from power, prestige and status is marked. In still another installation, the bronze figure of an eagle perched over a snake symbolizing as masters of two worlds, depict the classic natural power struggle for existence. The cause of the laboring man has also been impressed upon in several art works, the pyramidal structure of labourers and the figure of the ‘Karma Yogi’ at the apex is a direct commentary on it. Several works have mockingly commented on the decline of social values, as also, on social pressures, and personal conflicts in making choices over tastes, fashion and moral values. The practices of compartmentalization and storing or stacking of necessities like barrels of fuel, objects of entertainment to painting and sometimes even stacking people in cupboards as we take them for granted are a severe challenge to our notions of hierarchy. Marking out spaces even within a hut underscores the human need for separation, seclusion and diversity, while, an engraving of a three storeyed grass hut, documents the strength of tradition in monolithic structures. One of the most striking paintings is that of the decorated hands and feet of a woman with a sewing machine placed on top raising questions of bedecking women with ornaments and cosmetics while imposing on her the burden of stitching together the fabric of life. It addresses the underlying question of gender exploitation and the falsity of branding and valorizing specific notions of beauty constructed by the consumerist world. A more private world of women is depicted through minimalist formalism or abstraction such as, an oval mesh, which is both symbolic of sexual energy, as well as the intricate complications of life.
History, memories and mythology have also been embellished as vehicles of artistic expressions and subversion. The photograph of ‘Hanuman carrying Sanjivani’ as drawn from the epic imagery of Ramayana, is perhaps the cry for nature’s antidote to death and disease, the importance of the Ayurvedic over the chemical and modern medicine, even while the arid mountains depicted behind betray the increasing disappearance of vegetation. Memories of childhood has been shown in a fun-filled yet satirical way, through the figure of a child smiling innocently even as he stepped onto his father’s shoes, much larger in size. Drawing the idea from a Bengali nursery rhyme, one can say that, it demonstrated aspirations and dreams to take over bigger responsibilities in life even when not yet ready to do so.
The art works create a bridge between urban and the rural, personal and the political and tradition questions the traditional rituals, challenges the national values and bombards the myth of a safe life yet some works also depict a flicker of fun, humour and sheer joy of beauty – for example, Anil Kumar Bodwal provides a satirical and humorous insight into an existential crisis in an increasingly consumerist world, where the socio economic function of milking a cow and supplying the milk has led to branding the milk as a ‘natural’ product while the picture of the cow becomes a stamp in the background. The incandescence of light as opposed to dark corners, or appearing through cracks – all bear the marks of humanism both sensual and spiritual. This exhibition shows how different medium can be used to provoke various sentiments and thoughts. Above all, these art works allow the audience to engage with the work academically, artistically and on a personal level striking deep into one’s intellectual and creative sensibility. The tenor of the exhibition intended to allow free play to the artists’ creative inspiration and has indeed been able to do justice to it.