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Contemporary artists from India have returned to picture-making with a new idiom. There are many stories to tell
and various ways to tell them, finds out Betty Seid
In his essay, "Reading for the Plot," Peter Brooks discusses how narrative is the means we use to order and give meaning to our lives, in effect to overcome and control the chaos that is human existence. Our lives are ceaselessly intertwined with narrative, with the stories that we tell and hear told, those we dream or imagine or would like to tell, all of which are reworked in that story of our own lives that we narrate to ourselves in an episodic, sometimes semi-conscious, but virtually uninterrupted monologue. We live immersed in narrative. * * * * Often, no distinction is made between modern and contemporary art, and the world "derivative" has been bandied about. What makes these narratives new? Does it matter that these works are by Indian artists? Are the stories Indian, but the art giobal, or vice versa? Perceptions of Indian art have long been mired in Orientalist theory. The West has wanted art from India to "look Indian," but most contemporary Indian artists have come to realise that "Indianness" is not in itself an artistic pursuit. They have broken away from that expectation. In a sense, they are saying, "Know me! Know my ancestors, my fears, what I read, what I see, what I hear. Let go of your Orientalist stereotypes of me and who I should be." Contemporary artists from India are of the world but happen to be living and working in India. * * * *
Artists may not be canaries in a coal mine-harbingers of impending disaster. However, they are often "first responders" to crises-translating with personal narratives the distressing experiences of violence, social injustice and environmental crimes. Contemporary Indian artists in particular face national — and increasingly global — issues head-on, refusing, even unable, to excise art from their body politic. Nalini Mahani has said, "I strongly believe in a partisan space... I do believe if you are neutral you cannot be passionate... my endeavour is to make visible that which is invisible." * * * * The human body, particularly the female body, has long been an allegorical device in painting. But nakedness is vulnerable. Using their own female bodies as stand-ins for outrages against colonisation, violence to women and violence to the earth itself, they respond with focused narratives. This is particularly evident in Malani’s Stories Retold, in which she reinterprets traditional female monsters as victims of abuse. Putana has been deceived, Medea dispossessed. Both have been tricked into allowing their bodies to be misused by domineering men. The stories of these heroines are easily understood allegories for the rape of a nation politically or ecologically. * * * * In a recent dialogue, Arpita Singh was asked by her colleague Nilima Sheikh, (Is it that not having staked our ideologies in the making of polar art movements (groups of male artists in the forties and fifties... negotiating their space in the east versus west/modern versus traditional debates) we are not so committed to their exclusive grammar?" Singh replied, "(Being) unmindful to them gives us our freedom." That freedom is embodied in Singh’s use of formal patterning and textile motifs (traditional feminine arts) to expose her own psyche. Over the years, the bodies of the women in Singh’s paintings have matured, as has her own. Her earlier fear of aggression against young women has morphed into fear of larger aggression — against society in general. Her current ogres are the holders of power, "men in suits." Technology has been a major player in the global impact of twentyfirst century artists from India. The Bangalore "Silicon Valley," the beneficiary of multi-national outsourcing, has literally put India on everyone’s "radar screen." * * * * The mere use of text cues the viewer to read. Arpita Singh employs alphabets to imply a narrative — one that further unfolds through visual symbols. Hema Hirani Updhayay uses the format and text of a personal missive. Jitish Kallat painstakingly revives Swami Vivekananda’s historical speech by searing it, letter by letter, on a triptych of mirrors. Atul Dodiya reconfigures the meaning of Allama Prabhu’s tenth-century altruistic poetry by installing it next to potent symbols of inhumanity. * * * * Anju Dodiya invokes dream narratives by staging them on mattresses. The events in her head are displayed on the bed. These are dreams of the nighttime variety-Jungian in their symbolic imagery. Time too has transported the narratives that identify a culture — from ancient roots to contemporary interpretations. And just as in ancient times, stories continue to inspire the making of art. Whether revealing dreams, commenting on current events or re-imagining the great epics, contemporary artists in India are inspired by narration. Nalini Malani finds parallels in the human condition in European and Indian classics. In her series Stories Retold, she fuses the tragic heroines Sita and Medea in sisterly pain. In Living in Alicetime, Lewis Carroll’s Alice finds herself lost and needing to renegotiate her physical and psychological world in Malani’s topsy-turvy India. The unfolding of epic stories gets a particular spin with each generation of retelling, further exemplifying how ideas spiral through time.
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