The door opens and a strange smell trapezes in,
Swinging from one beam to the other, the smell hits my nose.
I walk away and try to escape it, but in vain.
Not inclined to make a judgment so soon, I was only aware that it followed me.
" Why?" I wanted to ask, "To what purpose?"
I kept quiet and waited for it to start a dialog.
Nothing.
And then I remembered that smells have no identity, no personality, no conscience.
I laughed.
The smell whispered back, " Who follows whom?".
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Delhi Diary- II
I sit on the steps and
stare
at
the
lizards
on
the
wall.
With sharp bursts, one of them moves.
Lethargia masks their deadly intent.
A moth flickers close by.
The head darts.
A miss.
The moth flies on.
I snigger.
The lizard doesn't get the joke.
The moth teases again.
The head darts.
The moth disappears.
Another lizard darts its head from the hinges of the door.
They stare at each other.
I turn my head.
An instant passes and I look back.
The lizard goes on another hunt.
A dart. Bullseye.
Burp.
It moves around restlessly. The black eyes have no glint. It's pathetic. Bordering funny.
Another moth.
Another meal.
No challenge.
Just Survival.
stare
at
the
lizards
on
the
wall.
With sharp bursts, one of them moves.
Lethargia masks their deadly intent.
A moth flickers close by.
The head darts.
A miss.
The moth flies on.
I snigger.
The lizard doesn't get the joke.
The moth teases again.
The head darts.
The moth disappears.
Another lizard darts its head from the hinges of the door.
They stare at each other.
I turn my head.
An instant passes and I look back.
The lizard goes on another hunt.
A dart. Bullseye.
Burp.
It moves around restlessly. The black eyes have no glint. It's pathetic. Bordering funny.
Another moth.
Another meal.
No challenge.
Just Survival.
Delhi Diary- I
Minutes Trickle down from the crack on the pink wall,
The corner's take the proportion of a dozen Milky
Way's,
And from the depth's of the red in the air,
I yawn and stumble across the room.
The air is a shirt made of pure black velvet,
And from it's torn corners I breathe,
The fan screeches hysterically,
" I want to be far away from here "
, I reply.
I take my words back for the fear of being heard by the spirits that reside in my room.
"Tee- Hee"
I mumble, and gulp on some heavy, tasteless, warm water.
I baby step back into my room, and turn the sweat soaked pillow to it's drier side.
-My body hit's the bed-
I try and remember the chamber that I was in the labyrinth of my dreams.
The corner's take the proportion of a dozen Milky
Way's,
And from the depth's of the red in the air,
I yawn and stumble across the room.
The air is a shirt made of pure black velvet,
And from it's torn corners I breathe,
The fan screeches hysterically,
" I want to be far away from here "
, I reply.
I take my words back for the fear of being heard by the spirits that reside in my room.
"Tee- Hee"
I mumble, and gulp on some heavy, tasteless, warm water.
I baby step back into my room, and turn the sweat soaked pillow to it's drier side.
-My body hit's the bed-
I try and remember the chamber that I was in the labyrinth of my dreams.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Thursday, January 04, 2007
The Sarai Mural : Dilemma of the Techno Hero
The Dilemma of the Techno Hero references popular comic book culture in
India. It emerges from my ongoing research on, and documentation
of a collection of popular comic books at Sarai.
Raj Comics have been in existence since 1986 and have published more than a thousand comics ever since. It started out as an action adventure series borrowing heavily from its western counterparts and the superheroes created by them. As these comics progressed, it got filled in with many religious undertones and mythical plots. The role of the superhero also changed from a local vigilante to the protector of the universe. With the technological evolution around, the world in the comic books too changed with technology and gadgets an underlying element in the plot development. I was also aware of the visual evolution in the vocabulary of the comic book and the project began as an attempt to build a narrative that would be an intersection of the following tangents- the idea of the superhero, the visual language of the comic books and remixing tropes and narrative fragments from a large body of comic book material that reflect an obsession with computers, mobile phones and surveillance technologies.
The mural has been made behind the Sarai Cafeteria and was made keeping in mind ‘Sensor-Census-Censored ‘ , an international colloquium on Information Society, held from 30th November- 2nd December.
(Panel 1) The Sarai Mural: Dilemma of the Techno Hero
Panel 1. (Divided in four parts)
36 feet X 3 feet
Acylic and Laminated Laser Prints.
Sunday, July 09, 2006
Saturday, July 08, 2006
Are you lonesome tonight ...
The inspiration for this visual was the Rickshaw flaps and the cheap hoarding board images that we see . The treatment was to be something like the rickshaw images and Pop art. A mix of the two... The visual once again was to be like this hybrid image .
This was the only work done on tin and purely with enamel paints.It was almost made like a demo work , with larger works planned in a similar language .
Friday, July 07, 2006
David and Goliath.
"You are not able to go to war against the Philistines. You (David) are just a boy, and Goliath is a man of war."
Samuel 17:33
David is part of a diptych called David and Goliath .Here I wanted to somehow make a coherent link between the macro and micro impacts of consumerism . I played around with the whole myth a little bit and swapped roles . David in my painting is Goliath and Goliath is David . The Giants of global advertising and consumer marketing against the pint sized man , who is the obvious victim . David( painted as 'Goliath') is me, you and all of us . Wanting to be someone .Wanting to be Beckham.
The painting 'David' has five heads with five different hairstyles of David Beckham . Beckham is the largets living brands of our times. He ceases to be a human being . He is a living hoarding board which gives birth to a million dreams , wants and desires. The five heads also served the purpose of giving the image a certain 'evil ' connatation to it . It was a reminder to the Ravana image ( that of 10 heads) .
So in certain respects I feel that the visual worked , although the Pepsi signage made it look more like an ad for the softdrink giants to a few .
Size - 6 feet x 4 feet
Medium - Oil and enamel on canvas
Bol.
This was painting was made keeping in mind the state of contemporary art . Most of the contemporary artists were just painting to make a living , a very hefty living . They made works not because they believed in it , or because they had something to say , but made it so that they could earn money . Art was a profit making machine . Not expression . Not communication . And so It was almost like the painter was being gagged . He could see , but could not say . Money had gagged him . In the background were words written by faiz ahmed faiz , called ' BOL ' . It said ,
Bol ki lab aazaad hain tere
Bol zabaaz ab tak teri hai
Teraa sutwaa jism hai teraa
Bol ki jaan ab tak teri hai
Dekh ke aahangar kii dukaan mein
Tund hain shole surkh hai aahan
Khulane lage quffalon ke dahaane
Phailaa har ek zanjiir kaa daaman
Bol ye thoda waqt bahut hai
Jism-o-zabaan kii maut se pahale
Bol ki sach zindaa hai ab tak
Bol jo kuchh kahane hai kah le
"Speak, for your lips are free .
Speak , for this tongue is still yours .
Speak, for this body is still yours.
Speak, since it is still your life.
See that how in a blacksmith's shop ,the flame burns wild and the iron glows red;
The locks open their jaws,And the link of every chain begins to break.
Speak, for this brief time is enough ,before the death of the body and the tongue:
Speak, because the truth is still alive. ....Speak, speak, whatever you must ."
Meidum - Oil on oil sheet
Size - Imperial oil sheet .
Bottle Of Pickle.
This painting again tried to zoom into a form of consumerism rampant in our ages . I was trying to see how consumerism affects us in a micro level , how it gets transformed into a very personal thing . Personal as well as Universal . Micro and macro .
I found a similarity in the way most men looked at women . It wasnt derogatory but ummm ..it was viewing them like an object . And the media to a large extent enforced that view . The whole idea of skin show , and that of 'sex sells ' are proof of that . And so , for someone like me a woman's body was seen as an object in almost alien proportions .
The more I looked around , read and thought about it , the more it became clear to me . A womans body was overhyped , almost like a consumerist agenda . The truth of the matter was that it was all skin and muscles and bones. Even I have tits , so does every other man . Then what makes a woman's chest so special . Why the curiosity.
I refuse to believe that this is something natural . It is not something innate. It is something that is carefully and subtly groomed by outside sources . Primarily the media .
So , I took Marilyn Monroe's head ( the worlds most widely recognized sex symbol ) and merged it with a mans torso . The man is clutching (/hiding ) his tits . The point is that ..its just the body ..!! The outer painted frame of Rickshaw stencils was to give the concern a context . An Indian context .
Size - 5 feet x 2feet 6'
Medium - Oil & Enamel on Canvas
Self Study
And so I asked the question- what is the west ? Barring first hand experience , various other sources of knowledge indicated to one common train running through all our notions of the west- consumerism .
" This is the generation that grew up entirely under the marketing microscope . They were the ones with commercials in their classrooms : stalked on the internet by voracious market researchers ; with youth subcultures fully bought and sold ; told that their greatest aspiration should be to become a dot-com millionaire at eighteen ; and taught that rather than being a citizen then should learn 'to be a Brand called You ' "
- Naomi Klein 'Fences and Windows'
To see my generation and myself in this light changed my approach towards the subject . My works tried to visually articulate effects of consumerism . All the spheres it touches . Slowly , from just a visual representation of my culture they metamorphosed into a comment on consumer culture . One tried to understand how macro affects the micro and starts a chain reaction of wants and desires.
This painting was done keeping my generation in mind . The whole 'coolness' quotient that me and people my age so desperately aspire to was put in question . The whole absorption of the MTV culture was put to question . The whole issue of a 'wannabe' . So , I have my own image on top , with the rays and the halo trying to give a certain Indian context to the concern .The shirt that "I" wear is a kind of a an american hip hop scene in the subway , and tries to signify the basic influences that I absorb. The chai and samosa represent my reailty. Its almost as if the painting is saying ( in a very inidrect way ) that " Boss , you might be as cool as ice but you will still come back to having chai and samosa ."
Size - 6 feet x 4 feet
Medium - Oil & Enamel on Canvas
Thursday, July 06, 2006
Ram in a Disco.
This was the last work in my 'Contemporary Indian' series . It was also the first time that I attempted to do a 6 feet by 4 feet canvas . The whole image had been going around in my head for a long time ...that of a silhoutted Ram figure in a discotheque . It was initially conceived as a triptych , then turned into a diptych and finally came into a more compressed and coherent form in this painting . It again tried to visually mix two 'cultures ' . However , Once again my own views of what Indianness was and what the west was , was quite nascent and naive . It was after this work that I tried to investigate what the two meant . In that respect , this painting was a point of departure for me , in terms of the thought content , the scale and the ultimate visual impact that I wanted to create .
Size - 6 feet x 4 feet
Medium - Oil on Canvas
Hey Pops !!!
This was my exam work for the third year of college…primarily a work made out of a sort of repugnance . Repugnance of the hypocrisy that me and people around me indulge in . I found Mahatma Gandhi to be a good example. People don’t know anything about him , most people my age only have bawdy joke to share about him . And yet he is called the ‘Father of the nation ‘ . So the purpose of this work was to offend sensibilities by a modern version of Gandhi . I tried to make him as Racy and Kitschy as I could . I wanted to drive out an argument , with people angrily accusing me of how I dare represent him like this . And then I could charge them of the hypocrisy that they were so wont to . I failed miserably . To date , Hey Pops is the only work that my parents have liked.
Size - Imperial Oil Sheet
Medium - Oil & Enamel
Kindly paste your snap here .
Reacting to the misinterpretation of ‘Lady on a flower ‘ I made this work much more direct. I made it in two symmetrical halves. One half being that of modernity , where on his left half the image is holding a symbols of consumerism and capitalism . The faces on the left were also “western “ icons , that of Bush and of the urban Indian ( played by Amir Khan in Dil Chahta Hai ) . The right side had Amir Khan as Mangal Pandey and Mahatma Gandhi as symbols of the “Indian” ness. The thought and concepts behind these works was both naïve and shallow . The central face was left blank and was to be replaced with a cutout image of the viewer. It was a supposed interactive work . The second canvas that I painted
Size - 5 feet x 3 feet
Medium - Oil & Enamel on Canvas
Lady on a Flower
The first Canvas I painted . It was 5 feet 9 inches by 3 feet . Life size , and at that point primarily an exercise of skill . It was part of the same series , that of identifying the contemporary Indian . This time it also had another layer in it , that about the way we perceive a woman . So we have a semi-nude woman who has her head turned away . The lotus and the rays were purely a symbol of Indianness . But it was widely misread . What I wanted to represent and what was being represented was different . I didn’t have any control . It was for the first time that I was aware of the subjective nature of art on a first hand basis . This compelled me to think and most of the works of the future were trying to catch the viewer ‘ by the neck’ and tell him exactly what I wanted to say .
Size - 5 feet 9' x 3 feet
Medium - Oil & Enamel on Canvas
Shri Jim
The second work of the series ,where my research of Raja Ravi Verma and his oleographs came in handy . I hade looked them before advancing to paint and saw them as a good symbol of the eroding value systems that have been passed down to us . The transformation that his paintings have taken into the loud calendar art , perhaps can stand testimonial to our own change . And so I took the iconic image of Jim Morrison ( I am a HUGE doors fan ) and mixed it with that of the ornamentary ‘mukut’ found in Indian calendar art .An image representing the modern Indian.
Size - Imperial Oil Sheet
Medium - Oil & Enamel.
Versace Laxmi.
The first in my series which tried to explore the meaning of the contemporary Indian . I tried to look at myself and people of my generation and basically attempted to find out who was an Indian in the contemporary sense of the word . I found that the society that we live in and what we call as 'Indian'ness is essentially something of a hybrid nature . On the one hand there are very strong and rooted 'traditional ' values and on the other a strong influence of the west . The contemporary Indian ( read: modern) was a very curious mixture of the two . This was the first visual representation of the dichotomy .
Size - Imperial Oil Sheet
Medium - Oil & Enamel.
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