By SHIRIN MAZDEYASNA, 8/03/2016. The weather has been amazing since the past week. It’s either super hot and humid or rain is pouring down as infinite blessing (both catched in the photo above, Aug 2 4:15 PM). Apparently based on Skymetweather Delhi’s Monsoon rains has broken record this past weekend since the last 10 years! Not carrying an umbrella around and walking places has created a couple of incidents where I have been soaked wet and upon arrival to somewhere froze due to the high functioning AC’s indoors. Similar to the weather that is in a cycle of humidity and showers, one of the magics of India is you never know what you’ll stumble upon. It could be a community of inner-city slums or an Indian wedding, which you can hear the drums from distant.
I went to a couple of contemporary art galleries in Lado Sarai and had the chance to meet the artists from a curated group show named “As You Can See” at Exhibit 320. One of them was going to Art Institute of Chicago in the upcoming fall, and one of the other one had previously graduated from there. One of the artists, UBIK, talked to me about the current art market in India and how there are so few artists who do and appreciate contemporary art. Apparently the art market in India is solely in hands of a handful rich people, who have selected artists and styles and play the power roles. I think it’s almost the same thing around the world as the people with money have the power to make the artists’ reputations build or destructed by managing the market of what gets sold for how much. I vividly understood this when I saw the solo exhibition “A Hue of Devotion” by Ritu Gupta at India Habitat Centre. Her works were recognized as trade marks of Shades of India, and using traditional devotional art, she portrayed her meditations through traditional art and color, in her own style. She had reinterpreted characters and concepts such as NavDurga (enlightened women as source of infinite power), Navagraha (combination of myth and reality with flavours of hindu astrology), Mahakali (goddess of time, change, power, creation, preservation, destruction), and Lakshmi (goddess of wealth, fortune, and prosperity). Her attempt was to reinterpret this figures based on today’s modern life.
Seeing this exhibition that carried a heavy cultural background and conceptions, I felt moving away from traditional indian art that has been cultivating and so weaved in people’s lives and religion is very hard and frustrating (similar to how Italians tried to move away from their centuries of classical art and paintings through the Futurist movement at 1909). Having paintings and sculptures that resembles the essence of daily lives and committed religious practices, it takes a lot to move away from it as a nation and open to new ways of perception, for example conceptual art. At the National Museum, I had the chance to witness India’s rich history of 5000 years of craftsmanship through viewing different objects such as sculptures, miniature paintings, and religious artifacts and relics. I noticed some styles of making art is very specific to India and those mostly encapsulate local practices, rituals, and gods. The artifacts related to Buddhism for example, were indeed influenced from the areas like Pakistan and Afghanistan based on the centuries of influence. The miniature paintings were also a great representation of different variation of Indian miniatures and even included Persian miniatures with Farsi texts.
The experience at the National Museum was topped with the special temporary exhibition of “Yoga in Indian Art.” It influenced me so much that a couple of days later when I went to the opening of the exhibition “Our Everyday Portraits” I unconsciously were trying to tie the traditional Indian Art to Shantala Palat’s contemporary paintings. Fascinating that just by knowing the artist is Indian, I was looking for cultural cues in her art. Later when I talked to her, she indeed was also surprised by my observation as an outsider to Indian culture and art. In my art classes at Parsons my teachers and classmates always mention that due to using cultural references in my work, they feel a barrier to understanding my point of view. However, I don’t intend that and always were upset about not being able to communicate my points without having a specific cultural mindset perceived for me. Now I understand this conception that being in the context of India, my mind was looking for cultural hints and distanced myself from what she might have truly meant. For example, I saw a resemblance between this ancient paintings of chakras and the yogic sitting pose and this piece of her that is very similar yet she did not intend for any references to Indian background.
When talking to Shantala Palat, I got to meet Vaibhav Kaul, who is a Himalayan geographer, photographer, and environmental researcher. His recent exhibition ‘Two Bodies, One Soul: Glimpses of the Alps and the Himalayas’ was on view at India Habitat Center in June.
India Habitat Center was a very interesting and sustainable building, with beautiful gardens and contemporary outdoor sculptures by Indian artists. I also attended a free event on music and dance, provided by Swaraanjali Institute Of Dance, Drums And Harmonic Arts, and it was a great introduction on Hindustani classical vocal recital.
