23 November,2024 08:08 AM IST | Mumbai | Debjani Paul
Sajan Mani’s serigraph on rubber, titled Stretched Light and Muted Howls, features a haunting of eyes compiled from photographs of Dalit workers; (right) Kulsoom Khan’s What do termites eat?
Election fever lasts for mere days; the oppression of marginalised communities by high politics has been in existence long before that, and will continue even after the polls," says Manan Shah, curator-writer, and museologist who curatorial practise focuses on colonial and post-colonial studies.
It's these marginalised voices that take centrestage in a new exhibition, Lament Traces, which unravels the layers of history that have both complicated and defined the idea of a "democratic India". Curated by Shah at Colaba's Apre Art House, the show features work by seven artists across various mediums.
"The exhibition looks at the creative practitioners from marginalised sections of society, and those who acknowledge the struggle of the such communities," says Shah.
Take the work of Sajan Mani, an artist born into a family of rubber tappers in a remote village in Kerala, whose commentary on marginalisation takes on a more personal note with his art series, Black Dalit body, which confronts the pain, shame, and power play surrounding caste. His installation - a haunting collage of eyes compiled from photographs of Dalit workers - dominates the gallery space with this display of tightly contained emotion. In this piece, tellingly titled Stretched Light and Muted Howls, he turns his family history - in the toxic, exploitative rubber industry - on its head, printing the serigraph on a natural rubber sheet.
To the left are prints by Ram Rehman, a photographer from Delhi, among which is an arresting image of a grief stricken survivor of the anti-Sikh riots of 1984. "Ram Rehman is one of the few photographers, artists whose work has documented the impact of the assassination of Prime Minister Indra Gandhi, ensuing anti-Sikh riots," Shah tells us over a phone call.
New Delhi-resident Kulsoom Khan piece, titled What do termites eat? (mixed media on canvas), which shows a domed structure in the final moments of collapse, is a layered metaphor for the systematic erasure of marginalised communities.
"Pushing any community or a section to the peripheries is a threat to the entire ideal of democracy. Reshaping or erasure of history and knowledge is one of the initial tools used by dominant politics to channelise, promote and propagate their narrative," says Shah.
This rewriting of identity is not just along religious lines, but also gender - something that Grant Road-resident Meher Afroz Vahid ponders on in Squeeze Duck (collage with photograph and acrylic painting). Her artwork captures a blurry moment of tenderness between women across three generations, before a newlywed bride drives off in her wedding car. On the print is juxtaposed an acrylic painting of a pink duck on a green background - another reference to femininity.
"A gender play, movement between countries, committing to roles - while nurturing a being. These are a few layers that have been expressed in the work," says artist Vahid.
There are plenty of voices and issues to explore in this exhibit. Among other highlights is Bhaskar Bordoloi's satirical - almost grotesque - commentary on religion through his paintings (acrylic on canvas) of a dystopian cult of the "Crystal Mountain".
Madhurjya Dey's photographs that show how print and broadcast media have historically been used as a tool to manipulate public opinion on the Northeast, while simultaneously censoring the region's crises.
What can art do to shed light on these issues? "Art cannot exist without politics, they are connected and conjointly related," says Shah, while gallery director Prerna Jain adds, "We have tried our best to show the human impact of political crises, at the same time showcasing marginalised voices that are often neglected or suppressed. Our motive for this exhibition was to initiate a starting point for this conversation."
