Memory in art

For a few years now, art admirers have been pondering over the lack of ‘conceptual' art shows in Delhi. And, more often than not, a ‘thematic show' is confused with a ‘conceptualised show'. Recently, a few shows in Delhi raised hopes: A. Ramachandran's show at Lalit Kala Akademi by Rupika Chawla, Nand Katyal's exhibition by Ebrahim Alkazi, and now “Retrieval Systems” curated by Ranjit Hoskote at the Visual Arts Gallery, thanks to Sunaina Aanad of Art Alive Gallery, who has organised it.

The commonality among these three well-conceptualised shows is that all are mounted by art critics and curators and not just by gallery owners. As the name suggests, “Retrieval Systems” revolves around “archives of memory and references that sustain the contemporary artistic imagination”, as Ranjit puts it. It is also a result of his research interest in neurology, anthropology, archives and digital technology.

Simply put, the participants — Alex Fernandes, B. Manjunath Kamath, Baiju Parthan, G.R. Iranna and Tina Bopiah — revert to past influences in their works and blend them with the present, in which Ranjit's research interests too find a suitable space.

Alex, a 46-year-old Goan artist, for instance, shows meta-portraits of ‘Tiatristes' — performers representing Goa's loved theatre forms. They are men and women in black and white dignifiedly dressed with an aura. Some have a typical Bollywood hint minus the melodrama.

“Tiatristes was invented by Goan immigrants in 19{+t}{+h} Century Bombay, who blended village festivities with jatra, applying the technical and visual qualities of the Italian opera very popular among European expatriates in colonial Bombay,” says Ranjit. That way, Alex attempts to revive history for the present generation through pictures that look very Indian yet international.

Fifty-three-year-old Baiju Parthan presents a multi-part photographic installation. It has the statue of philosopher-adventurer-hypnotist Abbe Faria hypnotising a woman lying down, installed in Panjim. The statue was Baiju's first inspiration and when he saw it as a science student was inclined to study art. He saw a few hippies dancing around this cult figure. For Baiju, the picture symbolises his past memory, dreams and desires that still reoccur in most of his works.

G. R. Iranna's spectacular, mammoth fibre bell, sleeping Buddha and fractured boat are instant attention-grabbers. The 39-year-old constantly recalls his days spent in Karnataka during elaborate religious festivities.

He bandages the bells' clappers together to indicate their silence in contemporary times. His Buddha sleeps on several tin suitcases bolted with sealed locks, and his body suffers insertions made by calipers, representing how cities are breaking and disregarding peace.

Among the contemporary artists, 37-year-old Kamath is the only one whose works are laced with sly humour. In this show too, his digital prints on “No logic please” have assembled rib-tickling images mixing mythology and technology, history at the crossroads, etc. For instance, Superman ‘poses' like a Raja Ravi Varma woman on a plinth in a palatial modern house.

While his spectacular wood-terracotta brick-cement work “To be continued” is a post-colonial almirah similar to what he saw in his grandparents' home, he has architecturally modified it into something like an unfinished construction site, which indicates the loss of a sense of belonging in the present.

Tina Bopiah's egg tempera works are multilayered, dark and slightly surrealist. The 65-year-old, through highly symbolic images like a hanging fish or a netted woman in a boat, chooses to revert to suppressed teenage desires, repressed under strict Catholic teachings and expectations of a perfect woman by the Army discipline at her father and husband's home.

The show is on view till December 2.