Erased Memories / Jeanno Gaussi

Erased Memories
36 inches x 24 inches
Photographs
Jeannette Gaussi, Afghanistan / Berlin
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It's a pity that Jeanno could not make it to the Serendipity Arts Festival in Goa, 2016. Having done multiple rounds of the VISA office, Jeanno was denied VISA to India for no particular reason. To some extent, this also echoes the strained relationship between the countries of the subcontinent. Infact, Jeanno has regularly visited India in the past, and no one can really predict what parameters work in visa approvals in cross the subcontinent borders. Inspite of this drawback, she was able to send us images of a project that she undertook in 2007, which we could print and install at the exhibition. 

Jeanno sent us some vivid images of Kabul. One can see in the grainy, burnt out images the lonely landscapes of Afghanistan. Large dry stretches of land are encompassed within the fold of distant mountains that also contain the city. The photographs have serendipitously desecrated, (as Jeanno informs us), much like the landscape itself. Shot from a distance, most photographs try to capture the overwhelming silence of the city. In the selection of images, one sees little sign of life, creating a sense of strangeness and fear. Is this place desolate? Do people only stay inside? Is it too aloof to be outside? Are the outdoors safe? These are questions that have come to grip me on a primary viewing of the images.

The washed out photographs on one hand metaphorically represent the unfamiliarity of a distant unknown landscape, and on the other, allow the viewer to fill in the "gaps" with their own imagination. Phenomenally, they evoke simultaneous sensations of tranqulity and fear. Has the city calmed down after a turmoil, or is this the silence before a large upheaval? The faded photographs leave us in suspended time - sometimes leading into, and sometimes leaving us within Kabul's political geography. They may also give us an impression that the photographs were taken by a fugitive - rather they make the viewer feel like one...creating a sense of suspense and secrecy. But more than any thing else, the photographs become an apt mirror of Kabul's past, as much as the artist's.

Artist Statement: 

I was photographing Kabul, but had no knowledge that my camera was faulty until I returned home to find that all the pictures had been marred by a black or white shadow.

But there was serendipity in the incident because it highlighted the existence of my past within my present. The past was erased while my present was visible.

- Jeanno Gaussi

The Land and the Lore / Shrimanti Saha

Shrimanti Saha's drawings were one of the most delicate works at the Young Subcontinent exhibition. She works with drawings on paper, and collages them to create new mythical story structures. Shrimanti is an avid reader, and much of her art is worked out through her readings of Edward Lear's Book of Nonsense, other nonsense literature, the tales of Shakti and so on. Her drawings in turn results into accidental mixtures of characters and environments from different readings / settings, thus mirroring the working out of cultural processes. 

In doing so, Shrimanti is able to put together different timescapes together, invoking the viewer to read into disparate histories at one, bringing in a contentious comparison. Some of her panels also reveal the actual confrontation of different histories in real time - for example, the different practices of worship in everyday India and its rejection by the British; or the ritualistic versus the scientific approaches to life, and so on. By employing such methods, Shrimanti is able to create soft surreal imageries that playfully tickle the viewer.

Living in contemporary India is much like living multiple histories at once. Our urban environment is full of such absurdities - Temples installed with CCTV cameras, railways as theatres of religious exchanges, mobile phones used for attending ritualistic ceremonies, cows fed on streets for promotions, gadgets worshipped on festivals with garlands and kumkum - all such practices often intrigue us about which time and history are we living in? The co-existence of traditional and modern lifestyles in contemporary India is gently provoked through Saha's paintings. It gives us a moment to reflect, ponder and think about the way in which our lives are collaged. Further, they also have a speculative quality, for they create fictitious historical futures - extending both, in the past and the future.

- Anuj Daga

Artist Statement:

My work is a compilation of detailed collaged drawings, depicting allegories of historical significance and mythological references; mingled with personal experiences.

They are rendered from the imagination of the present and placed with figures which are depicted like objects/shapes (collaged paper mounted on board); denoting a sense of fragmentation and the feeling of being embedded in the collective memory.

The intention of the work is to explore the possibilities of drawing, collage and storytelling while commenting on the ideas of identity, exploitation and the present as a conse­quence of the past.

- Shrimanti Saha

Letter From Korlai / Aman Wadhan

“We’ve inherited hope – the gift of forgetting.

You’ll see how we give birth among the ruins.”

-Wisława Szymborska


Of the cattle that come to graze on the slopes leading to the fort of Korlai, I would ask, why do you not speak to me of your happiness but only stand and gaze at me? Their eyes appear to say, the reason is I always forget what I was going to say—but then they forget this answer, too, and stay silent so that the human being was left wondering before the sea, in the time of yellow grass.

I had first visited Korlai in 2009. A very dear friend of mine had also been there, separately, unbeknownst to me, around the same time. We were both haunted by something mysterious at work over there. We used to write each other about life, about cinema and languages, but we had never mentioned Korlai and its secret indifference, or our desire to return there. It wasn’t until a few years later, when an assignment brought me back to Korlai, that I could begin to speak about it. By then, my friend had disappeared from my life.

It was the walk to the fort I remembered most—following cattle trails, not the dirt road to the lighthouse, finding pockets along the hill which seem to put the whole world into perspective by revealing that the world is blue at its edges and in its depths; from these pockets one can see that this blue is the light that is lost, the colour of where you are not, where you can never go. These nameless places awaken a desire to be lost, to be far away, yet they can also become anechoic chambers where the silence of the Self becomes audible. You take a deep breath, and unto the dust bequeath yourself, to grow from the grass you love.

In the year and a half it took to make this film, to retrace my footsteps and start over again, Korlai, for all its endurance, kept on changing. I have not returned to Korlai ever since, though some of my friends have recently been there and sent me souvenirs. The continuity of memory falls short to measure the abyss between what it once was and what will remain of it in the near future. Though when I think of my long-lost friend, I feel how little some things change—the last stretch of white sand, the three trees, the cattle trails—even if I be not there—it would always be the same. May the grass make it known that wherever you are my friend, if you want to find me again, look for me under your boot-soles.


Film Synopsis

On India's Konkan coast, in the village of Korlai, a sense of quaintness pervades its Portuguese heritage, the Creole, the faces, and the fort. The filmmaker had visited this place once, as did his friend, of whom nothing is ever said. Years later, an assignment brings the filmmaker back to Korlai. Memories revive but what compels his wayward excursion this time is the elemental and the immemorial wherein his solitude finds refuge. In the time of yellow grass, with steps receding and prayers unanswered, a desire for oblivion forks the search for images of exile and belongingness. This experience surfaces through grainy 16mm images and an elegiac voice-over, which retrace a sense of remembrance, loss, perception, and time intersecting with an inner self and with history. A letter for Korlai also becomes a letter to a dear departed; and in reading this letter, in seeking a new way of inhabiting the world, a vision of Korlai emerges that is both attentive and phantasmagoric, a series of possible angles and tributaries that the viewer and traveller might possibly take.


Letter from Korlai 

running time: 22 min. 23 sec. 

original format: 16mm 

Colour & Black-and-White screening format DCP 2K 

BluRay sound format Dolby Digital 

original language English 

subtitles none


direction, production: Aman Wadhan 

cinematography: Niraj Samad 

editing: Nachiket Waikar 

sound: Bhanu Dhande 

production company: Film and Television Institute of India

-Aman Wadhan

Inside / Anuradha Upadhyay

"Inside" was performed by Anuradha Upadhyay as a part of the Young Subcontinent Project for the Serendipity Arts Festival in Goa, on 16th December 2016. In the inner courtyard of the Adil Shah Palace - Anuradha prepared for her performance invoking the environment through mythical symbolic themes. Defined within the geography of several pots was a triangular arena outlined with series of candles that would be lit up during the performance. The pots, the candles and the red triangle (created using the sacred red sindoor) clearly refer to ideas of fertility, gender and sexuality. Each pot contained different experiences of growth - some poked by sharp objects, some filled with masculinity, and and another trapped within barbed wires. Bound within the carefully constructed diagrams, as well as within the four walled geography of the palace's womb - the performance began with the recital of Kabir's poem, followed by a short passage.

One with the ground, contained within a red translucent fabric, the performer almost appears to be like a seed erupting from the earth. The next fifteen minutes saw her struggle to release herself from the bounds of societal confines. The performance/setting recalls several mythical tropes that have come to define the dual status of women, particularly in the Indian society - the birth of Sita from the soil, or the laxman rekha - the boundary that puts her in trouble on crossing it... Women in India are often held in this duality - where on one hand they are considered to be sacred sustainers of life, while on the other, they are imposed with several societal restrictions in the way they behave, speak, dress up and so on. The fight begins from the moment when the seed is planted in the womb. 

The issue of women's liberation is certainly not just an Indian one. It is shared across most cultures in the subcontinent, as well as beyond. Often, what holds back women from acting against such domination is their own cultural conditioning, which creates an ethical-moral dilemma that can be quite emotionally disturbing. In such confused state, often women define new limits of liberty, inscribed within their limitations. It is hard to open up new questions when we still dealing with, and waiting for the earlier ones to be answered. 

One wonders if it may be a pointless exercise - when the upholders of the state rights (equality of women) themselves speak a language disqualifying their questions! I am referring to the recent molestation of a woman that took place in Bangalore over the New Year 2017! Inside provokes the audience to experience frustration - what it fees like to be caught up within in the mythical, social, moral, ideological, symbolic as well as constitutional traps - what it feels like to be a woman. Perhaps.

 

Anuradha Upadhyay's ideas and work covered in the newspaper Sakaal Times, 8th January 2017. In the context of the molestation case over the new Year in Bengaluru, India (incidentally also included on the page by the editor), the performance gains more significance.

The Disturbed Corner / Teja Gavankar

The Young Subcontinent Project, as much as the Adil Shah Palace in Goa greeted its visitors by Mumbai-based artist Teja Gavankar's bold experiment in bricks. Produced in about two weeks on site, Teja created a large brick wall corner that folds itself strangely. At once, the viewer is taken over by the projections from corners, as if the corner is shouting out to you. the mutated edge, the fuzzed boundary, the distorted lines, the protruding forms - all call out for several themes embedded in the framework of the Young Subcontinent curatorial note. The collision of the subtle and the loud, the plain and warped echo how seemingly benign materials can take disruptive forms, much like the history of the Indian subcontinent.

In the 'Disturbed Corner', Teja attempts to question the idea of security that a wall corner creates. How do parallel and even brick courses create sloping surfaces? How do the brick lines remain continuous over the folded planes? How does the brick cantilever? These are initial questions that take the viewer by surprise and confusion. New forms of shelter are created on both sides of the intervention - where on one hand, space is created through shadows, the rear side caves in to form a scooped corner.

To be sure, brick is one of the oldest materials through which civilizations have built themselves and sheltered humanity. Clay brick is a material that has moulded, and been moulded by cultures. The brick is an apt metaphor for humanity - fired and hardened over years of civilizational pressures. Several building blocks come together to form walls - those that can protect, as well as screen (from) the other. Regimental courses set in history can create hard edges, without any room for negotiation. Creative processes can blur such boundaries, opening up spaces for dialogue and discussion. In the present work, Teja challenges the conventional method in which bricks are laid out, and how their capacities can be furthered through strategic intervention. By twisting surfaces, Teja makes the unsettled geographies of the subcontinent more apparent. In doing so, she invites the viewer for a close observation of the disturbance.

In the urban settings in which Teja has grown up and still lives, often an unfamiliar, unrelated accident on the street brings together passers by to whom the event may be seemingly unimportant. Yet, in the established pause of the moment, the viewer is able to reconsider and reflect upon some of the innermost morals and values that one carries in a flash. Such disturbed rhythm of quotidian city life often becomes a productive backdrop for us to relook at our lives. It is these disturbed moments make us human.

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Artist's Statement:

The interrelationship between different urban spaces, and the way the individual relates and reflects upon them is the primary subject of my inquiry. Working with architectural sites, I find it interesting to think of the “corner” within a space to represent an individual’s “personal area” - that which distorts, deforms and ultimately becomes the impression of the changing identity in the way it is occupied.

Saju Kunhan's artistic explorations

ABSTRACT

Two works of maps on wood panels; which deals with the area of mythology> history> anthropology> migration> invasion> expulsion> displacement> unity> settlement. The multidimensional power of maps gives it the inclusiveness.

IMPORTANCE

Throughout history, there were many civilizations and lands, which are buried under history or lost in mysterious conditions. The reasons are mostly unknown. But we make speculations with available information and hypothesis.

The search for new lands always opens up the possibilities of invasion and violence, which was and is always the result of somebody's domination over the others. Neo-modes of information and ‘news or resources’, which may or may not be reliable, have the power to change or divert the entire connotation of a subject and it acts as the new mode of domination.


METHODOLOGY

I have a habit of visiting different places through ‘Google map’, especially the areas, which has considerable his­torical and archeological value. And from here, I take screenshots of zoomed areas, stitch it together to make a large scale map.

The recycled woods; which is nearly 200-300 years old, as mate­rial, was part of an entirely different functional existence before. Somehow it is the rebirth of the wood as an art piece. Its damages, marks and corrosions were from its previous birth.

The medium plays a vital role. Here I used panels of recycled wood to transfer the images. The slow manual process of transferring the digital prints on wood, gives accidental results. While transferring, through the process we can't predict how the final result would be. I often got maps with missing and erased areas along with extra lines and marks on it. The semi transparency of the wood surface and its rusted areas created some mystery to the map. Moreover, the recycled wood, which has an unknown history and has lost and damaged surfaces, creates holes and erases certain lands from the map.

PROCESS

There are two works of mixed medium on recycled wood panels. Both of the work have a size of 9ft x 5ft. Six panels of 3ft x 2.5 ft are joined together in one work, similarly in the other. One work shows the world map whereas the other depicts the South Asian region.

The use of high definition computer monitor is essential, as the process involves joining hundreds of screen shots together to get an image of 'google map' with desirable quality and size.

The map is then printed on paper, later subjected to processes like painting, erasing, fire burning etc., before transferring the print from paper surface to wood surface.

Multiple images of different layers are added throughout the process. The surface of the wood has to be treated and protected well. 

-Saju Kunhan

Saju's final works:

History Always Repeats, 2016
9 ft x 5 ft (6 panels)
Mixed Medium on Wood,
Saju Kunhan, Mumbai, India

United We Stand Divided We Rule, 2016
9 ft x 5 ft (6 panels)
Mixed medium on wood
Saju Kunhan, Mumbai, India

The making of Irritating Machine / Kabi Raj Lama

Its an big honor for me to be part of this project. As Riyas Komu selected my work that was done in September 2015 Titled "Irritating machine "which was installation based work. 

Regarding the young subcontinent project he told me to remake this work in smaller size. There were 13 portraits of prime minister from the past 25 years in history of Nepal which I carved and printed on hand made paper. The original size was 122cm x 92cm each and for this project I am going to make half of it which is 76 x 61 cm. Actually its a concept of light box and lots of led lights are fixed inside the print box and in the original work I have used sensor and arduino but for the smaller one I want to make it more simple and planning to use only few lights and there is an audio on each piece which needs speakers. 

‘The Irritating Machine’, was a combination of woodcut printmaking with sound and sensors to create interaction with audience through colours and political dialogues.

Since 1990, Nepal has seen countless coalition governments fight over the nation’s direction. The change in political office is so incessant that most Nepalis will be unable to name all the Prime Ministers who have assumed office in the past 25 years.

Our political system is broken. Party ideologies means there is never consensus and thus no action. Yet the institution grows, and stumbles into the far reaches of every social issue that affect the citizenry. The current crisis is just one example of the stagnation brought on by change of political representation.

All Nepalis, young and old, have been left indifferent because the system simply recycles a few individuals every few (months) years. Politics, democracy, the supposed path to betterment, seems to only deepen our ‘bitterment’ instead.

The Irritating Machine aims to simulate this frustration of our elected into a time-based installation.

- Kabi Raj Lama, Nepal