Auto De Fé: The Sea is History by Kedar Dhondu

Title: Auto De Fé : The Sea is History
Artist: Kedar Dhondu
Medium: Water Colour and Gouache on Paper.
Size: 240 inches x 80 inches (Eight Panels of 60" X 40" each)


‘Auto De Fé: The Sea is History’ / 2016
Video and Sound Installation
32 Sec (loop)

‘Auto De Fé: The Sea is History’ explores my overarching interest in light, history and time. The work looks at the migration through the lens of religious persecution and colonial hegemony. In Auto De Fé, ocean plays an important role. It is symbolized as an intermediate zone between the past and the present, the particular and the general, the local and the global. Here I am interested to showcase the societal topics it addresses, from migration to social and economic disenfranchisement and suppression, and religious violence that highlights Goa’s history.

The Portuguese conquest of Goa in 1510 and its subsequent rule by Portugal resulted in a large-scale conversion of Goa’s indigenous population to Christianity. The state of Goa then became the centre of Christianization in the East. After conversion, locals were usually granted Portuguese citizenship. The rapid rise of converts in Goa has been described as mostly the result of Portuguese economic and political control over the Hindus.

In 1560, the ‘Inquisition’ was established in Goa. It involved persecution of Hindus as well as Christians. It was used as instrument of social control, as well as method of confiscating victim’s property and enriching the Inquisitors. The main aim was to preserve Catholic faith in Goa. Thousands and thousands of ‘heretics’ were burned, tortured and executed. Finally it got abolished in 1812. From 1560 to 1774, the tribunals of the Inquisition tried more than 15,000 persons. Seventy-one autos de fé were recorded. In 1567 and in 1583, the campaign of destroying temples in Goa (Bardez, Asolna and Cuncolim) met with success. At the end of it, more than 300 Hindu temples were destroyed.

In Goa’s past, the Portuguese treated ‘black image’ with oppression, alienation, emasculation and abuse. Thus in my work, the converted dark heads of the local Hindu Deities of present time temples of Goa, are rendered with similar ‘darkness’ of the destroyed basalt stone Hindu Temples and deities of Goa’s history. (Idols, which are originally, Gold, silver and other metals called as Panchadhatu gets converted). The darkened heads of Gods and Godesses hovers over the undulating movement of waves of the ocean creates an intensely meditative, almost therapeutic atmosphere in ‘Auto De Fé’. Thus the images of Gods signify the Hindu practice of replicating manifestations of a deity in order to achieve spiritual merit.

Kedar Dhondu

HD Portraits / Parag Sonarghare

Parag Sonarghare's hyperreal images were the hallmark of the Young Subcontinent Project. Rightfully mistaken as photographs, Parag's paintings are an exercise in close observation of the human body. Parag explained how each work took him days together to take it to completion. These larger than life images are painted patch by patch bringing the artist close to the flesh and texture of human life. When working on a smaller detail, Parag often found himself immersed in the stretched detail of the folds of the skin. While one is clear about the image from a distance, a closer look at the paintings makes it almost a territory of its own. The faces create a physical map, marking a geography of wrinkled contours that only appear as textures of land forms and dried vegetation.

Placing Parag's work in the larger social and technological politics of the time, Riyas Komu invokes the artist's work as he once qualified it - "high definition" (popularly referred as HD). While Parag remained anxious about the political status of his own work, Riyas addressed it aptly by opening up the question of what it means to make a "painting of HD quality"? What does it mean to seek "high definition" quality - a notion of seeing images in the digital world - into the physical world of the painting? Most of us today have become active producers of images through our screen-devices (mobile phones, i-pads, digital cameras, etc). While technology has facilitated the shrinking of screen-sizes significantly, most devices compensate by offering to capture larger densities of data, increasing the number of pixels, thereby allowing one to zoom in and stretch the image on the limited window within our palms. This allows us to stretch and look at images almost like a large canvas.

Every new screen device tries to revise itself into a higher definition camera that can capture more pixels per inch (ppi), implying denser images and thicker information. For whom do individuals, who indulge in even in casual image making, accumulate so much information? Is this practice carried out in the pursuit of higher knowledge, or a better understanding of the self? What does the perpetual zooming inside a surface signify about the perceptual ambition of our society? Does this make us more conscious about our own bodies, or numbs us into the image? And what happens when the image on screen that we've zoomed into about 1000% on our small devices appears all at once?Such a quest leads the painter to create art of a certain kind who is looking for a language for one's time. It is the artist's way of asserting his individuality in a certain way, which is inevitably political.

---
Artist's Note:

Human face, in its own sense reveals many aspects of a person. I see face as evidence of one’s journey, psyche, it reflects a metaphysical realm of one, which becomes person’s feel. For me, what exist are layers, what person is made up of. I don’t see it as single unite body but collection/ layers of experiences. There are experiences, feelings, moments, time, conditions in which subject must have lived in. but it is the body/face as evidence where my center of interest is.


Parag Sonarghare
Untitled Series
90 x 66 inches
Acrylic on canvas
2016

Parag's Work as displayed at Adil Shah Palace, Goa

Discussing Yolanda's Journey

With artist Yolanda D'souza at her studio in Goa.
Pic Courtesy: Vishal Kadam

The following note will spell something about Yolanda:

YS Artworks

Visual Diary - Young Subcontinents - Studio visits

As The Young Subcontinent group of Artists we together visited and approached local Goan artists in their studio spaces. I am one of the young subcontinent artist beginning to memorise our journey though some visuals here and i am sure there are many more to come. During our visits to their studios we learnt to engage with absolutely new characteristics of each artist's we met . Their style , their visual languages and temperaments , the concepts and inspirations, their methods and materials all such varieties and qualities reinvigorated us. Simultaneously their identity of being Goan reflecting in their art works i truly enjoyed. 

These studio visits were done in two sessions where we visited eight to nine artists in two days. 

Francis and Verodina Desouza, a painter and sculptor in Saligao.

Yolanda Desouza - an acclaimed artists of Goa

Sonia Sabharwal graduated from Goa College of Art

Nirupa Naik is endowed with a special talent in painting and studied at the Goa College of Art

Rajendra Usapkar graduated from Goa College of Art and pursued his Masters is Baroda

Hitesh Pankar studied at J.J School of Art Mumbai, and Goa College of Art

Santosh and Chetali Morajkar, located in Mapusa. 

Young subcontinent artists with Anuj Daga and Nirupa Naik

Opening through a Closure

This blog is a continuing accumulation of the works and evolving thoughts of young subcontinent artists - those who were selected to present their works for the Young Subcontinent project curated by Riyas Komu for the Serendipity Arts Festival in Goa, 2016. The blog documents and archives works shown at the festival, as well as sets up a convergence platform for the participants to remain connected with each other, discuss ideas and build new possibilities of collaboration with each other. At the same time, the blog opens itself to comments from the public and invites opinion from the larger circuit of artists, intellectuals and art enthusiasts to respond to the work presented here.

The Serendipity Arts Festival 2016 was hosted at Goa during 16th to 23rd December bringing together on display several disciplines including visual arts, performing arts, culinary arts, music, science an so on. The Young Subcontinent project was a multidisciplinary arts exhibition that was structured around exhibitions, talks, studio visits and artist presentations over a two week residency in Goa. The invited discussants for the programme included:

20th December, 2016

Packiyarajah Ahilan, poet and art historian, Sri Lanka

21st December, 2016

Gayatri Sinha, art critic, India

23rd December, 2016

Amrith Lal, editor, Indian Express, India

joined by Riyas Komu

In addition, the program included studio visits to local Goan artists. The aim of these visits was to give the artists an insight into their rare body of work and to facilitate a meaningful interaction with the key members of the local artist community here in Goa. Following visits were made over three sessions:

Day 1, 17th December, 2016

A visit to the studio of Francis and Verodina Desouza, a painter and sculptor in Saligao, followed by a visit to the studio of Yolanda Desouza, an acclaimed artist of Goa. From there, the group proceeded to the studio of Santosh and Chetali Morajkar, located in Mapusa.

Day 2, 19th December, 2016

Rajendra Usapkar graduated from Goa College of Art and pursued his Masters is Baroda

Nirupa Naik is endowed with a special talent in painting and studied at the Goa College of Art

Sonia Sabharwal graduated from Goa College of Art

Suhas Shilkar graduated from Goa College of Art

Hitesh Pankar studied at J.J School of Art Mumbai, and Goa College of Art

Day 3, 21st December, 2016

We visited the MOG (Museum of Goa) a beautiful and well designed space by architect Dean D'cruz. MOG is a privately owned contemporary gallery by Artist Subodh Kerkar whose works have been exhibited in India and all over the world.

The above activities were interspersed within several conclaves, panel discussions, performances and exhibitions organized as a part of the core festival around several venues in Panjim, Goa.