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

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.

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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