Can Flowers Say it All?

In an exclusive interview done for www.artconcerns.com,
Amrita Gupta Singh focuses on the life and works of the internationally acclaimed artist Hema Upadhyaya. In this candid interview Hema Upadhyaya talks about her being a feminist artist, contexts of her works, international curatorial issues, market and about migration and memories. Excerpts:

Amrita Gupta-Singh: You have established yourself fairly soon as an important artist in the contemporary Indian art scene. What were your first forays into Art and how has the journey been?
Hema Upadhyay – Well, born and brought up in Baroda, my introduction to Art (besides drawing and painting at home) was also through my grandfather, Kishoomal Hirani. He would make our holidays constructive and creative.  (Visiting the zoo/ play gardens, Kamati Baugh/ art competitions and other such places of entertainment) One holiday, he took us to the Faculty of Fine Arts Fair. I did not know where we were, but I remember entering a room with a lot of people dressed as animals… a masquerade of sorts? I remember a Giraffe head that came so close to my face … I jumped away.
With time, my creative ventures adorned my bedroom walls. This was followed by a time when I wanted to become an airhostess. ….
I joined the Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda, in 1991,

AGS: Studying at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Baroda, how has its pedagogy shaped your artistic sensibilities? You wanted to join the Applied Arts Dept. first?

HU - Faculty of fine arts with its course structure for various categories was very strong. Be it right from the practical, theory to personal interaction with the teachers only shaped up my language further. For me the first two years (1991-92,) were more of just following the practical lessons and doing and redoing a lot of things in want of understanding it better. I can better put it by saying that I was learning the skills. During the four-year course of study, I was introduced to a lot different materials for which, till then, I could see no creative purpose / value. And a lot of work followed. It was only in my third year of study (1992-93) that I became aware of my continuous use of these materials, and the narrative in my work. The exposure to different materials, languages, people, teachers, and theories made me more aware of my own work and the purpose of it, and that of the materials and language I wanted to use.

In fact, I wanted to join the fine arts, because I wanted to do Applied Arts (only for the craze of advertising and the glamour that goes with it). But, that was not to be. I was admitted into Painting and, with a lot of convincing from my parents, I joined classes. With one condition: that I would re-apply for Applied Arts the following year. But, I never did re-apply.

AGS: You work across mediums, painting, photography and installation, a post- modernist practice. Did this way of working develop in art school, or was it a later artistic extension to situate your ideas, after your shift to Bombay?

HU - It is both and many more elements that govern it. For me Baroda was more like the place which made me realize the power of saying what I wanted and with what language. It certainly gave me the choice of language as well because it trained you so well with various materials mediums etc., though my shift to Bombay made a drastic change to my attitude to art and my own position as an artist, and an individual vis- a vis the city. You can see this very clearly with ‘sweet sweat memories’ and later on with Loco-Foco Motto’

AGS: You like to tell stories, both real and imaginary, spanning historical time and real time. Could you elaborate?

HU: I consider the years 1993 onward absolutely path changing for me as an individual. On personal and professional level during the third and fourth year at college, my work changed a lot. New elements began to appear in work and these were very personal elements. My father lost his left foot to gangrene. Being the eldest in the family, the power equation was changed significantly and, from a joint family, we split into a nuclear family.

Certain incidents in my personal life took on a special place, elements of which recurred frequently in my work. Many of these stories became sources for my work.  Like, papa’s artificial leg, a chair as a symbol of comfort and power, toys as symbols of hand puppets. All these had its own course to take, with my shifting to Bombay in 1998.

Like, once I got to Bombay, I must admit that no work got done for six to seven months. The city was just too difficult to grasp. It looked so easy from the outside. But once I became a part of it, the process of wanting to be accepted, needing to understand the body language and attitudes of the People and the City and dealing with the often-hostile environment. There was a fear of rejection. A fact every migrant has to face. Belonging to a family displaced from its birthplace, (Pakistan) I could now very closely connect to, and understand certain ways I was brought up with, as I now live another migration in my own family. (But my parents’ move was made without any choice, and I had moved by choice). All this you can see in “BYE”, “Bleeding hearts”, “This space in between you and me” and even much more in the earlier works done during 1996 and 1998

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