Facilitating the Beast

Young art critic Rashika Ojha scans through the paintings and installations of BV Suresh presented at the Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi and observes that the artist is successful in capturing the moments of pogrom in the contemporary Indian history in metaphorical ways.

Works by B V Suresh in his recent exhibition “Facilitating the Beast” explore some issues that confront us today, will tomorrow and also have in the past. Exhibited in the capital for more than a month at the Vadehra Art Gallery, art lovers saw the artist’s holistic and widened approach in display. B V Suresh has been working with multiple genres of visual arts since 1990; his tremendous creative scope can be measured through the vast canvas of works. The huge canvases staged diverse violence, set of digital prints ‘Shiftings’, bread crusts and video installation called ‘Retakes of the Shadow’ come together as consorts. The binding force of the different media is their theme violence and the recurrent motifs in them; the different canvases explore different forms of violence, the digital prints give a sense of stillness after any act of violence through the reformulated images, the bread crust as the reminiscent of violence and finally reflecting past through the flicker of the images is the video.

 In this range of work Suresh plays with images that circulate in contexts of violence, in context of distinct communities and in the ideological project of nation. The motifs deployed such as lotus or the choice of saffron also the cow, are indicative of this usage also suggesting a narrative pattern. Images from his personal experiences and public events merge to question and recreate history, history that has fallen into the hands of few. Like the legalities of the best bakery case are highlighted constantly but what about the dead and the differences between communities that had been heightened by this massacre. In contrary to this framed history Suresh tries to trace this terrible act of violence through popular images such as the burning of the bogey in Sabarmati express and the burnt bread. The installation of bread crusts in the middle of the gallery triggers multiple horrors in mind because bread is the basic necessity of the nation. More than ‘roti’ i.e. chapatti bread is easily available and consumed but destruction of the same is symbolic to end of life.

Disturbing portrayal of a cow as heaped on a hand cart in the Wall, posed against a darkened boar in the Enquiry, the quotation marks of Facilitating the Beast, photograph of a float titled Sabarmati Express taken out in Rajkot during Janmashtami and others denote an important aspect of violence i.e. violence is staged and performed sending across a message of terror. Violence is no less then a coordinated act of the intentions of the powerful and this is seen recurring in all works may that be the paintings, the digital prints or the video.  

 The glimpses of the best bakery case that had become the face of the 2002 violence in Gujarat, the images of the Mumbai blasts in the local trains and many more, they all stand in juxtaposition because in all violence was staged and intruded into everyday lives of people. The best bakery case received a lot of media attention but was limited to the legalities of the case, the pain and suffrage of the people remained in the back and was soon forgotten. The agony of the people is seen neglected amid the towering people of power where the common man is seen burnt by the volcanic eruption of violence, as projected in Suresh’s In Between.

B V Suresh addresses how violence exists in everyday lives in different forms, recollecting his childhood memories in his interview with Deeptha Achar, he had talked about caste discrimination he faced which today he reads as communal violence. The vast spread of his work needs to be acknowledged because it addresses all kinds of violence whether it is political, communal, social or personal violence. In the Wall, deformation and dislocation of the self becomes a sight of inflicting violence on oneself. While painting Acrobat, Suresh had one proverb running in his head “To pull the carpet from under one’s feet”, underlining the instability of events and the violence of imbalance in poison blue colour.  The violence of seeing that is revealed in Enquiry, where the reclining nude is open to viewing in prison flanked by men who hold powers to hold her because she is just an object of glance but hollow as an individual.

When the entire nation is talking and practicing Gandhigiri, brought to fore by the recent film ‘Lage Raho Munnabhai’, this exhibition reminds us of the acts and the repercussions of the dark phases of our nation that happened not long ago and that need serious contemplation. “Images were first made to conjure up the appearances of something that was absent. Gradually it became evident that an image could outlast what is represented…” wrote Walter Benjamin. Similarly, images of violence created by B V Suresh outlast the barbarous act of violence.