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Aspiring flaneus’ in the city

Shubhalakshmi Shukla assumes the role of a wanderer in a city and with her innate passion to make observations- which could be sociological, psychological or even psycho-pathological, singles out four women artists from a group show at Project 88, Mumbai in order to see how these artists themselves function as wanderers in city mazes.

Cities extend, expand, broaden and swell (along with all that remains ‘internal’ and ‘existential’) except when they decay! Walter Benjamin, on these aspects of growth, has described an individual’s experience of wandering in the city, as if the in labyrinths, of such ever-changing, ever-growing spaces while writing about Paris. He once attempted drawing a map of his own life, where each important relationship figured as “an entrance to the maze”.

True, wandering on the city-streets can be like entering into a maze of relationships, investigating journeys of objects and materials, where one can discover the ‘new’/ surprise at each turn! While each city in India can be different, yet the influences of industrialization can be felt as a connecting page, making the literature written by Benjamin relevant even today. 

The works of artists under observation do make me think about Walter Benjamin many a times, for the way transformations in the city gets inscribed within their perception as well as language. At times there is a concern and anguish, and at other times there is a desire to take refuge in the imaginations of the mystical Nature.

Four young artists showing in Mumbai, suggest their wanderings in and around the cities they live. They are Vasvi Oza, Kiran Chandra, Shefalee Jain, and Kavita Desai.

While Shefalee Jain and Vasvi Oza have been awarded the Bodhi award ( for Post-graduate students), and exhibit along with other eight award-winners at the Bodhi gallery; the works of Kiran Chandra and Kavita Desai are in a group show with seven other artists at the gallery Project 88, Colaba.

In the following text I would make some observations followed by brief notes on the artist’s works.

Observation:

The character of ‘flâneur’ (the one who strolls) recurs within the mind whenever one imagines a detached observer wandering in the city. Flaneur, first emerged in the writings of Charles Baudelaire, as a detached observer of the street-life in the city of Paris ,18th century; which was becoming highly industrialized. During similar time emerged the character of ‘dandy’, the disengaged cynical voyeur.

The artists in context, however, could be today’s flaneus’(female-wanderer)!
Their participation in and fascination with the city spaces like a labyrinth does remind of Walter Benjamin’s work who extended the character of flaneur from being a detached observer to the one who would get ‘lost’ in the city or even explore the ‘forbidden’. Probably these artists address the void for such a character in the 18th century Europe ( literary and visual texts), and surface a need to discover when did a flaneus’ after all, first emerge? How is their presence or absence, different or similar to the existing flaneurs (see Renoir’s paintings) and dandys ( see Delacroix) in the history of paintings? If this tendency is already observed amongst the women artists earlier, then, do they feel the need to subvert?
 
A wanderer may have an innate passion to make observations- which could be sociological, psychological or even psycho-pathological. S/he may project a critical view point towards the indifference, anonymity, and uniformity of the so called ‘modern’ life in the city, pointed out in some of the works under observation here.

Brief notes about the artists and their works on display:

Vasvi Oza:

Vasvi’s imagination of a ‘Cold City’ presents a black-walled claustrophobic labyrinth like model of the city displayed on a table, where as below the table a landscape manifesting vastness and openness of Nature. This display of the city-model in her room, as well as the title suggests a dark imagination about the city as if drenched in gloom.

Her ‘Between my Home and my Studio’ is painted with a little playful and cheerful approach towards the light, color and composition, introducing patches of green and twits and turns that may be engaging. Thus, the mood of both differs, although in both her paintings she is not present herself. She also suggests a mind-wandering along the path that one may experience as repetitive as a result of everyday journey, and yet endless with/without (new) surprises each time.

She has finished her master’s degree in Painting form M.S.University Baroda and lives and works in Baroda.

Kiran Chandra:

In her imagery the written text becomes the ‘material’ of art. Her field of observation is the more contemporary phenomenon of those ‘displaced’ in the process of so-called-development in the city.

In each visual she evokes an aggressive displacing of the affirmed meaning of the chosen word. ’This place…That place... Displace…This place ..’ reads a march-like rhythm and continuity of similar sounding words, where the words gets effaced at times, like the space itself or the space in the canvas rather becomes like the field to be displaced.

Kiran seem to imagine her visual expressions as precise and clear as a poster-message. She also believes in making her images available to the participants in the form of posters. 

She has studied BA in English, St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University and BFA at the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University, Boston. She lives and works in Kolkata. 

Shefalee Jain:

Within the expanded city, there can also be mind wandering, while in the interior of one’s house, where one might have grown-up.

She portrays her interiors as expanded spaces of lyrical floral design-surfaces form where her relationship with her mother emerges, or may be one can say the floral forms appear from a mystical relationship. These are pencil drawings which appear to be grown in lyrical floral-patterns; and bring in a quality of breeze in a free and expanded landscape. The figures and the furniture either emerge from or get enveloped in these. The house simultaneously cherishes a melancholy and sensuality in a monochromatic perception, as imagined in a dialogue with the colourful-merriments in city.

Shefalee has finished her Masters degree from M.S. University Baroda and lives and works in Baroda.

Kavita Desai:

She has recreated the photographs taken by her during her travels, while going deep into Nature. These, as digital images are printed on layers of acrylic sheets arranged one behind the other, to form layers within a back-lit box.

Her desire for a mystical-landscape as ‘missing’ in the city gets enhanced while she composes a technique that depend more on materials often used in the urban situations, like back-lit advertisements and texts. Her landscapes evoke a surreal presence in a simultaneous presence of the night and day.

She has finished her Bachelors degree in Visual Arts from M.S.University and lives and works in Baroda.