Desire and Death as Landscapes
Atul Bhalla’s engagement with the river Yamuna and the global water politics has resulted into a set of installations and video works. Recently he re-presented the works in Mumbai’s Project 88. Shubhalakshmi Shukla catches with the artist and the works and delineates how the artist generates a visual critique of the water politics.
Atul Bhalla’s installations, videos and photographic works set up a philosophical dialogue about desire and death in the contemporary urban landscapes. He neither poses to be existential nor builds up a utopia; his vision rather reveals what is hidden,related to human-memory and action. It brings into context the river Yamuna, his long term associations/observations in and around the city he has lived in, Delhi. Time, Memory and History appear as integrated in his concerns, while he brings on to the surface disrupted associations of this in the present ‘urban’ context. This could be a collective quest about the interlinked cycle of mass-scale-productions and constant ‘waste’ produced, to which human action is inevitably associated. He rolls back the dialogues on Desire, Space, Thought and Death as questions asked in the voice of Water (in the religious mythical text of Mahabharata).
How can one count the age of a river? As for a tree it would be possible to cut it and count the growth-rings. The transverse-sections of the felled tree trunk made by the artist for one of his installations triggers of such questions. Like a scientist, he engages in observing the fifty percent loss of the mass in the sliced off tree-trunk as the sap dries up - over a period of one year. Yet, rethinking such a process, in fact recreates a philosophical engagement with the material- wood, which can trace a travel path on water (having lived on it).He brings into play the relationship between human-body, wood or objects casted in cement and sand as the receptacles of water, with the cisterns of water.
The present state of Yamuna, the main tributary of Ganga which starts form Himalaya, places a question mark in the deep seated memory of all the earliest human settlements that emerged and flourished as civilizations on the banks of the rivers - Indus Valley Civilization near Indus, Egyptian Civilization near Nile, and so on. What has history to do with these specific sites, now preoccupied with violence of different orders? One may even ask if there is a memory of human beings’ earliest associations with water or of Yamuna being the life line of the city of Delhi.
Atul’s process establishes a communication through these long observed pathways, objects and materials, which make his art possible. Thus the element of sensuality in all his works invites a dialogue for knowing its mystery, rather than remaining a mere surface. And what fills the onlooker further is the thought or the knowledge that has ruptured the surface, marking the death of the visual .. or ironically giving beauty to death! He takes his journey on by asking questions that tend to shake the established scientific-truths and touches upon human-action, primarily placing the ‘self’ in question.
In his engagements with the Yamuna river, he brings back the dialogues from the Mahabharata. This could be an ongoing philosophical relationship between human being and water, even today. Here there is abundance of water, yet one might not be able to satisfy the thirst, as one need to answer the questions first!
Water: Give me an example of Desire. Yudhisthira: Poison
Water: What can cover the Earth? Yudhisthir:: Darkness
Water: An example of Grief: Yudhisthira: Ignorance.
Water: What is your opposite? Yudhisthira: Myself
Water: What is swifter than Wind? Yudhisthira: Thought
Water: Give an example of Space. Yudhisthira: My Two hands as One.
Water: Why do men Revolt? Yudhisthira: To find beauty either in Life or in Death.
It is difficult to imagine water that runs through the city’s capillaries to be traumatically polluted and yet so loaded with power? Questions have been asked about water in its own voice to understand the politics of water in the present times.
Atul Says, “Water binds..!” He exemplifies through his materials- cement and sand (from Yamuna) bound together to make the direct-casts of the jerry cans and the mineral water bottles which lie submerged in his imagined landscape of the city. He suggests the cycle of people leaving behind garlands and money (as ‘religious’ wastes) tied up in plastic-bags in the river; and those who live on this money received, (like grave- diggers) who on the issue of water keep apart as their castes differ!
His ideas also predominantly associate with Time. He takes up organic-transformations, as one of the most elemental quality of his thought process or shaping his subjective content. In the making of a mashk (a life-giving source, which stores water) from a goat’s skin he reveals the transforming nature of continued association of human-hand with the weapons and tools (see his earlier works) from Paleolithic age onwards. Human hand suggested a desire to possess and /or kill, as placed on prehistoric cave-paintings of animals. In ‘Wash/Water/Blood’ it takes the shape of a slowed down sensual presentation of ritualistic act of washing the blood stained hand under clear water. It could be observed that this association of hand with tools now remains alive in the form of (‘sin’ conscious) ritualistic faith in communities who work with tools and weapons.
Through his attempts Atul explores the darker side of the human mind/action, and uncovers the violence within (signifying the terror beneath the city’s skin). And hence, he emphasizes upon the human presence while he explores the inner-city-fabric. |
