FEATURE

• 
• 
• 
• 

A Moment of Reunion

Kashi Art Gallery, Kochi recently celebrated its tenth anniversary with a group show titled ‘Kashi 10 Light Years’. For the artists, the event became a moment of reunion and celebration. JohnyML reports from Kochi.

“This place still has the innocence of a small town. The people are unassuming and wonderful in their participation. I hope institutionalization will not mar this camaraderie,” standing at the terrace of the Kashi Art Gallery and looking at the clean blue sky studded with a crescent moon and innumerable stars, comments Sunil Gawde. His association with Kashi is long and fruitful. He cherishes fond memories about his first visit to Kashi Art Gallery as part of Bose Krishnamachari’s curatorial venture in 2003.

There is a curious resonance between the night sky and the work of Sunil Gawde in the ‘Kashi-Ten Light Years’ show. In Sunil’s work an inverted crescent moon and its hazy halo are painted against a pitch black surface and the canvas is horizontally divided with the reflection of the same moon and the same halo. The tips of the moon/s do not touch each other. There is a thin gap, which only closer observation could reveal. “That is the horizon line, which divides the dark sky and the dark sea. This moment of stillness and the gap are important for me,” says Sunil. “In a journey, the departure and arrival are unimportant, it is the distance between these two points summarizes the sense of journey,” he explains further. Perhaps Sunil’s statement on his artistic philosophy encapsulates the journey of Kashi too.

On 15th December 2007 evening the Bazar Road in Mattanchery, Fort Kochi, Kerala, where Kashi Art Gallery is situated, became another road to Santiago, a route of pilgrimage. For the first time in Kerala’s ‘art history’ the local people came in groups to witness the tenth anniversary celebrations of a gallery that carved out its own niche in the national and international art scene with relentless efforts and carefully laid out strategies. They came, saw and enjoyed the company of the artists who came from all over India and made the occasion a historical event. They looked at the works with admiration and even looked at the artists with reverence, an unheard of thing in Kerala before.

For the artists, especially the Malayali artists who are settled elsewhere in the country and flew in for the celebrations, the event provided with an opportunity to walk down the memory lanes. Sipping wine and chilled beer under the night sky, most of them remembered their days of struggle; the days that stretched before them endlessly as if they were the tunnels made out of social scorn with no light filled end of redemption in the vicinity. While sharing their current glory with the aspiring local artists they told them, “Work with passion and conviction. The rest will follow.”

The ‘lethargy’ that once Bose Krishnamachari accused the Kerala artists with seems to have gone into drains, if we go by the collective indications seen at the Kashi’s celebrations. Everyone is charged with a new energy and the ultimate cynicism that fuelled their parasitic lives has now transformed into an informed critique, pepped up with aspirations and big dreams. Artists like Valsan Koorma Kollery and Riyas Komu, in their works refer to the dangers of this cynicism. Valsan’s extempore work with corrugated paper sheets talks about the ‘Local Air’. He divides the title into ‘Lo-cal-air’. Here the air could mean ‘pretension’, local is ‘lo-cal’ and at the same time it could connote ‘Low Calorie Pretension’. Valsan uses the very same cynicism to create a critique of it. “Hey local Mallu artist, if you have eyes to see, ears to hear and brains to comprehend, do it,” Valsan seems to say.

Riyas Komu’s is a politically charged ironic commentary on the general socio-political and cultural scene of Kerala. A man is seen lying on an Ennathoni (A wooden cot like structure which is used for Ayruvedic rejuvenation treatment with herbal and oil concoctions) with his legs dissected as if in an operation table. His body is entombed in a traditional roof like/tomb like structure engraved with foliages and a sickle and hammer symbol. This loaded sculptural image is confined in a concrete grid like structure that prevents any kind of encroachment. Installed in a sparsely lit room, this work could be ‘read’ into multiple ways. It connotes the dead revolution on a postmortem table and at the same time, it is an ironical comment on the political situation where the compromising left ideology is trying to rejuvenate itself by undergoing Ayurvedic therapy. The concrete grid could be a commentary on the insularity of a ‘porous’ society, which allows the brain drain but no in take of progressive ideas. Does it connote the Kerala society in general, culture and politics in particular? Does it make a critique on the depletion of left ideology? Does it show how the progressive government prostitutes itself through health tourism? Has the Kerala society itself become a thing of past? Is it an imaginary society now living a ghost life in a zombie world? Riyas opens his work for multiple debates. So powerful a work. “If you have eyes, see it.”

It would be impossible to discuss all the works from the ‘Kashi Ten Light Years’. However, I would say T.V.Sathosh in his signature style work represents a wounded man struggling to protest. Couldn’t it be the wounded self of a society, which demands redemption? Considering Santhosh’s anti-imperialist and anti-hegemonic stance in earlier works, this work also, in this particular context, should be seen as a protest against a particular society that wounds and gets wounded by the mindless political and cultural process.

In Kashi every one looked a guest and a host. There were several re-unions too. Anand Scaria and Gayatri Gamuz who once played a pivotal role in establishing the legacy of Kashi were back from Thiruvannamalai to join the celebrations. Anoop Scaria and Dorrie played perfect hosts. Now all of them are planning to revive their erstwhile ‘Tree Festival’, the eco-art project. Now it would be known as the ‘Tree Biennale’. Aji VN from Amsterdam was in Kashi with his artist wife Jule. Shibu Natesan with his die hard sarcasm commented on Aji’s dress code, “Hey, are you coming from Ramakrishna Mission?” Natesan did not see his own dress code with a saffron kurta, olive green trousers and a pair of multi-colour shoes. Anand Joshi was in his sober clothes and he went through each work of art carefully. Bose Krishnamachari in many ways ‘managed’ the events by being present in several places in the gallery at the same time. Jyothi Basu and Anil Janardhanan looked like pious devils in plane clothes. Kerala’s own Babu Xavier, N.N.Mohan Das, Bhagyanathan, Sosa Joseph, K.Reghunathan, Rajan M Krishnan, Upendranath and so on looked cool. N.N.Rimzon and George Martin seriously talked to friends and visitors.

Perhaps, I could name each and every person who came for Kashi’s celebrations. However, at this occasion I remembered the names of K.P.Krishnakumar and Asokan Poduval. Had they been alive, they would have been obviously a part of Kashi and its celebrations. “The whole world is here,” Anita Dube commented. It could be an exaggeration, however for those who saw their struggling days together, Kashi’s celebration was their celebration too; celebration of their past, present and future.