A report by Jayashree Venkatadurai, Critic-in-residence

Images: Matter and Persona

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.
-Oscar Wilde

It is true for the Artists as for the dreamers. As long as we dwell in our dreams the world is so unproblematic. The moment we wake up, its pathetic realities affront us. Poverty and hunger with the backdrop of globalization and urbanization; caste and gender discriminations with the backdrop of religious fundamentalism confront us. Life and death seemingly oscillate between the urge to survive and the effort to serve others.

Art becomes an empty signifier if it is not an aesthetic awakening to reality. Art does not solve problems, but makes us aware of their existence. It opens our eyes to visions and our brains to imaginations. When the artist is alive in any person, whatever his kind of work may be, he becomes inventive, searching, daring, self-expressive creature. He becomes interesting to other people. He disturbs, upsets, enlightens, and opens ways for a better understanding. Where those who are not artists are trying to close the book, he opens it and shows that there is still more writing possible. Therefore artists, apart from bearing witness to the events around them, are bound to react critically and searchingly.

Few academic institutions provide the art students the academic freedom to practice according to their own evolving styles and imagination. Many institutions do not provide the academic background that enables one to reflect about social conditions that relate to artistic expression. An institution like Khoj workshop is commendable for it provides an opportunity to young artists to bring out their latent imaginations with complete freedom of execution. It provides a platform for young minds that are brought together from all corners of the country to stay together and share their experiences and thoughts.
In the Khoj Workshop for Peers-2007 we were six people from different parts of India.

Pratap Modi- “Hooked to virtual hallucination”

Pratap Modi my batch mate from the Printmaking Department of M.S. University Baroda engaged himself in making massive woodcuts. His work imitated the weighing machine tickets. Normally the tickets hold photograph of a popular personality and a sentence that hints at the fortune of the person who is being weighed. He made six big massive replicas of the ticket in wood cut with the photograph of the peer groups members at Khoj manipulated in to a stencil image through the aid of Photoshop. The weight and photograph of his fellow peers were displayed on the final day as wood cut prints when he had also exhibited the blocks he used to make the prints.

Pratap’s crux of the argument is with regard to popular-commercial culture and its impact on people. His claim, to my mind, is as follows: Instead of looking at ourselves as mere reflections of consumer culture and the norms that are set by its overall agenda, we should proceed with a conscious and self motivated understanding of ourselves. The two admirable aspects I found in Pratap’s work are: the massive scale and the economical and user friendly hardboard which he deploys as him medium. All through the residency, our discussions focused on the method and theme on which he works. I appears to me that  he has a need to reflect on the art works that stem  from images circulated by popular culture (like that of Chuck Close’s portraits and Andy Warhol’s conceptualization)  while researching a lot more on how to anchor himself on vivid conceptions.

Pratap aptly exploits the textured surface of plywood which is malleable for different types of scooping out. As against the heavy wooden planks ply is economical as well as easy for handling. Apart from using them as the printing blocks he also presented them as low relieves.  Pratap hired an electric scale for the final show in which he fixed a mirror in lieu of the images of film actors and the stenciled pictures of the participants of our workshop which were at the centre of the woodcuts. The idea of using an actual electronic weighing machine and reflective acrylic sheets for lettering are ornamental devices to please the senses. The risk that most of the contemporary artworks that tease and critic the consumer culture run are that they end up being replicas of they seek to contest. There are causes for concern on that score with Pratap’s work too. Pratap had recorded on video his entire process of working which he displayed during open studio. This explained to the audience the creative process. Though his work was titled as “Hooked to virtual hallucination”, the expression was rather transparent with no mystification.

Shaahkar Siddiquee – Reverberation

Shaahkar’s works combine sound and visual. He attached a speaker in to laser beam pointers. As he played his music an array images arose from the laser beams that resonate with the music created. Shaahkar’s attempt is quite innovative and distinct in conception. Particularly, the objects with which he produced this music like empty beer bottles, water cans and scrap metal was mind blowing. He used electrodes from mobile phones, kiddy toys and electronic waste materials to evolve his project. The images produced by the laser vary in shapes. Sometimes they are spirals and some they form complex patterns. 

During the open studio event, Shaahkar’s work perhaps didn’t get the secluded atmosphere it perhaps needed amidst the range of multi-media works on display. With greater conceptual elaboration and a proper setting to display, like a darkened auditorium with acoustic precision may enhance the value of the work.

Aishwarya Sultania - In and out of the Heartscape

Among all the Khoj peers Aishwarya’s works were the most expensive. She had displayed three installations on the open day. Her concepts are pinned to her everyday life. People, places, emotions, actions, expressions all formed the subject matter of her work. Aishwarya brought in the welders, carpenters and the electricians to complete her elaborate installations. 

For heart-scape she had made a welded iron heart at one corner of the room, covering it with red cellophane paper. She placed a light inside the heart like contraption. At the back of it she placed an exhaust fan. The whole room was painted with black and red wavy strokes and was filled with red heart shaped balloons stuck on to steel wires across the room. Only two could enter the room at a time. As they entered the heart the light inside the heart was switched on. The moment they left the heart the exhaust was on. This supposedly expressed the stress one undergoes within oneself when people get inside and come out of one another’s heart (may be a lover). As they leave one has to exhaust the feeling.  The complexity of the material constitution of the institution is in total contrast to what appears a commonplace idea. Further, the choice of the material to represent ideas has got be appropriate. Steel welding doesn’t appear to suggest the tenderness associated with heart as sponge might. The installation appeared to lack clarity and precision in terms of the concept. What exactly is the conceptual specificity of heart? How does it relate to history of representation and the real? These questions beg answers in the face of empty homogenization of humanity.

Performance has been a way of appealing directly to a large public, as well as shocking audience into reassessing their own notions of art and its relation to culture.  Aishwarya’s other project consisted of a video recording of her performance in a hospital room. She arranged the images during medical scanning while making lip and chin movements and projected them as a form of art work. This video of the artist undergoing the scanning was displayed on the screen while the scanned images were pasted in the form of a screen that had made partition between her art works.  Though it was an interesting experiment, I feel it was hard for the viewers to connect to the experience. The images and accompanying sounds were unclear amidst other installations compounding the problem.

She explores with different mediums and is quiet excited in experimenting. Her project “Sswussh Aah!” was installed in the rest room. A hard board was fixed on the top of the toilet on which “Sswussh Aah!” was perforated like a sieve and shown through the light at its back. Whenever the visitor sat on the commode the noise “Sswussh Aah!” was created through a sound system.  A relief from constipation perhaps points to letting imagination free, but it is hard to keep at bay a sense of the trivial. A deeper understanding of the works of artists like Ana Mendieta and Chris Burton who focus on their body-performance may enrich Aishwarya’s future works with greater insights.

Aditi A. Kulkarni - Inhale and Exhale
Aditi’s project was based on the issues of time and space. She had created multiple tiny rooms in which Television sets were installed. Each television set showed a different channel while some of them were still searching for signal. The artist’s plan was probably, to take the audience in to a roller coaster of emotions as the sound and atmosphere varied from room to room. She had pasted newspapers all around the room in order to block the noise from one room to another. The walls of the rooms were made by corrugated papers.
On the open day during which the peers were showing their previous works, we could see that the entire range of Aditi’s works are persistent abstracts. It is interesting to see her travel from minimal abstractions all the way to the multi faceted installation. The use of corrugated sheets in place of the partitions, I would say, is a clever idea which is also inexpensive. The nature of this material not only solves the purpose of partition but also resists the passage of light. The artist had added beauty to it by way of doing some abstract sketches with enamel paint on the surface of the sheet and the surrounding walls. She displayed pairs of wooden boxes painted black and white, printing on the black one “inhale” and the white one “exhale”. The boxes were probably the expressions of agony of congested city space within which we are caught up between the still and moving images. One could understand considering the city in which the artist lives-Bombay!

Uma Ray – "Journey inward - Journey outward / Cross Over / The Trail"
Journey inward - Journey outward
Uma Ray stuck all the bus tickets of her travels to and in Delhi to a flex board on which she also wrote her everyday thoughts and feelings. She feels it was not just a physical journey but then something that was powerful enough to make a shift in her thought process. Journey outward on the other hand was the means of realizing the journey that she had made in various walks of her life. Moving on, meeting people and dispersing and sharing her views it is absolutely a journey contrary to the previous one. The artist explains that the work is self explanatory which becomes complete through her second visit to Delhi. Through her work she attempts to figure out her subjective position that reflects on the outside world and the outside world in its authenticity visited by her. Shall we name it “Home and the World”? Well, one can understand it for the artist is from Kolkata.
Cross Over
Cross over is a community project that Uma had evolved after talking with the community around Khoj. This way she had made use of the surroundings of Khoj, the Khirki Village. As the peers project was on we could see the youth and the kids of the neighborhood walking in and out of the Khoj space with ease. They interacted with the inmates and played in the campus or ran in to the office to converse with the staff. This inspired all of us to interact with the community. As a result Uma’s project turned out to be a community activity inviting the people from the Khoj village and asking them to record their expressions as an attempt at breaking the compound wall that separates the “Organization-Khoj” from the “Khirki Village”.
The Trail
This work attempted to look in to the traces that were left behind by the people in the residency. The artist captured in a video projection interesting moments and personalities that was projected on the roof.
Largely Uma’s works engages through words. During the initial presentation at the beginning of the residency, senior artist Anita Dube rightly suggested Jenny Holzer to her. I think Uma engages with two modes of expression. One is the monologue where in she revisits her thoughts and the other the interactive mode where she aligns the same with the community around. Apart from Jenny Holzer, this reminded me of the artists Barbara Kruger and Martin Firrel. But one should also notice that these artists’ works are not simply confessional or inward philosophical journeys but also powerful reflections on violence, war, class and gender hegemonies they focused upon. The individual in them undergo a shift when they are in association with the outside world.
Jayashree Venkatadurai - Please mind the Gap
Delhi, the capital of India puts me in a state of constant unrest as if I am being under surveillance. The difference between the classes muted through the cleansing of the city still exerts a pressure by its absence. While the other metropolitan cities of India are congested with slums, Delhi appears at first sight classical exception. The contrast between the crowded working class Chandni Chowk and posh  and gorgeous South Extension, the congested Khirki Gaon and the concrete jungle like Gurgaon makes one think about the gaps in the social class produced by capitalist modernity and globalisation. As I have been a practicing artist for more than thirteen years, the city of Delhi   inspired me to do an art work by myself apart from being the critic-in-residence. As I traveled by metro, the announcement before the arrival of each station “Please mind the gap” was quiet thought provoking; inspired by which I planned to do an installation. As I researched further I came to know similar attempts made when the London metro came in to existence in early 60’s inspired by the announcement “Mind the Gap”.
I went around the city and collected video shots of several places of juxtapositions and contrasts. I edited the images, synchronizing it with music. I also made a map in tracing paper which reportedly looked attractive in the lounge area though it was not understood by many as the map of Delhi metro.
In Conclusion:
The Khoj peers workshop is an absolute gift for the junior artists who crave for experimentation. It provides a platform for interaction with fellow artists as well as senior artists and critics who are part of Khoj. The initial open day session was useful for we could present our works and interact with the artist community which is a rare opportunity. Secondly, the video presentation made by Hemant Srikumar gave lot of inspiration and ideas to proceed with. Thirdly, the availability of new media tools was a great advantage as the resourceful staffs were very supportive.
I thank Pooja Sood (Director) for her interactions and cheering , V.P.Manoj, Rohini Devasher,  Aastha Chauhan, Parul and  Hemant Sreekumar for their support and affection. I take this opportunity also to thank India Foundation for Arts for funding and making this project possible.