THROUGH THE INTERFACE OF ART AND TECHNOLOGY
Peers, the Artists Residency 2021 at KHOJ, throws up interesting questions about ‘technology’, ‘evolution’, ‘gender’ and ‘caste’
Given our new virtual existence during the Pandemic, it is perhaps almost foreseeable that the Peers Artists Residency 2021 showcases artwork that reflects intensely upon technology. The seventeenth edition of the Peers residency, showcases the works of six young participants, Jayeeta Chatterjee, Pahul Singh, Salman Bashir, Sandeep TK, Shubham Kumar and Srinivas Harivanam.
This year’s critic-in-residence was Shivani Kasumra. The jury for Peers 2021 comprised Monica Narula, Savita Apte and Marialaura Ghidini. Peers is a four-week residency programme at Khoj International Artists’ Association that provides emerging artists from India with an opportunity for exchange and dialogue.
To begin with, one spoke to Srinivas Harivanam, whose video work was captivating in its execution and premise. Created on a software called Blender it imagines a discourse around evolution. He employs the spine as a metaphor, throwing into question the idea of ‘progress’. It references the Indus Valley Civilization figure of the Dancing Girl, (dated approximately 2300–1750 BCE). Through the video work using landscapes, the sea and other natural elements as metaphors, Srinivas contrasts the idea of the landscape with the ‘silicon and carbon spine’ that is a result of our controlled, sedentary computer-based lives.
Srinivas is a Bangalore-based artist whose work looks at geo-biological evolution,with essential elements. “My practice is stretched in understanding the shades of inter-aura Space and how identities morph accordingly. An inquiry of spaces in a tribological sense and I try to pack and unpack the friction happening in between them,” says Srinivas who has studied design at NID (National Institute of Design) in Ahmedabad.
Shubham Kumar from Gaya, Bihar, presents us with work that reflects on the history of serfdom, a conflict-ridden history, and land politics through the site and metaphor of farmland and construction. “The visuals and stories I have been working with talk of personal, intimate experiences from Murera and Gaya (Bihar) where I live with my family,” says Kumar who pursued his BFA and MFA at Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayajirao University (MSU).
“I come from a village and community with unending communal confrontation and indirect involvement with the politics of land, farm fields, and construction,” says Kumar.
“Certain regional events including massacres, counter Maoist-insurgencies, exploitation and personal-familial system push me to investigate the nature of socio-political norms and operative hierarchical structures of religion and caste,” says the artist whose work strongly addresses these issues through photographs of his ancestral village Murera, which is close to Gaya. He also includes photographs of the interior space of his flat as a kind of starting point to address lifestyle and caregiving. Working with a Canon 80 D that he borrows from his teacher he manipulates and creates painterly textures on his slides.
Unlike her contemporaries who have worked mostly with new media, Jayeeta Chatterjee has created a work on Nakshikantha that talks of the kantha style followed by Muslim householders in her area where she lives in Baroda. The Santiniketan and MSU alumni work with woodcut prints and kantha and her concern is about making visible the stories of women who are usually relegated to the house-hold. “It is about getting their narratives out there in my work because most of the time they do not even practice their craft or get paid any money, it is a neglected aspect of their lives,” says Chatterjee.
Her intention is to foreground and celebrate their skill and keep alive the dying tradition of kantha. Before creating the wood cut prints and kantha stitched scrolls, Chatterjee documents them working with photographs and contemplates the composition so that it best reflects their purpose. She intends to work further with the groups of women and also on an individual level to develop a good body of work and perhaps have an exhibition with their participation.
Poetic and yet intentionally ‘shocking’, Sandeep T K’s photographic works talk of desire, gender and body. The image of a man shaving his chest hair, his legs and then his mustache are then contrasted with the same person holding tenderly a silicon breast that they place upon their body and then cover up with a saree-blouse, saree and all the other apparel that is considered ‘female’. The joy at the transition is apparent on the face of the protagonist.
“The transition that I speak of through these photographs is purely symbolic. The person doesn’t really go through a gender reassignment surgery. I have been struggling with talking about gender and queer love for many years as in my area Thalassery (Tellicherry) in Kerala, it’s very hard to talk openly about these issues,” says Sandeep. He shares that he was attracted to art as a form of expression because many of his partners were either artists or were involved in the artworld. Through the mediums of chat, access to internet and online books he was able to self-educate himself and formed important connections with the artworld. Sandeep is currently working at 1 Shanti Road Studio Gallery in Bangalore. He plans to take his work forward in the form of a book.
Pahul Singh is a Jaipur based artist and her project looks at learning language and the idea of the mother tongue. She examines how interactive text- based learning and guide books deconstruct language in a way that distances the learner from the way the actual language is spoken. “I have examined how Punjabi as a language has undergone change while using Hindi phonetics. It transliterates the language in a way that the person learning does not actually learn the language in an authentic manner,” says Pahul. She observes this dissonance through interacting with her grandfather who is a migrant from across the border and how his physical relationship with language changed.
For her artwork Pahul has developed a facsimile of the online literary programme that teaches language and she has filled it with all the critical thoughts that she has about the process that the online courses follow. “With Covid online learning is a reality that we have to look at and loss of language and the mothering of the mother tongue is something we have to look critically at,” says Pahul.
Finally, we end our exhibition tour with Salman Bashir Baba from Srinagar. His work is a video installation with a vitrine filled with dried and preserved flowers from Kashmir. He presents to us sounds of the ravens cawing on the hill, the map of Kashmir viewed from different positions, a voice over plays and the flowers glow in the soft light of the video that unfolds. “Kashmir is seen with a gaze that is either exotic or a land torn by violence. For me none of these extremes are acceptable. Kashmir needs to be seen as a grey zone. It is either presented as heaven on earth or there are visuals of the blood and violence. My intention of presenting the video is to reapproach the landscape of my homeland and it’s contestation through myth”, says Salman.
While one may argue that Kashmir has often been promoted as a tourist haven, he points out that this is a construction of the state and not the people of Kashmir. Salman points out that this work is just the beginning of his research and he hopes to carry this narrative further.
Shivani, this year’s critic in residence, captured the experiences of the residency through a series of dispatches and conversations with the artists on Khoj’s Substack page KHOJ (khojworkshop.org)
Peers 2021 has been supported by Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation.
Peers 2021 Open Day can be accessed on – https://readymag.com/u888390889/3158313/
Text by Georgina Maddox
Image Courtesy: KHOJ International Artists’ Association
Find more about the exhibition and the artists:
https://khojworkshop.org/opportunity/call-for-applications-peers-2021/#
https://www.instagram.com/just.pahul/
https://www.instagram.com/jayeeta.chatterjee.3152/
https://www.instagram.com/rangesaaz/
https://www.instagram.com/t.k.sandeep/