Brothers in Arts-ManilRohit

Interview

The artist brothers Manil Gupta and Rohit Gupta are working and exhibiting collaboratively as ManilRohit since 2011. The imagery of their works is derived from popular culture/media as graffiti, comics, games, movies and animation etc. while reverberating sarcastic nuances. The implicit dark humor hints at cultural capitalism created out of the popular. Here the artist duo speaks about their work, process, plans and many other areas of their works.

ManilRohit

Nisha Aggarwal (N): (question is to Manil) Manil, you were practicing your art quite successively having two solo shows in Palette Art Gallery in 2007 and 2009 with number of group shows in India and outside. So what prompted you to launch ManilRohit?

Manil Gupta (M): Launching ManilRohit was incidental. After my 2009 solo at Palette, I was experimenting with newer visuals and techniques to induce more juice in my art. It was a strong transitional phase. I had started exploring color and a more dynamic execution (as compared to my earlier clinical Black and White striped works). Throughout our careers, Rohit and I have shared the same studio space, often bouncing creative viewpoints off each other. One such momentous evening, slightly drunk, we started painting our studio wall together.  We ended up creating some very weird, uninhibited visual narratives. That urged us to create a similar play on canvases to test our consistency. To our joy, we created some intense wild works, with all the spontaneity intact. With that kind of creative satisfaction, it was imperative for us to explore this new territory together, as ManilRohit.

The Circus is coming

N: What are the changes you are experiencing (while working, showing collaboratively, and in terms of responses from galleries etc.) as ManilRohit instead of individually?

ManilRohit (MR): It’s been a thrilling and eventful journey so far, as ManilRohit. Our process is much more spontaneous and open to new directions as compared to our earlier individual endeavors. Each output becomes compounded owing to simultaneous energy inputs from two persons trained differently. Our Public art car project, ‘The Holographic Love Machine’ sprung out of a similar instinctive suggestion.

As for gallery responses, the new language definitely has a new set of audience. Honestly, we feel our language is contemporary, dense and dynamic. Tad unlike the limited aesthetic most Indian audience is used to. They still feel narratives dripping with ‘fun’ can’t hold serious content, simultaneously. Hence, it takes time for people to absorb and get through to it.

Pigventure Capitalists

N: Manil you came from an Applied Arts background, and afterwards you were doing sculptures along with paintings as a main focus. And Rohit, you are a self-taught artist and photographer. How did you both manage to collaborate and reach to your present ‘signature style’?

MR: Right from inception, we poured in all the inspirations and influences we ever had, without judging or filtering any of it. We wanted to be totally fluid, uncalculated and undiplomatic. It wasn’t an effort reaching to our style, we kept it natural, guess that’s why it works well. You see ManilRohit is a hybrid of different styles. It’s a medley of trained and the untrained. Since we’ve grown together, also at play are our common influences from the popular media, games, movies, and music. Simply put, our MR style is an amalgamation of almost all that we have individually done in the past, and more.

N: Have ManilRohit any plans to do sculptures for now? 

MR: We are have been trying mediums and shapes other than the canvas, for a while now, and it has been a satisfying experience. So we certainly are exploring ourselves. We’re excited, that’s what matters, as long as it doesn’t become a formula, or a pattern, we are open to things exciting and challenging, be it shapes, canvases or sculptures. Yes, painting our big 3 dimensional SUV for the public art car project was a challenging yet thrilling process and it showed us a new direction. Another such recent work was a painted sculptural Teddy form for the “Make a Wish” foundation’s charity auction.

Hallelujah!! The Carnival of Lost Souls

N: ManilRohit’s present body of work imbibes Manil Gupta’s previous practice in terms of dark humor and serious issues with unique and interesting titles. But ManilRohit’s color palette has become vivid and cheery replacing the Manil’s ‘Zebra’ black and white. Is it Rohit’s part to ManilRohit? 

M: In my transitional phase after the 2009 solo show of Black and White works, I was exploring color, trying abstracts, splashing, dripping, etc. to break away from the skillfully drawn and restrained works of the past. I was inching towards a more bohemian, carefree expression albeit with a much deeper and layered narrative. And the final missing link in the puzzle was provided by the studio accident (wall painting) with Rohit. His childlike drawing, unshackled imagination and outlandish color sense added the requisite zing and completed the picture. While he was pretty overwhelmed to realize his own potential, we were excited to create more fabulous art together.

The Rigged Lottery

N: For both of you ‘ManilRohit’ are someone who are…? 

M: Destined to create magic together.

Rohit Gupta (R): Umm, I agree.

N: Do you both work for each painting? Doesn’t anyone of you hold dissidence while working together? 

MR: Yes, we both work on each painting. It’s an equal partnership you see. We have a varied skill set, but it’s a fluid process. Also because as individuals our ideologies and notions are mostly on the same tangent, hence it’s an effortless collaboration. And since the works are never planned, they evolve organically, we take accidents as new directions and whatever little spurts of dissidence as opportunities to challenge hardened psychological patterns of learning and social conditioning.

The Chronicles of Sitafal

N: Tell about ManilRohit’s process and technique of working?

MR: The approach is spontaneous. No rough sketches or references. Either one can have the initial spark and draw out the first forms. The other is free to transform the drawing as per his own vision. Most of it plays out to a particular set of music, in consonance with our moods and approached content. We use aerosol spray cans, charcoal, graphite, pastels, acrylic paints, stickers, gels, etc. We like to spend time on a work and let it build to garner a dense layered narrative over time. With each new work we try to find new challenges and avoid following formulas. It has to be an orgy of text, visuals and ideas. We keep the entire process enjoyable and make sure we feel spent by the end of it. Essentially, through our work we get to travel into the unknown.

N: For last 2-3 years you have been part of many project-based works besides working on paintings. Throw some light.

MR: We have been freely exploring different mediums, as we want it to be an ever-evolving journey. As artists, we like to feel free and unrestrained. There are even times when we have gone 6 months without creating a single work, which is an important part of our process.

We have been indulging in various public art projects as we feel strongly about it and the need of it. We are happy and blessed to be part of many charity projects, which is an extremely satisfying experience.

The Holographic Love Machine has been our most important self-initiated Public Art Car project done in May 2012.

It rose out of our desire to do something loud, to reach out emphatically to a wider, untapped audience. We knew our language had the potential to spread some love, smiles and positive energy on the Road-Rage stricken streets of Delhi. THLM received an overwhelming response from all sections of society. We followed it up with tremendous activity on the social media about the project’s development, people’s comments, reactionary images and videos – (https://www.facebook.com/TheHolographicLoveMachine).

There was a huge ripple effect of THLM in the press. Almost every news daily along with magazines across Delhi, Chandigarh, even Gulf and many news channels featured it. (However, funnily, not a single art magazine covered it. No wonder India is where it is when it comes to effective Public Art. But that’ll change soon.

Lacquer Dreams

N: In your recent showcase of works, the paintings replace differently shaped wood surfaces to the canvases. Why?

MR: It’s part of our endeavor to try out new possibilities. We feel, the canvas shape and format has its own existence and contributes uniquely to the overall expression. It adds another layer to our narrative and also adds a theatrical side to the work. It gives us an opportunity to deal with challenging unconventional space compositions. The choice of material is more of a technical and logistical issue.

N: Tell me something about your upcoming projects/plans?

MR: Currently we’re working on really really really exciting project. It’s all been under wraps, except for the directly involved people. It shall be a refreshing add-on to the ever evolving and ever mushrooming Indian Art Scene. We’re afraid that’s all for now. It’s not yet the right time to bring it out. The months of May – June look sunnier than ever.

(First Appeared online in CartanArt Magazine, Issue-V, April 2014)

A Wanderer’s Visual Diary

Profile 

For an artist anything could act as an inspiration, be it time or the place they hail from or travel to. Artist B Ajay Sharma’s works depict his journeys within himself and through various cities using the metaphor of a humble fruit from a childhood memory, writes Nisha Aggarwal.

Artist B. Ajay Sharma

B. Ajay Sharma’s art practice tries to develop a language through the construction of ideas which embodies the contradiction of dualities like life and death, being and nonbeing, past and present, male and female, scientific and philosophical, and concrete and noetic.

In a direct way, his works are about the recreation or of rediscovering. This kind of intense catalogue of information he has found from his native place Deoghar, where he was brought by his mother reciting stories. Going back and finding occurrences and visages and reinserting them with the contemporary situations is a peculiarity of his art. Because it is a constitutive raw material which a lot of people just block or find insignificant, making grownups problems more important.

Story of A Garden

Apart from his childhood his major content for works comes from the ritualistic milieu of Varanasi, a place where he lived while pursuing Bachelor of Fine Arts from Banaras Hindu University. This is a parallel project he undertook with experimentations in time and space before moving to New Delhi. He came to Delhi initially to continue his Fine Arts studies with a Post-Graduation at Jamia Millia Islamia.

Thus, starting his journey from small places of Bihar and Jharkhand, Vaishali and Deoghar, he travelled through places like Kolkata, Varanasi, and finally reached Delhi, for obtaining education and livelihood. While his journeys to places like Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh etc. add dimension into this wanderer’s diary, the places he has lived and travelled, provides him with an enriched account of history, culture, nature, geography and political situations of respective places. All this makes a narrative existence in his works juxtaposed with the reality of time and place, which he experiences in his current location Delhi.

Prophesy of A Starry Night

He has connected these shifting and changing notions of rural and urbanized world, through the form of a simple fruit like papaya. Being passive of its travel from a village tree to a metro-city market this papaya form directly comes out from his memories of childhood. Later on memory combines the experiences of time and he visualizes the papaya as a vaginal form also. He has tried assimilation of different narrative voices. There is not only recognition of multiple levels of culture and language but also an effort to draw them, and his divergent preference together. It expresses the desire to go beyond the individual ego and achieve a new individuation by reconciling multi-voiced narration with self-expression. This entire spectrum makes its presence in Ajay’s art with a fruit form which boasts the various aspects of life and the world around him.

Transformations

Thus, as an artist and a vigilant traveler, Ajay has been an observant of geographical, political, socio-cultural and physical transformation of minor and major things, which he tries to depict through his paintings. The past here is translated into the real, the present, and this attribution of language provides him the addition of layers upon layers. Indeed he is always aware of the magical properties of the artist’s power of attaining transformations of one image into another, of time present into time past. This speaks of Ajay’s own perception of attending the process of Transformation. But the paintings are also meant to have a heightened presence in the moment of viewing. It posits an interactive role for the viewer, an opportunity to experience creation and absorption and to sense the timelessness in the present moment.

Hsuan-Tsang and Kasturi Mriga on Google search

Ajay comes from a carpenter’s family, where hand skill had been a means to earn bread, Ajay integrated the skill with vision. He is ardent enough to carve a niche for himself, which belie the brims of stark realities and experiences of his life. He started with drawing and painting, and these days he is triumphantly practicing with digital media and photography.  He was awarded a two months residency ALTlab 3.0 Photography Residency at Goa Centre for Alternative Photography (Goa-CAP) in 2013, which initiated his interest towards alternative photography. He exhibited his photo-prints developed out of alternative photography process (Van Dyke, Cyanotype, Gum By-chromate) at Taipei Photo Fair 2013, Taiwan. More recently his paintings have been shown at India Art Fair 2014 by Neilson Art Gallery, Spain.

(First Appeared online in CartanArt Magazine, Issue-IV, April 2014)

Spectacular Pictures of a Hybrid Landscape

Profile

When human beings start to communicate with each other through the meanings that they derive out of the relationship between objects and themselves, a society of spectacle is born. Chandrashekar Koteshwar believes in it and his attention is to capture this displaced meaning/communication seen apparent in our globalized society. Nisha Aggarwal profiles the artist.

Artist Chandrashekar Koteshwar

Chandrashekar Koteshwar is a Baroda based young artist. Born in Udupi, Karnataka he currently lives and works in Baroda, Gujarat. He studied Bachelor of Fine Arts in Sculpture at Chamarajendra Academy of Visual Arts, Mysore and has completed his Masters degree in Museology from Faculty of Fine Arts, MSU, Baroda, in 2007 and 2009 respectively.

Primarily Koteshwar’s works reflect his own experiences collected throughout the life journey. Apart from the experiences his observations have made him to state his comments more precisely. As an artist he see himself a commentator of present day world’s Globalization, a term which has been doing rounds since 1990s. Globalization is a process of integration arises out of ‘interchange’ and ‘interdependence’ of cultural and economic resources. Despite all developments that globalization offers, the artist’s attention is to look at the negative fall out of it and it could be seen as the main objective of Koteshwar’s works.

Elephant Thief

Koteshwar feels that globalization has created strange consumerist creatures out of human beings. It has turned the society into a cauldron of desires. People rush to change, exchange and interchange life just through consuming objects. The aftershocks of a thunderingglobalization have even reached the peripheral areas of the society where people have been living in harmony with nature for a long time. In this bogus process our cultural heirloom is also being frittered away. In this hybrid culture, the notions of ‘sanctified’ and ‘natural’ have no space or value.This cultural globalization has enhanced cross-cultural contacts but by accompanying the mitigation of the ‘uniqueness’ of once-isolated cultures. It will ultimately depolarize their importance too.

Give & Take

This efficacy at another side collates us to a question like ‘Where We Are?’ A painting with the same title is a visual representation of the question. Globalization and population growth bring forth rapid industrialization and urbanization. It takes over the areas of natural environments encompassing all living and non-living things occurring naturally on earth. It is an environment that links the interaction among living species i.e. birds, animals, plants and human beings. But when natural environment is contrasted with the ‘built environment’ comprising the areas and components that are strongly influenced by humans, it becomes arduous to find ‘absolute’ natural environment. Hence, a fragmented hybrid landscape arises.

Where We Are?

These manipulated images form a language in Koteshwar’s paintings. These are often rendered into a traditional environment of Indian miniature paintings. This environment gives Indian context to the subject/theme and also a satirical stance. For instance in one of his works titled ‘Handle with Care’ two male figures (reference from miniature paintings) bearing ‘text’ as a hand barrow exhorts the Indian tradition of marriages. The presence of trees in the background and text itself suggests metaphorical depiction of decreasing greenery on the earth. This text ‘Handle with Care’ prompts to a museum space and it’s aspects like conservation, protection and showcasing of historical objects as well.

Handle With Care

This urge towards conservation and protection plays a pivotal role in Koteshwar’s other works also. A painting ‘You, Me and Tiger’, is basically a picture clicked with a tiger for the viewers. Tiger here is an obsolescent animal (past), and artist’s self-image (present) with it is an endeavor to save the picture for (future) generations. In few of other works, the ‘faceless’ human beings depict their lost identities. There is also an exigency of rampart advocacy.

You, Me and Tiger

The images occur sometimes in a concrete appearance giving a sculptural outlook to the viewers. They narrate the reference from mythological lores. Here, Koteshwar’s art has built its thematic and visual dictionary by siphoning his diverse academic trainings in Painting, Sculpture and Museology. It tries to discover the evolution of the entire universe, which he has started out probably as the smallest element. And gradually he sees how effectively he can take traditional aspect of confronting large/complex ideas of changing the globe and inverting them for a solution through his artistic journey.

(First Appeared online in CartanArt Magazine, Issue-III, April 2014)

Spiritual Shadows that Speak Silently

Review

NGMA Bengaluru presents a solo show of noted artist V. Ramesh. Portraying devotional poetry by yesteryear’s women poets from the South, the artist brings to light feminine voices interpreting the Divine on his canvases. Nisha Aggarwal reviews the show.

V. Ramesh

The way from Mysore to Hyderabad is via Bengaluru; and between the gaps of the travel timing, I had a chance to visit the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), Bengaluru for the first time. After wandering around the alleyways of Palace Road in Bengaluru, I reached at Manikyavelu Mansion, thus NGMA. The banner of ‘Remembrances of Voices Past’, a solo show of the paintings of artist V. Ramesh at entrance, felicitated. It was the first solo exhibition hosted by NGMA Bengaluru in collaboration with Threshold Art Gallery, New Delhi from February 5 to March 30, 2014.

A glimpse of the paintings of senior artist Vedhanbatla Ramesh through the entrance of hall was inviting to the viewers. Born in 1958, a 1984’s alumnus of M. S. University, Baroda, V. Ramesh lives and works in Vishakhapatnam (Vizag), Andhra Pradesh. He teaches at the Faculty of Fine Art, Andhra University since 1985, and has taught for nearly three decades. He follows a simple routine like anybody else where after teaching at the University he can be found in his studio from 2 to 8 pm, working and listening to Carnatic music being a die-hard fan.

This collection showed the artist’s practices spanning from 2003 to 2013. The show included 17 large scale paintings done in oil on canvas, and 8 works from a series titled ‘Poets passion’, smaller sized watercolours on paper were displayed in a separate section. While his large canvases carried away different individual stories, a video of artist’s talk about his works and process was also on the view.

From the series of Poet's Passion

Ramesh’s priority is of oils on large canvases and his ideas are contemplated over a period of time, building up in an unhurried manner, thought by thought and layer by layer. He keeps changing it until it reaches a stage where nothing remains to be done. It often takes over a year to complete a single canvas. An exercise in patience and painterly detailing, it’s an arduous process by which he persuades the image that resides in his mind and out into layers of paint. His ‘recognizable’ images of bright and murky colours with various textures take the viewer into a realm of spirituality, mystery and obscurity. A manifest mileage of belief, devotion and transcendence, most of his works are imbued with deep cultural and personal experience. The artist’s engagement centers around the writings and philosophies of various Bhakti poets/saints. One can say that Ramesh’s art strives to find a visual equivalent of the emotional depth explored in Bhakti poetry.

He was introduced to the depth of Bhakti poetry during his 1998’s visit to Ramana Maharishi’s ashram in Thiruvanamalai, Tamil Nadu while reading the poetry of 8th century saint, Manikkavachakar, in the ashram library. It introduced him to an opulence of emotional depth that he was trying to bring in his paintings. The poetry of 12th century saint Akka Mahadevi (from Karnataka) that he had first read in college in English translation, now made sense. Then he discovered other voices, 5th century poet Karaikal Ammaiyar (A Shiva devotee from Tamil Nadu), 9th century poet-saint Andal (Vishnu worshipper from Tamil Nadu), 14th century poet Lal Ded (Shiva devotee from Kashmir also known as Lalla Moj) and Annamayya (from Andhra Pradesh). 

The artist found amazing similarity in tone and emotional depth in their writings despite their different time periods in history and in the way they looked at the world and went beyond stereotypical gender roles. In their poetry, all three women explained the body as a metaphor while having a reproached feeling towards the physicality of the body.

Karaikal Ammaiyar

Karaikal Ammaiyar was a beautiful woman who worshiped God Shiva to ask a boon of ugliness, which could free her from the objectifying male gaze. She appears in Ramesh’s painting in the form of a skeleton. Another female mystic is Andal, who used to create garlands for Vishnu taken to temple by her father. She used to try them on first and then hand them over for the temple. Once her father discovered her doing this when he saw her hair on the garland. He made her to create a new garland. That night, Lord Vishnu appeared in his dream and said he wanted the garland Andal had tried on because he missed the scent of her body. There is a sense of devotional longing in the story that Ramesh has tried to portray by painting a tuberose garland against a deep-blue background.

Andal

The third female mystic who is depicted through falling jasmine flowers in Ramesh’s painting is Akka Mahadevi. Akka means ‘didi’ or elder sister, who walked out of her family. Lal Ded also chased out of home by her mother-in-law, walked out naked. A merchant gave her a piece of cloth to cover her. She tore that into two and kept on both shoulders. Whenever someone ridiculed her, she tied a knot in the cloth on her right shoulder. Whenever someone praised her, she tied a knot on the cloth on her left shoulder. At the end of the day, she showed the merchant that there were an equal number of knots on both sides. These are metaphors that teach to take praise and criticism with equanimity. These voices may not seem significant in the 21st century, but they let us think about things that happen in our own lives. Due to poetic resonance, text and allegoric narrative is an integral part of his works making them polysemic to the viewer.

Akka Mahadevi

Remembering Lalla-Moj (Lal Ded)

Now, when I come out of the depth of his works, the question raised is ‘Does V. Ramesh’s stand like a silent shadow in the commotion of contemporary Indian art, with its fancy cutting-edge art practices?

V. Ramesh is a senior prominent artist not in the shadows, he might not be touted as a ‘popular’ Subodh Gupta because his journey is more inward with a conventional medium of painting. He likes to discover the depth of what he knows the best, and has chosen a path apt for his art practice.


Though I could not meet V. Ramesh in person, the artist’s soul could be felt through all of his work. The few hours’ time spent at NGMA, Bengaluru, a place of leafy environs where everything seemed well managed, systematic with vigilant care-takers and security-staff enhancing this must see show.

(First Appeared online in CartanArt, Issue-II, April 2014)

From Myths to Reality

Profile

Hyderabad based art writer Nisha Aggarwal profiles Mangesh Rajguru, a New Delhi based young artist who takes a lot of interest in depicting the mundane and their accidental connections with popular myths. Subtle irony and lampooning the middle class morals, spice up his works, observes the writer.

Artist Mangesh Rajguru

Ideas are the power punch of an artwork. When simple ideas born out of existential everyday life begets enquiry and passion, they converse directly to an inner core. This is the potency of the works of young artist Mangesh Rajguru. Born in Ashti, a village in Maharashtra, Mangesh is a fine arts graduate from Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. Routine life is a place where he finds ideas, images and objects for his works. He currently lives and works between Noida and Delhi.

Mangesh’s art is vivid, vibrant and versatile. He started working with drawing and painting, experimented in print and collage, and is now enriching his orbit of expression through sculpture and installations. His works traverse from realistic to distortion, mythological to contemporary, handmade to readymade, two-dimensional to three-dimensional, rare to popular and traditional media to modern technology based media. It shows the multiplicity assimilated by freely mixing different languages or dialects, but all done with a calculated complexity and refinement.

Man-1 (An Early Drawing)

His images invite the past into present, developing a dialogue with possibilities of the future. Some of his early works are about going back, finding the personalities, and trying to insert and rediscover through his art. It provides him the range of available images and subjects, but also projects his depictions of new experience of time and place. The Padmapani Boddhisatva of Ajanta caves, Leonardo Vinci’s Monalisa, Christ with his apostles in the Last Supper, are some sought-after images of art history. Symbolically used, these images appear and then disappear in Mangesh’s early paintings. They evoke humour leaving a possibility of numerous interpretations for the viewers.

Last-Supper (Acrylic-Digital Print-Stumping-Foil on Canvas)

Even Chacha Chaudhary, a memory of his childhood, stands as a symbol of strength or power, and iconography of Goddess Laxmi symbolizes wealth and power. Mythological characters have been mingled with human figures to give them a ‘transformed’ tinge. For instance a snake tailed human (iconography of lord Vishnu) holding sun in his hands, depicts the desire of ‘enlightenment’, but the lotus on his body shows the vacant seat of an assessor, who could guide him in a unknown quest. He tries to seek audience with the world through mundane objects, believing that for intimacy one has to trust life and dissolve that which is public and personal. The same reflects in his large scale sculptures, as his art treads outside from personal space to become ‘public’ art with objects like scooter, animals, skulls as apt metaphors.

Chacha Chaudhary

The ‘scooter’, an Indian middle-class’s vehicle is his all-time favourite. Ranging from earlier drawings to recent sculptures and installations, it has a germane presence. With his scooter, a work titled ‘Euro 14’ he connects to the changing notions of the urbanized world. Human-made objects while heralding a new age of technologies, also prove to be a hazard to an organically delicate environment. Regardlessly people still seem to move towards it, armed with ‘silencers’. Here the scooter is an ‘instrument’ of progress and also of pollution. The second version of scooter titled as ‘aasan/throne’ announces his idea of global warming more precisely. This chocolate coloured contextual sculpture was displayed at Publica, India’s largest Public-Art Festival. The two-headed scooter, transforms into a throne complete with a carpet. Oxygen masks and cylinder, carrying metal ears instead of front mirrors are the ‘rescue’ objects to be used in any emergency. The iconography is of ‘Sheshashahi Vishnu’ where the empty seat is of Vishnu, of power/authority with silencers behind the seat emulating the ‘phan’ (hood) of ‘sheshnaag’ (thousand hooded serpent on which Vishnu rests). The arms beneath the vehicle depict how a human is burdened with a necessity of commute by a vehicle and how a vehicle commands a position of power on the roads as compared to walkers.

Euro-14

Aasan

Another volumetric sculpture ‘Arambha’(Beginning) also stands indicative of the posterity of our current eco-system. Here, Mangesh converges the bird/hen and human skull. As human beings and animals, the two biological constituents of an eco-system are on the verge of catastrophic destruction due to the imbalanced human greed, nature and animals are getting affected rapidly along with humans themselves.

Aarambha

More recently, Mangesh has started using the ‘soft toys’ as a medium. These soft toys are shaped up into bottles and pressure cookers; two shapes which themselves hint at the two opposites of male and female. The bottles in the installation depict male metamorphosis in an ascending from a milk bottle to soft-drink to hard-drinks. The pressure cooker hints at women being associated with the kitchen from childhood itself as the artist refers to his sister playing ‘house’ with toy utensils. To depict the passage of time, Mangesh has made the bottles rotate on an axis. This work was awarded The Ravi Jain Memorial Award from Dhoomimal Art Gallery.

Grha

Representing himself in a giant maze of creative pursuits, Mangesh Rajguru is fully aware of every little particle involves and evolves, thus making him a willing participant of this maze.

(First Appeared online in CartanArt Magazine, Issue-I, April 2014)

A 'Winter' Anecdote of an 'Autumn' Pleasure

Travelogue 

While walking through the poky alleys of Shahpur Jat, Nisha Aggarwal chanced upon the shops housed in dilapidated buildings, and peeped into its rustic history. She shares her experience as she pulls Shahpur Jat out of the clutches of time.

Two moving needles of a clock contain the most powerful invisible phenomena inside, they move within their periphery repeating the same path, but make us to sense the change in whole world outside. This invisible vigor is 'time' which becomes visible in the form of change; in us, and in our surroundings as well.

We take pictures of ourselves, of everyday happenings and places around. Afterwards we feel, think, juxtapose and sometime enjoy the changes time brought to us, by looking at those pictures. Pictures are not only clicked by camera, human memory also does the same. We grow up in any place and unconsciously witness the process of change, than we may get distant to that place. But after some time becoming part of that same place opens up all the past pictures saved in memory, and 'nostalgia' happens.

It may be my definition of 'nostalgia' or these days I sense it strongly whenever I come to Delhi. With every visit to Delhi I try to touch the bygone, perhaps to know what the changes time has brought in me. When I feel everything is same like it was, I feel happy and when I sense the occurred changes, I feel the 'progress' of time but both the things bring an 'autumn' pleasure. 

I can add an 'anecdote' to this 'autumn' pleasure. Few days back, after a friend's suggestion, I was re-visiting the lanes of Shahpur Jat, in South Delhi. I could see the newly opened spaces and could sense the increasing rents of floors. Shahpur Jat is an old urban village settlement and provides good spaces on rent. A lot of art students, artists and designers take this bustling creative den to make their studios.  A place with troubled lanes, filled of ‘labor class' has become the interest of 'elites'. I felt it necessary to go in its history by talking with few of 'elders' of the place. 

Entry to The Jungi House Lane

Shahpur Jat in South Delhi is a hybrid village enclosed within two of South Delhi's most up-market areas, Asiad Games Village and Hauz Khas. It is listed in Lal Dora areas of Delhi. It has missed the trendy touch of city architecture, yet captures the essence of a city. The veterans of the village say it was founded around 10,000 years ago (8,000 BC) by a Hindu King.  He set up a fort and palace there. But 5000 years back, 'Pandavas' (of Mahabharta) took the stones of that fort to built their Capital 'Indraprastha' few miles away to the place. The excavations in the Old Fort Area confirm the belief that Purana Quila was built on the site of 'Indraprastha'.

In 11th century AD, Tomar (Hindu Jat Clan) ruled Delhi. In 12th century AD, Prithviraj Chauhan was the ruler until his defeat. 13th century AD replaced Hindu rule by Muslim rulers. Mughals ruled Delhi in succession starting from Qutab-ub-din to Khilji and Tughlaqs. In 1303 AD, Allau Din Khilji conquered almost the whole of North India, he erected the First Muslim City of Delhi- 'Siri' on this site. Siri was a fortified city built on a large scale with palaces and other structures and had seven gates to enter or exit the city. Though the remains of only southern gate has found but it is said that the main palace of the fort was very beautiful and profusely decorated with precious gems and stones. Nothing remain of them except parts of its wall, a mosque and a structure called Baradari. Today Shahpur Jat has Tohfewala Gumbad Masjid and ruins of domed structure belonging to Khilji period. 

Entrance to Tohfewala Gumbad

Delhi passed on to the hands of the British in 1803 AD. It was only in 1911, when the capital of British Empire was shifted from Calcutta to Delhi. During this period, 900 years ago the modern history of Shahpur Jat starts. This was the time when Dagar clan from Indri (a village in Haryana) shifted to Shahpur Jat area. The fertile land and their agriculture skill helped them accumulate wealth in a short period of time. This attracted Panwar clan and other castes to the area. By then this area was called Shah (wealth) Pur (colony) Jat (a clan), meant a locality of the rich Jats and acquired the name 'Shahpur Jat'. 

Tohfewala Gumbad-Closer View

This time Shahpur Jat had farmlands spreading from Hauz Khas and Andrewsganj to Greater Kailash and Malviya Nagar. The move came up in 1978, when Government acquired the lands from most of the Jats by paying the sturdy compensations to them. On these acquired lands posh colonies of Asiad Village, Panchsheel Park and Hauz Khas were raised. The Jats with their compensation money expanded their small open houses to cramped up, matchbox like haphazard concrete structures. The multi-stories houses were coming up now. Slowly when the place emerged as the centre for basement workshops and its migrant population bloated, the ex-farmers discovered gold in real estate. The landlords created virtual acres by raising floors on their houses, which they rented to tailoring units. The big fortune came with the arrival of boutiques at the turn of the century.

Tohfewala Gumbad-Left Side View

Today, Shahpur Jat has over a hundred stores of Indian and European fashion, art cafes, book stores and home decors. Few art galleries has also opened up. The designers or artists living here are not notably rich, but they are comfortably creating their art and engaged in the process of their employment. But a large number of stores are shifting their location to Shahpur Jat, from Hauz Khas Village and Khan Market following NDMC crackdowns and high rents. The entry of such gazebo stores seems impatience to grow commercialization. And Shahpur Jat is lifting up as a new alternative space for everything trendy, a status usually reserved for Hauz Khas Village. 

Ruins of Siri Fort Wall
(Backside View of Tohfewala Gumbad from Park)

Still a majority of the designers and the residents want the village to stay the way it is. Larger crowds and bigger brands may rob the 'hybridized' charm of Shahpur Jat, and quiet working spaces of the artists. But people of Shahpur Jat reject the possibility of its fate like of Hauz Khas or Khan Market because of the Jats. The Jat owners in the past 15 years have never sold a single property outside their community, but have only let out spaces on rent. They have also refused all liquor licenses, so there is no bar and pub is seen in the locality.

Inspite of all the 'elite' changes, the unplanned multistory buildings hiding the sky to eyes, the overhanging wires, the peeping eyes of mannequins through the glass walls of designer's shops, and a mix crowd of animals and human (of all classes including the foreigners) both. 

The remains of the Old Fortified history still stand tacit imbibing the whole story of change within. A cyber cafe opened in a senile house keep its artistic value. A closed up Government school just near the entry of Jungi House seems distant and detached from all the capitalist forces of the place. I feel the growing 'art' of economy (of landlords, tailors, designers and all the 'artists' living here) has found a place to survive which has once enjoyed the royal patronage and today enjoying the status of 'alternative' but still a maze. I would conclude with the words of Sam Miller, the writer and historian while standing atop the ruins of a tomb, taking a walk around Shahpur Jat, 'Art lives to survive only when it has a purpose or when it's in the middle of nowhere.'

Originally Published in Travel&Deal Magazine, Issue-06, Vol-II, January 2014