The Thinking Mumbaikar's Museum

Jeejamata Udayan, Bombay's rundown, ramshackle zoo, is no place for a museum. But in a city that works in mysterious and baffling ways, the zoo is precisely what the Bhau Daji Lad Museum calls home. And if location weren't enough of a disadvantage, it is also commonly acknowledged that the Prince of Wales Museum (situated in the heart of Bombay's tourist district) houses a far more impressive collection, in a structure that's considerably larger and better taken care of.

So what, if anything, does the BDL have going for it? A sense of its place in history, and a vision for its role in the city's development.

Established by Lord Elphinstone, the museum was meant to be a storehouse for industrial products, arts and crafts. Ransacked during the 1857 Mutiny, it was resurrected by a committee of prominent citizens, given its present home, and refurbished with donations from the government and the public. With India being absorbed into the British Empire, in true colonial fashion, the museum was named after Queen Victoria and her consort, Prince Albert.

Over the years, though, the V&A Bombay, fell into disrepair and was almost totally neglected. Its restoration was a protracted affair, requiring the combined efforts of an unusually enterprising director, an unprecedented public-private partnership, and several craftsmen and experts. Once restored, the museum was re-named after the founder who had most ardently championed its cause. Today, the modestly-sized BDL looks sumptuous, saturated as it is with color and intricate detail. Columns soar to the ceilings, tiles gleam, and light fills the building. 

The collection remains largely unchanged from the one seen by millions at the Crystal Palace in 1851. It consists of artifacts -  textiles, lac work, daggers, vases, brass platters and even carved coconut shells - from across the country, products traded by neighboring states, and dioramas constructed by students from the (then) Bombay School of Art. 

This was a collection designed to convey the diversity of India and the capabilities of its craftsmen. But it also pandered to the sensibilities of the average 19th century Briton. Indians were presented as curiosities, and the Indian village, as a harmonious but dangerously rustic idyll. The colonial government was also preoccupied with the classification of Indians into 'types,' which would explain the presence of numerous figurines representing meticulously delineated sub-communities such as 'Bhatias' 'Amdavadi Banias' 'Prabhus' and 'Surti Bohras.' Pay special attention to the maps - each one is unique, created to fulfill different purposes and answer to different interests - a telling comment on the contentiousness of boundary-making and the covetousness of ownership.

In and of itself, the collection merits one, or possibly two visits. But it is elevated by a spirit of inquiry. The collection is simultaneously two things - a celebration of craftsmanship and the city, and a deliberate, self-conscious investigation into the construction of history and the museum's own past. This self-consciousness is lent weight through collaborations with contemporary artists such as Chintan Upadhyay and Jitish Kallat.

Jitish Kallat's ongoing interventions at the BDL are thought-through and remarkably successful. Whether it's the true-to-scale scaffolding, intertwined with animal sculptures, or a massive wrought-iron stove representing destruction and sustenance, the works draw inspiration from Bombay's colonial-era architecture and its elaborate Gothic flourishes. 'Anger at the Speed of Fright' is a deceptively commonplace diorama. It's easy for a visitor's gaze to slide over the work - but if one is paying attention, one will notice dozens of figurines in two glass cabinets, poised to hurl, maim and hurt - an interesting contrast to the demure goddesses and peaceable citizens that form part of the permanent exhibit.

There are other interventions designed to question the linearity of time and the coherence of space - old-school Roman numerals illuminated by ghastly florescent light, and a single photograph composed using multiple shots taken over time. A particularly elegant intervention involves the projection of a You-Tube 'loading' symbol onto a relief map - an appropriate signifier for a city that is moving too fast to come to grips with itself. My personal favorite is a large waxy looking heart, which on closer examination reveals itself to be an inverted flyover congested with traffic - a tongue in cheek commentary on Bombay's clogged arteries.

Each work has its own integrity but retains a strong and, more importantly, valid link to the museum. The interventions 'belong' - which might be why they are so easy to miss. This kind of dialogue - between artist and museum, between an individual's concerns and an institution's history - allows the collection to transcend itself. I don't expect all the planned interventions to be equally effective, but each will likely have a perspective to offer, and will cast a different light on the objects and artifacts, drawing visitors back again and again.

Unlike the Prince of Wales, which is content with showcasing the past, the BDL seems intent on questioning and challenging itself. School students are invited to attend workshops, study-sessions and walkthroughs, and there are plans to create more educational content, design interactive kiosks and offer full-fledged diplomas. Few Indian museums question their legacy as part of their contribution to their communities. If this doesn't merit a visit to the zoo, I'm not sure what will.

Note: Wanted to rectify a couple of  factual errors:  the museum was renamed in 1975, and has interacted with Sudarshan Shetty, Nikhil Chopra and Jitish Kallat (not Chintan Upadhyay). Many thanks to Varsha R. for the corrections.

Nature and the Cosmos - Observations from a Lapsed Art Lover

Is it just me, or are there more shows on in Bombay right now than one can possibly hope to keep up with? The last few weekends seem to have slipped right past me, taking with them a host of shows that I was very keen to see - Manjunath Kamath at Sakshi, young curators at Art Loft, Iranian art at the Guild, Zuleikha Chaudhari at Project 88 and Maya Burman at Art Musings. 

There's probably a lesson in there somewhere. Maybe what the art lover needs is an iron will, the ability to resist the temptation to eat, nap, shop and watch movies in a quest to see every exhibition in town. It is safe to say that I lack this strength of character, and that I remain undecided about whether it must be cultivated. 

Nostalgia, Pride and Fear

Gallery BMB, Fort

9th March - 9th April 2011

I remember visiting 'Nostalgia, Pride and Fear,' at the BMB early last month. An exploration of humanity's relationship with nature and science, the gallery brought together a diverse group of artists working with different media, but addressing similar concerns. Alison Kundla's petri-dishes and oxygen cultivating devices highlighted the somewhat hazy distinctions between what we define as 'natural' and 'artificial.' What happens to these definitions when natural processes are replicated and re-enacted in laboratories? Is the end product   - pure oxygen, in this case - natural? Tatiana Musi, from Mexico, questioned our common definition of a 'garden.'  Is it something we co-create with nature or is it an imposition and intervention of sorts? Is a garden necessarily beautiful and orderly? Can paintings of nature and scenery constitute an attempt to create a garden? 

The other works - Ratna Gupta's latex moulds of tree barks, Teresa Gruber's tree portraits, and Soazic Guezzenec's insect/human collages - didn't strike me as being particularly compelling. It probably didn't help that the works seemed to have been exhibited without much thought or effort. I had to 'find' some of the smaller pieces for myself, and the nook right at the back of the gallery had been clumsily closed off. 

BMB makes a habit of hosting a number of exhibitions- most of which run for a month or 3 weeks. I like the fact that there is something new and fresh to look at whenever I visit. But I've said it before, and I will say it again - their shows are uneven, and it wouldn't hurt for them to be put together with a little more finesse. 

Jitish Kallat - Stations of a Pause

Chemould Prescott Road

March 22nd - May 21st, 2011

Everyone's been talking about this show - particularly a massive, 750 part work entitled 'Epilogue.' In Epilogue, Kallat charts the course of his late father's life by depicting all the moons he witnessed during his 63 years. The moons, and their waxing and waning, are represented by photos of partially eaten (or intact) rotis - the essential component of an everyday Indian meal. It's easy to speculate on the significance of the rotis as moons - do they represent fullness, emptiness, cycles of life, the unvarying nature of basic human needs? Kallat himself has articulated the conjunction of the cosmic and the microscopic in this work - we can use the moons to locate ourselves and our chronologies, and the rotis, unsurprisingly, symbolize a pan-Indian mode of sustenance. 

As I walked through Epilogue, however, I was reminded of nothing so much as filing cabinets of the old-school Godrej variety that one still sees in government offices. Much like a mottled file in a cardboard folder, Epilogue records the details of a single human life using a handy metric. It's a little disconcerting to think that no matter how unique and rich our personal histories seem to be, the minutiae of human existence remain universal and even banal and can be boiled down to an average of three meals a day, a new moon and a full moon every month. 

There are also a number of paintings depicting men at Bombay's train stations - looking  expectant, patient, resigned; their belongings packed into small duffel bags; their hair tousled into strange shapes that on closer examination reveal themselves to be parts of the city's landscape. These men are waiting, always waiting, and it looks like the city - including its paan stains and socio-economic fault-lines - has infiltrated their beings, if not their dreams. I particularly like the gilded gargoyle heads that crown each painting - a nice, gothic, Bombay University inspired touch. 

The video 'Universal Trail of a Grand Banquet' ostensibly depicts galaxies, universes, large cosmic bodies. What we are really looking at, however, are microscopic x-rays of everyday food items - another juxtaposition of the cosmic and the microscopic. I must confess, though, that I watched this video (also described as an immersive experience) 3 times over, and failed to grasp its significance. Sometimes what the viewer really needs is just an explanation. 

Kallat's interviews reveal that he has taken on large themes with this show - the cosmic, the microscopic, birth, death, life, time. He is a quality artist, and his works are, without a doubt, competent and interesting. I wasn't moved by anything I saw, but that may be a function of the concerns he has chosen to address - it's not easy to translate the cosmic into something personal and felt. Epilogue does it best. 

India, in Images

Homai Vyarawalla: A Retrospective

NGMA, Mumbai

25th February - 10th April 2011

Children everywhere are schooled in a certain version of their country’s past. They are taught to look at leaders as heroes, at events as epic, at struggles as noble. The present tends to be seen as a betrayal of everything that led up to it. Then these children grow up, and if they are still thinking, and learning, and looking about themselves, they realize that the past is less pristine and more complicated than it has been made to seem. The makers of that past, too, are no more than mortals – their motives as murky and as questionable as ours.

We know this, because we’ve been through it. We have inherited a post-modern, ‘glocal’ world in which everything is relative and all isms are passé. I, for one, know that photography has often been used to construct reality rather than to depict it. That shots that have been heralded for their spontaneity, have often been carefully composed. That in India, in particular, photography has had a chequered history – it has been used to ‘survey’ local populations, to romanticize an outpost of an empire, and, immediately before and after Independence, to create a national consciousness, to document rituals and events, and to foster a certain ‘idea’ of India. Early Indian photography charts the course of our collective imaginings, and retains great academic importance.

Knowing all this, I should have left Homai Vyarawalla’s retrospective at the NGMA feeling informed, rather than moved. But images work in unexpected ways.

Most of Vyarawalla’s photos are interesting, as one would expect – they capture interesting people living in enormously interesting times. Some of them are amusing – shots of British revellers in drag at Gymkhana parties and women giggling as they participate in air raid drills. Others have an odd ‘textbook’ feel to them, that their captions further emphasize – ‘A Day in the Life of an Indian Farmer,’ and ‘How Parsis celebrate Navroze,’ are two photo-essays that come to mind.

But several images – crowds milling around Parliament House to celebrate India’s first Independence Day, people running behind the train carrying Mahatma Gandhi’s ashes to Allahabad, members of the Congress voting on Partition, a young Dalai Lama crossing over into India in full ceremonial dress – are compelling. We’ve seen these pictures, and we know the stories, but they retain their power nonetheless.

I tend to respond to photographs, largely because they tell us how things used to be. We know the past was not a simpler time, but which one of us hasn’t been tempted to cast it in that light? After all, if we were to accept that things were always as convoluted as they are now, it would be difficult to believe in the possibility of a better future.

It was in this spirit that I responded to some of Vyarawalla’s pictures. Was there really a time when Sanjay Gandhi was just a boy who liked frosted cake? When prime ministers took carousel rides? When the Bhakara dam heralded progress? When Delhi and Bombay were beautiful, tree-lined and spacious? When photographers were invited to presidential parties and ‘teas’ and were sent hand-written thank-you notes?

There is also Vyarawalla herself to consider – a young lady from an orthodox Parsi family, who travelled around the country taking her pictures while dressed in a sari. She was India’s first woman press photographer, was close to all the leaders (particularly the Nehrus) and was fittingly referred to as ‘Mummy-ji’ by tyros. A compelling woman who took some compelling pictures, and influenced how we remember our past. Which made me wonder who was busy chronicling this country’s present, and fervently hope that there were men, women, and moments worth the effort.  

Art in, and as, Bottles

I've discussed the ineffability of cool elsewhere.

Cool might be difficult to describe, but it is  easy to recognize. A few weeks ago, it manifested itself in the guise of the Absolut Art Tour featuring Subodh Gupta. A show as tight and enjoyable as anyone could have asked for. Whether it was Absolut Britto, bright and cartoon-like; Absolut Secret/ Dubufeet, red-white-blue and geometric; Absolut Indiana, all signature lettering; Absolut Fairhurst; flecked with plastic shopping tags; Absolut Vautier, Absolut Marischal;  Absolut Warhol - the works were just plain fun. Of course there's no ignoring Absolut Subodh Gupta - a vodka bottle crafted in his signature style. This was my first 'up close and personal' encounter with Gupta's work. Though I knew what to expect, it was still interesting to see commonplace steel vessels lose their everyday identities and assume a wholly different, collective form.

I realize, now, that it is, in fact, possible for art to come together with marketing and result in something engaging. Or is this show just the exception that proves the rule? Either way, somewhere in Stockholm, there is an Absolut Art Museum ticket with my name on it.

Many Media, Some Notes

Sweet Unease by Ranbir Kaleka

Volte, Colaba

16^th December 2010 – 15^th February 2011

I’ve always had some difficulty engaging with trans-media art. Unlike the more traditional and conventional forms that I have grown accustomed to, works of this nature rarely come with the in-built cues that tell viewers what to watch out for, what to attend to, what to acknowledge. Trans-media art makes for a more immersive experience – viewers must contend with multiple streams of information and sensory stimuli, and arrive at a negotiated understanding of what they see, hear and sense. Viewing such art is a challenging and often unwieldy process – which is why it helps when the effort seems rewarding.

‘Sweet Unease’ Ranbir Kaleka’s first solo exhibition in Bombay, offers an introduction to some of the art he has been producing over the last decade. These trans-media works are simultaneously interesting and intricate, consisting of video, audio, pictures, and paintings overlaid on one another. Each work calls for a conscious engagement – whether it is ‘Cul-de-sac at Taxila’ (2010), a Murakami-esque juxtaposition of a man, a hammer and a horse; ‘The Kettle’ (2010), a riff on the many settings and scenes an everyday object can inhabit; or ‘He Was a Good Man’ (2008) a meditation on the inanity of an ordinary human life.

I approached these works looking for a hook or two that would allow me to access them in their entirety – a wasted effort, because I soon realized that there is no one element that holds them together. They are complex, and demand time and absorption. Eventually, I had to permit myself to experience the works in fragments and parts, and it was only through repeated viewings that I was able to derive some sense of the wholes. It seems to me that this lack of coherence is at least partly deliberately constructed. 

Kaleka superimposes the bizarre onto the ordinary, the almost-there onto the most-certain, and his works retain a slipperiness that evokes those moments in which we realize that things are not always what they seem, and that there are cracks beneath even the most solid surfaces. He forces us to grasp at images and meanings, and there is a palpable open-endedness to the viewing. There is an all too rare conjunction here between media and theme(s), and I wonder why we haven’t seen or heard more of him. 

Myth ↔ Reality: Constructing Cult-u’re - Group Show

The Guild, Colaba

4^th-30^th January, 2011

The name of the exhibition, the punctuation, the pun, all work together to assert that this is a show about the continuous making, re-making and un-making of myth, fact, belief and consequently, culture. We are invited to think of culture as mutable, as a dialogue rather than inheritance.

Such themes that lend themselves easily to multiple interpretations. Sutras scrawled on driftwood, the evanescence of reflections, the mysteries of the physical world in which a single substance can be liquid, solid and vaporous, the implications of the many meanings and pronunciations of a given name, the increasingly intimate connections between consumer choice and personal identity, the multiplicity of personal narratives – these are all legitimate, if not equally accomplished or sophisticated ways in which to address the constructs of self and permanency.

The works I found most interesting were Job Koelewijn’s ongoing reading project, in which the act of reading is endowed with physicality, transforming our experience of text. Renata Poljak’s videos and photographs spotlighted the intersection of costume, performance and nationality – perhaps the show’s only attempt to explore culture within an explicitly political framework. 

The show was relatable, accessible, earnest and honest, but I must admit it would have been interesting to see a little more conceptual complexity, and to have had the artists push their envelopes a bit further. Having known the curator, Veerangana Solanki, for some time now, I am aware that she attempts to seek out artists we don’t often see, and media we don’t attend to enough (along with everything else, two movies by Johan Grimonprez are screened at regular intervals). She’s succeeded on both those counts, although the show is fun, rather than exceptional. 

I Went, I Saw, I Liked

More than most other contemporary artists, Anish Kapoor has a reputation that very decidedly precedes him. He been feted and celebrated so widely, and so well, that it is difficult to approach his shows as a first-time viewer with anything resembling objectivity. One perceives his work through the lens of all that has already been declared and exclaimed upon – and it is possible that there is little of consequence left to say. Which is why I wended my way to Mehboob Studios not to analyze, but to experience Anish Kapoor’s particular brand of art.

The viewing is very much a bodily experience – an experiment in juggling so many different ways of seeing and perceiving that the combined effect is likely to leave one reeling, quite literally. It is possible to walk towards the glittering surfaces of ‘Untitled, 2010’ and ‘Untitled, 2008’ as well as the multiple ‘Non-Objects’ and feel one’s sense of space and proximity flounder. There is a point at which one feels inclined to almost ‘tip over’ into the illusory spaces they create.* These are not so much sculptures as they are cleverly designed rabbit-holes that test our notions of up and down, big and small, motion and stillness. And lest one get too drawn into the polish and gleam of metal, two large waxworks anchor the exhibition space with their looming solidity. ‘Shooting into the Corner’ is the more spectacular of the two, consisting of a cannon-like device that shoots wax pellets onto a white wall. The echo of the shot reverberates loudly, deliberately unsettling viewers and introducing an aural element into the show.

I saw the exhibition as part of a guided tour, and while the guide left much to be desired, I was impressed by the degree to which audiences were moved – either intellectually or physically – by what Kapoor had created. Men and women of different ages walked back and forth between the pieces, examining their own widths and heights from all angles, pulling funny faces. People spoke articulately about how the works affected them, interested them, excited them. One person noted the contradiction between the fluidity of the metal, and the heaviness of the wax. Another spoke about reflections and new perceptions. Someone else got so nauseous that he had to leave the room. All of this happened in spite of the fact that the venue – run down and devoid of personality – was ill chosen, and the placement of some of the works seemingly arbitrary.

It has been a while since a show in Bombay has done something to its audience. I suspect that while some of us enjoy thinking about art, many more of us enjoy responding to it. I recommend this show - because it is Anish Kapoor, because it is his first time exhibiting in India, because Bandra is conveniently located, because the works are distinctive, but mostly because they have to be encountered, rather than seen.

*Which is probably why there are so many anxious docents posted on ‘guard duty.’