Ecology, the hunting and trading of exotic birds and nuances in communication make up Minutes of the meeting , Mumbai-based designer/illustrator/animator Garima Gupta’s solo show hosted by Clark House Mumbai. Through a series of 14 illustrations from Gupta’s travel notebook (scanned and printed on archival paper in varying editions) and two videos, the exhibition focuses on the hunting and trade of birds of paradise that are unique to the island of New Guinea. It hopes to spark a conversation about the loss of nuance in communication and its resultant effects on local and global ecologies and the environment at large.
Birding with purpose
The island of New Guinea comprises of three political provinces: the eastern half is Papua New Guinea, while the western half comprises Papua and West Papua. While there are many anthropological similarities between indigenous populations scattered across the three provinces, socio-political differences keep the island in constant conflict. A self-taught birder, Gupta travelled to the rainforests of West Papua in 2014 to see birds of paradise. The birds are known (and sought) for their extremely colourful plumage, and extravagant courting rituals practiced by the male of the species. The birds have found significance in evolutionary science, as their specific evolution has led to the process of female mate selection, unlike most other species. The males are bright, colourful and have to work tremendously hard to court the plainer females. Since colonial times, the birds have been captured and traded by the indigenous tribes as a means of income.
Gupta’s work — sketches of birds and the villages of the tribes she met on the island of New Guinea while travelling — is done in a style reminiscent of sketches in colonial-era scientific and anthropological journals. The sketches could loosely be seen in three sets. The first is a set of images that work as an introduction to the style in which the drawings are done, the geology of the area, and the two tribes, depicted via sketches of their similar but not same bird hunting tools. The second contains the science journal-esque sketches of birds of paradise subspecies and one of a bird encased in vitrine that recalls cabinets of curiosity that travel and discovery brought during colonial times. It is indicative of the long-standing interest in the bird as an oddity, as scientific inquiry and as orientalist decoration. The last set of sketches are of village life, of the tribes Gupta met, who alternate as guides to birders and hunters, still working with traditional implements and home-grown methods of preserving birds.
Accompanying the paperwork are two videos: a documentary style video capturing a traditional dance by a tribe from West Papua’s Afrak Mountains, and an animation set to Gupta’s guide Zeth Wonggor narrating the hunting and preserving of the birds.
Peeling layers
What Gupta does, in combining these styles — Western scientific journaling, documentary video and animation — is to narrate a tale about the ownership of stories. How does a nuanced piece of information help us create a point of view as opposed to a barrage of data? “Information is noise. Nuance, on the other hand, a valuable piece of information,” Gupta says. “There is enough and more information, numbers, statistics about what is happening all around the world. There is so much of it that all of it has become irrelevant. Nuance, on the other hand, is difficult to come by. It requires scraping the surface multiple times to reach to a place that is never visible on the surface.”
Within the context of Minutes of the meeting , the sketches, a tradition started by visitors, conquerors, colonisers and curious scientists, tell you a physical story not unlike the anthropological photographs and diagrams of indigenous tribes made by the British discovering India. The subject becomes a thing that is similar but not the same as the person studying it. The photograph tells you nothing about the tribe except the most obvious physical attributes. Similarly, the sketches of the birds of paradise — Gupta says she rarely uses colour if she’s sketching when travelling, but within the context it adds to her premise — tell us nothing about their larger significance to Papua New Guinea and West Papua. What they mean, or indeed, meant at another point in history, to the island’s original inhabitants is unclear. What they become instead is a cry for nuance, because outside the information on the sketch they tell you nothing else, not even the colour of its plumage.
“Anxieties, aspirations, complexities, inner conflicts, imaginations of a people count as nuance, and we relate better to other humans through nuance,” adds Gupta, referring to the set of sketches recounting village life. This constant layering of information as you walk through the show is Gupta scratching back those layers of noise for her viewers by adding specific, pointed bits of information. As the noise recedes, the nuance becomes the voice you are drawn towards. A dense drawing that should have been a rainforest is actually a busy image of stacks of bird cages. Slowly, a narrative emerges that challenges your notions of what a small island province should be.
Part of a whole
According to Gupta, the show itself is a very small part of the larger narrative which she is still constructing. A history and geography buff, Gupta fell into design because of her interest in art and communication, and graduated in Animation Film Design from the National Institute of Design. “When we think of design, we try and equate it with craft. There is nothing wrong in that, except design is also problem-solving and re-imagining of things, which is where my interest lies. Design plays a part in my thinking, constructing of narratives and craft. Beyond that, there is a general sense of curiosity and strong need to tell a story.” This sense of curiosity had her exploring Mumbai (she moved to the city in 2012) statuary to create Project Bambai, images and animations exploring the secret lives of Flora (of the Fountain) and the Jawan and Kisaan of Hutatma Chowk and the Khada Parsi, who watches down from Byculla bridge, to name a few.
Narratives and storytelling have been part of Gupta’s interest elsewhere too: in her work with the South Asian’s women’s graphic storytelling collective Kadak. “The gender gap is like cicadas in the backyard. You grow accustomed to the noise until you don’t. It is the backdrop for everything one does. Sylvia Earle, a very well-known marine biologist, when she first appeared out of the marine expedition was referred to as ‘aquababe’ and asked if she wore lipstick and used a blow-dryer in the underwater station.”
The Kadak travelling library features Gupta’s comics about identity, physicality, and femaleness, and of course, her interest in birds of paradise, whose practice of female choice is what drew Gupta to them in the first place.
Minutes of the meeting, is ongoing at Clark House, Colaba until March 8. The artist will conduct a walkthrough of the show on February 26 at 5.30 p.m.
