Rahool Saksena is still a little breathless from the whirlwind the last three weeks of his life has been. From the moment he stepped off the Delhi-bound flight, and was whizzed past the city’s tight traffic as a State Guest, to when he stepped into Rashtrapati Bhavan as one of two artists chosen nationwide for its ‘In-Residence Programme’, dined with the President and gifted him his art, Rahool’s days have been filled with moments of awe. For a boy who grew up watching the stars, learning of rocks from his geologist father, and went on to exchange a 15-year corporate career for the life of an artist, there could be no greater validation for following “the song in his heart.”
Rahool first heeded that quiet call as a child, crafting and pruning bonsai plants. Years later, in memory of one of his cherished pieces that withered away, he fashioned a replica, this time, immortalising it as a lampshade, its stand resembling the bonsai’s stem, shedding light on a little four-legged animal, all of which was carved from roots picked up at construction sites in Vasant Kunj, Delhi. And therein lies Rahool’s expertise: to take the scrap of the world and turn it into art. From discarded bangles to coconut shells, food grains and chillies, wax and paper, Rahool’s eyes see possibility everywhere. At the Rashtrapati Bhavan’s premises too, he nearly stalled an official tour to pick up a discarded piece of wood that resembled a peacock’s head to him. “Sometimes, it’s the things I see that spark the idea for a piece; at other times, I’ve got the idea in my head and I’m hunting for that exact material to suit it,” he says.
It is in this perfect blend of diverse media that Rahool finds great joy. His gift to the President, for instance, was ‘Nritya’, a dancing peacock, its crown and beak gold-plated, with feathers of fused glass, set against a backdrop of rain carved into wood, and framed in raw silk. It was Rahool’s ode to the peacock apartments that he was housed in at the Rashtrapati Bhavan, the peacock golf course around him, the peacock dining room and all the live peacocks that peopled his weeks there. The programme’s purpose was to demystify the Rashtrapati Bhavan for common citizens, and open its hallowed precincts to inspire art.
Thus, as exciting as watching a film at the President’s private theatre and sitting beside sculptures of freedom fighters was, Rahool treasures his time in the Rashtrapati Bhavan’s many museums, soaking in the splendour and grandeur of the best of art from around the world. His time there concluded with an exhibition of his pieces for State eyes only, which was replicated as ‘Re.Play’ at Delhi’s Lalit Kala Akademi for the public.
‘Re.Play’, which Rahool hopes to showcase in Chennai too, soon, spanned the width of his artistic career thus far. All through his time with various multinational companies, which peaked as Creative Director of O&M, Rahool rummaged through abandoned or leftover fragments of metal, wood and glass to repurpose into quirky pieces of art. In 2002, he finally gathered his guts, quit the corporate world and plunged fully into art. It was in this early season that Rahool made a name for himself with his signature lamps, pieced together with everything from black pepper pods and cans to ceramic and twisted metal, and sold at oddly numbered rates, the dividends of which went to different causes. “The lamps were a way to spread light, both physical and metaphorical,” he says. One his most innovative pieces remains the ‘Terrarium,’ a wide-bottomed bottle that housed within it a thriving garden, fed with light from the lamp above it, and auctioned for NGO The Banyan. “There’s only one principle behind all of this,” says Rahool, “and that’s ‘Willing to experiment, allowed to fail’.”
Over the years, Rahool has also spent substantial time working on commissioned art for close to 50 corporates, such as Ford, Murugappa, and Radio Mirchi among others, designing logos, gifts and coats of arms, thus bringing together the conceptual strengths from his advertising experience, and his penchant for creativity. Creative satisfaction, though, comes from the passion he has for reviving crafts that generate employment. Through workshops with master craftsmen at DakshinaChitra, for example, Rahool worked on redesigning coconut shells into everything from pen stands to mobile holders, and creating souvenirs from palm leaves, a project he wants to carry forward today. His days, now, are spent in shifting workspaces, from glass factories, and carpentry shops to granite sculptors looking for material that will fuel his future plans: public sculptures of the trash gathered from Chennai’s streets. In the meanwhile, he hopes to work with children, inspiring them, just as he did, to follow the song in their hearts.
