In a mid-career retrospective that contains over two decades worth of thought-provoking works, artist Jitish Kallat’s show titled “Here After Here” at the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) here continues to have an impact on visitors long after they leave the gallery.
Unique interpretation
With over hundred works spread across two galleries, the paintings, photographs, sculptures, installations and collages are set up like a maze that the viewer has to navigate. The artist has provided a unique interpretation to iconic speeches, everyday events and the socio-political milieu.
The exhibition does not follow a chronological trail as artworks from various moments in Kallat’s career are given pairs that are not immediately obvious to source new meanings. While some of his works are based on the transient present, others reach into history and overlay the past onto the present through citations of historical utterances.
Famous speeches
In his trilogy titled “Public Notice”, Kallat took excerpts from famous speeches, including Jawaharlal Nehru’s “Tryst with Destiny”, Mahatma Gandhi’s speech before the historic Dandi March and Swami Vivekananda’s speech at the first World’s Parliament of Religions, and turned them into art installations.
Kallat hand-inscribed Nehru’s speech using rubber glue on acrylic panels before setting them on fire. The skeleton of the incinerated speech brought to focus the failure of the Nehruvian dream. The work, created in the aftermath of the Gujarat riots, evoked the agonising violence and arson unleashed during sectarian riots since Independence.
‘Sculptural palindrome’
In “Anger at the Speed of Light and Circadian Rhyme 2,” Kallat uses miniature human figures to tell a story. In “Circadian Rhyme 2,” the figures are frozen in awkward positions associated with security checks.
The artists calls the placement of the images a “sculptural palindrome”. The work evokes moments of border checks, surveillance and paranoia. The other sculpture — created with miniatures — freezes a moment of rioting. The frenzied Lilliputian mob showcases the absurdity of human violence and the fear that underline bursts of anger and violence.
Bulging pockets
The artist also has on display photo-collages of close-ups, including one of bulging pockets of shirts worn by faceless people, titled “Cry of the Gland”. The pockets are weighed down by the burden they carry and each pocket tells it’s own story of the unknown person. A similar approach to story-telling in “365 Lives” looks at evidence wounds sustained during minor and major vehicular collisions in a crowded metropolis.
The moon
At the heart of the exhibition is “Epilogue,” a photo display of eaten rotis representing the moon. The rotis represent the 22,889 moons Kallat’s father saw in his lifetime and the lone moon at the end of the display represents the last moon his father saw.
To commemorate the exhibition, a monograph published by the NGMA was also released with an anthology of essays on Kallat’s works by Catherine David, Ranjit Hoskote, Peter Nagy, Deepak Ananth, David Elliott, Susan Leask, Natalie King and Homi K. Bhabha. The show is curated by Ms. David, the deputy director of Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.
The show is on at NGMA, Jaipur House, till March 14. The gallery will remain closed on Mondays and national holidays.
