An unnamed woman’s bust is on display at Pepper House, Fort Kochi. She was a marble beauty once. In place of her face is a ball slung from the head.
The sculpture is part of an ongoing series of untitled works by Scottish artist Jonathan Owen on how women are made prisoners of conceptualisations of beauty. But beyond this allusion, his removal of the facial features is intended to be a ‘rejuvenation’ and ‘reactivation’ of the work.
The artist is showcasing his brand of ‘elegant vandalism’ at the Kochi Muziris Biennale-2016. Vandalism, as his artistic interventions involve carving into existing pieces of art – the marble bust above was bid for at an auction—to take away their names and histories. In doing so, he inserts himself into their stories. The act of production by removal and reshaping is a ‘nerve-racking’ process, says the artist.
“I do think about the work and time put into the sculptures by their creators. Some of the works are centuries old and I reflect on this before working to recreate them. Though the figures are disjointed, I like to think I have transformed them into intriguing puzzles from the biographical objects they were meant to be,” he says.
The transformation of existing objects and images through his “two-dimensional carving” method allows him to showcase both the systematic nature of his artistic process as well as his take on the intent of the sculpture’s original artist. The dimension of time is thus built-in to the artwork – hence his referring to them as ‘three-dimensional’.
“I leave behind traces of what had been. While the details of the torso such as the cross were kept intact, the head was made barely distinguishable. The figure was thus de-humanised and transformed into an unsolvable puzzle.”
Mr. Owen builds, likewise, an alternative history with his ‘eraser drawing’ series, a collection of which line the walls of the enclosure that houses the marble bust. Taking an eraser and rubbing out figures and layers from original photographs and film stills, he leaves ghostly reminders of what was once there. “Unlike the sculptures, I don’t add anything to the surface of the image. Making the decision on which feature or figure to remove or retain is mostly intuitive. It would be a breeze to do this with photo-editing software, but leaving some residue of this imperfect intervention is important too,” he says.
