On display at the quaint and inconspicuous gallery of Clark House Initiative, A Part Apart brings to the fore an often unheard voice. It’s an exhibition of works by two artists that throws light on marginal communities stripped of their identity. The show is the first in a series of invited curatorial projects that deal with alternative art histories and conceptualism, and focus on India’s eclectic aesthetic practices.
The show, curated by Venkatraman Divakar, derives its name from Dr. B.R. Ambedkar’s declaration: “I am not a part of the whole at all; I am a part apart.” It hopes to draw attention to the representation of a people who somewhere fell through the rungs of the Brahmanical order of society. From Baroda and Mysore respectively, artists Raju Patel and G. Mahesh challenge the imposition of stereotypes and the accepted social hierarchy through their paintings. Both hail from tribal and artisanal backgrounds, and paint their experiences (as individuals and their communities) in a matter-of-fact manner, uplifting their subjects from the ‘reduced identity’ historically ascribed to them.
The artwork renders images that expand from being identifiable motifs of the communities they depict to being realities in themselves. “Each of them emphatically and sensitively subverts the exoticisation and eroticisation of the people they portray,” says Divakar. For instance, Mahesh’s work, The Blue Portrait, captures the fascinating contradiction of a bahuroopi artist, exoticised as one who takes on the role of Lord Ram. But the artist’s canvas shows the subject painting his face: revealing the paradox of a man elevated to being a god, but only because he is of a lower caste. Divakar also describes how the artists’ subjective identification allows for the spiritual to enter into the mundane. Take Mahesh’s untitled piece that acts as a commentary on how the divine is sought in everything. By depicting a dog swimming in lotus-ridden waters, it shows the animal with a blue face like his bahuroopi.
Patel’s watercolours on the floor above situate individuals of lower class communities in the conventional portraiture of higher classes. They occupy the position of subjects and are largely devoid of the symbol of articles that suggests their social stature.
As described by artist Benoy P.J., Patel’s works execute a treatment of people, in an unassuming style, rejecting the secondary status conferred to them by artistic canons. For instance, his piece titled Persistence, depicts the ‘half-boy’ from the controversial 1931 American film, Freaks . Showing a man without the lower half of his torso on a road, the reference to the cult horror movie directly challenges the discriminatory roles ascribed to them. The exhibition’s confrontation with established social hierarchies is two-pronged: it’s not just art, but artists too. Their work is influenced by their Tier-2 cities that are uniquely positioned in between the extremes of the rush of the metropolis and antiquated rurality. And theirs is a voice that is often lost in the midst of these extremities; it conforms neither to the stereotypes of the progressive urbane nor of traditional small towns.
More significantly, Mahesh and Patel’s works do not just stand for an alternative art history in India. Rather, as Divakar says, the exhibition draws attention to the plurality of histories and protagonists that make up the narrative of Indian arts.
