Mahatma as the muse

Artist Subodh Kerkar ‘Reclaiming Gandhi’ is a result of a constant engagement with his philosophy

July 20, 2017 05:20 pm | Updated 05:22 pm IST

Subodh Kerkar is curating the exhibition ‘Reclaiming Gandhi’

Subodh Kerkar is curating the exhibition ‘Reclaiming Gandhi’

Artist Subodh Kerkar’s first encounter with Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was at the age of six when his father was commissioned to do a portrait by the Goa Assembly. They were staying at a chawl in Margao and his father called all the children to see the portrait and instructed them to fold their hands in obeisance.

Little did he know that one day he would conceive an entire exhibition around the subject of this portrait, which also featured Goa’s characteristic palm trees and the sea in the background.

By the time Subodh was ten, he had read several biographical sketches of Gandhi and other luminaries. His interest in Gandhi further spiked during his student activist days in college. He also remembers making a solo trip to Amboli where he read My Experiments with Truth in relative seclusion pondering over the contents of the book.

Language of expression

These sojourns however didn’t turn him into a Gandhian overnight. “I was not a Gandhian per se, but the recent spate of violence and intolerance that has engulfed the nation has saddened me immensely. I am angry but what can an artist do? I sought refuge in Gandhi and his writings helped control my anger. I read him voraciously along with other historians like Ramachandra Guha and Vinay Lal who have written extensively on Gandhi. Gandhi wrote to Hitler addressing him as ‘Dear Friend’. He made me realise that I can dislike an ideology and not an individual. All this chest-beating will lead us nowhere. Instead we must try to propagate his thoughts. My language of protest and expression is art. I started an anti-litter campaign in Saligao, Goa influenced by Gandhi’s thoughts. It was my artistic protest. Littering is also a kind of violence.”

Carpet of Joy was an installation by Subodh Kerkar where he used 1,50,000 discarded plastic bottles to make flowers with an intention to raise awareness about littering and create a litter-free Goa. The installation was inspired by Israeli artist Uri de Beer’s ‘Plastifora’ which featured bottles painted in different colours. Subodh was assisted in this mammoth project by more than 3,000 school children, who were further sensitised during the process of creating the installation. This event also transformed into a meeting point for various environmentalists, writers, politicians and common people of Goa. “Gandhi may not have been directly involved with art but he had a great sense of aesthetics. Go visit Sevagram or Sabarmati ashram and you will see his minimalist aesthetics. Also when Gandhi met Romain Rolland, he asked him to play Beethoven’s 4th Symphony and Rolland obliged. Gandhi was never divorced from art as much as we would like to believe,” says Kerkar.

Gandhi has been a subject of great curiosity for various Indian artists. Haku Shah’s paintings of Gandhi are well known. Many would also recall Nandalal Bose’ linocut image of Mahatma Gandhi (Bapuji) on Dandi March. M.F. Hussain did several experiments too. Contemporary artist Riyas Komu showed Gandhi as a malnourished farmer. And popular culture renderings of Gandhi are endless. Kerkar adds, “There are many artists still experimenting with Gandhi. He is also our biggest mass icon. Wasn’t Prime Minister Modi recently seen posing with the charkha? Arvind Kejriwal also began his campaign evoking Gandhi. Everybody is making an attempt to appropriate Gandhi because he amounts to great marketing. He is both loved and reviled.”

Subodh however feels that Gandhi is symptomatic of love and his upcoming exhibition aptly titled ‘Reclaiming Gandhi’ will help permeate Gandhi’s core philosophy. He explains, “This is an evolving exhibition which will be formally inaugurated on October 2, 2017 at Museum of Goa. In collaboration with an Ukrainian computer engineer, I have made an app which can be downloaded October 2 onwards. With the app, you could point your phone to any currency in the world and there appears a 3D Gandhi on your phone. I thought what could be the best way to reach the common man? Everybody uses currency notes and thus this idea originated. If I have to take the project to everyone, currency could be my code. The visual will be accompanied with a quotation of Gandhi in the language of the currency note.”

Alongside, there will be another exhibition featuring video art, movies, talks by different scholars and a plethora of poster art being specially created for this occasion which could be shown anywhere in the world. “I am thinking of this as a travelling exhibition. I can send this entire exhibition via email to a museum anywhere in the world. They could just print and show. We must create an access for the world to engage with Gandhi and technology will facilitate this convergence. I am also appealing to artists to produce new work on Gandhi or share what they have. This is going to be a continuously evolving show over the next couple of years. A museum in Brazil has already expressed interest in the project,” adds Kerkar.

Numerous Gandhi statues dot our cityscape but Subodh Kerkar deigns to call it art. He feels these are merely representational. “These are not even good sculptures. While designing Chandigarh, Le Corbusier left a note saying there should be no statues of political leaders in the city. Our bureaucrats however misinterpreted it as a statement against public art. Actually, the understanding of public art in our country is sadly reduced to ugly replicas and sculptures of politicians which is a travesty,” he bemoans. While work on the ‘Reclaiming Gandhi’ exhibition gains momentum, Kerkar has envisioned another environmental project. Called ‘Green Geometry’, this project will develop as a corollary of the main exhibition. “Gandhi was also an environmentalist and in this project, I am trying to create drawings with nature — plant trees like a drawing. Imagine a straight line of gulmohar on the hillside or a perfect circle of mango trees. Won’t that be interesting?” Amen, we say!

Kunal Ray teaches contemporary literature at FLAME University, Pune and writes on art and culture

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