It’s easy to see why the work of a visual artist like Zanele Muholi spoke to a curator like Shubhalakshmi Shukla. In inviting entries for the third exhibition of her ‘Text’ series, Shukla asked photographers to send black & white pictures in which protagonists would gaze straight at the camera/viewer. Muholi, who is an internationally renowned artist, is known for her powerful work in the areas of race, gender and sexuality with subjects who are black lesbian, gay, transgender, and intersex. Her stark and stunning compositions aside, her subjects can often be identified by their piercing gaze. Shukla’s curated set is very reminiscent of this aesthetic, but one that is also very distinct and Indian. Another artist whose work deeply inspires Shukla is Anita Dube who is known for her use of conceptual language in art. It wouldn’t be inaccurate to say that Shukla’s exhibition is a marriage of sorts between these two powerful, feminine forces.
Taxonomies of text
Shukla, an art writer since the late 90s, took the next steps as a self-published author and curator, with one of her most important shows being Synonymous with The Guild art gallery in 2010-11.
In 2014, she teamed with Art & Soul gallery to commence a series of exhibitions that explored anxiousness with text.
However, the curator’s idea of text is more expansive than what we usually imagine. Applying literary theory to her context, she reminds viewers that “a text is any object that can be ‘read’, whether this object is a work of literature, a street sign, an arrangement of buildings on a city block or styles of clothing,” elaborates Shukla. “It is a coherent set of signs that transmits some kind of informative message.”
In the case of her latest exhibition, the body becomes the text. Titled Subaltern Sexuality: Body as Text , the show’s concept includes everyone who is dispossessed – economically, culturally and socially. Where the first and the second exhibitions lay emphasis on the written word, the third instalment relies upon the visual medium of photographs. Like in Muholi’s art, the subjects of these photographs gaze fiercely back from the margins of society, posing uncomfortable questions about gender, sexuality, and inequality.
Being themselves
The line-up of visual artists in this exhibition include diverse, big and up and coming names such as Ajay Sharma, Arpan Mukherjee, Deb Barua, Anuradha Upadhyay, Avijeet Mukherjee, Loknath Sinha, Rajesh Eknath, Shatrughan Thakur, M. Sasidharan Nair, Tushar Potdar, Sudharak Olwe, Swarup Dutta, Sharmila Gupta, Rachana Nagarkar, Vedi, Nijeena Neelambaran, Sanjana Shelat, and Santosh Kalbande.
Queer and trans people are the protagonists of most of the portraits in the exhibition, but self-portraits, silhouettes, and people from the past are also a part of this ensemble. Most pictures serve the viewer bold, unashamed looks, reversing the gaze. Here, the subaltern — which is often expected to keep its head down and eyes averted in real life — stares back at the ‘mainstream’ in defiance. It questions the many notions of normality, by presenting maleness in the female body or vice versa, same-sex desire, queer symbolism, uncommon in the common, repression, and aspiration. Through pictures of these ‘uncommon’ bodies that have been sites of violence, thwarted desire, love, rejection or complete inversion, we read many personal histories that would otherwise be buried under the dominant narratives. In reading these, we realise that these sound very much like our own stories, and we are able to return the gaze with a little more empathy and love. Or such is the hope.
Subaltern Sexuality: Body as Text is ongoing at Art & Soul Gallery till August 26
