It is highly improbable for an artist to reveal his art making process, let alone allow anyone to document the step-by-step procedure that leads to creating a piece of art. But predictable is not the word one usually associates with Vivan Sundaram, one of the celebrated Indian contemporary artists who is known for producing monumental installations that highlight concerns plaguing the society. So, when the viewer is allowed to enter his intimate space — the studio, his search for the right kind of material and his everyday conversation with his dependable workforce, it results in a sense of understanding the thoughts and precision with which the 74-year-old moulds his creative process.
Aspects like these have been chronicled in a 52-minute documentary titled, “In Search of the Found Object” in which director Pankaj Butalia has meticulously followed the artist from his studio to trash markets and finally to the Ivy Lodge in Kasauli. “I started working on the film three years ago to capture his process of creating art. What fascinated me about him is the fact that he kept on taking up one project after another, relentlessly. He was going on and one and then I thought that I had to stop somewhere,” says Pankaj after the screening of the film at India Habitat Centre.
The film opens inside his studio where the artist is surrounded by disassembled body parts of mannequins and is seen trying several permutations and combinations, like placing a leg against the arm, to represent an image that he has visualised in his mind. This visual is followed by the artist narrating in detail how “he finds meanings and metaphors in many things and then how joining them together gives them a new meaning altogether”. Vivan had used mannequins in his exhibition, “Postmortem (After Gagawaka)”, where he placed the wearer in the spotlight and mannequins represented a site of violence and sexuality.
“You will not look at mannequins once when you are in a market, but here they have acquired such grace that it looks as if they have some character,” he says in the film.
It was in the early ‘90s that he switched from painting to installation, as Vivan tells me that he realised that to put his ideas into a larger context, he felt the need to create monumental installations. “Installations, as you see, aren’t restricted. It was around this time I realised that certain statements cannot be made through paintings. Installations are an open and inclusive form as they are immersive. They are a powerful medium to express your thoughts.”
While this film traces the journey of his several practices, it also highlights one integral aspect of his workmanship — the nature of his studio. “I refer to this place as an open connective studio because people of varied skills and expertise come under one roof, and this aspect, in particular, highlights how the making of my work is in a relationship with different skills,” he says.
Active relationship
“The studio is very much in an active relationship with the art process. Also, I really enjoy working with my technicians because there is a dialogue and as they are experts in their respective fields there is always a room for learning new things,” he adds.
Since Vivan’s practice usually involves working with the found object, the film also tracks him down to the trash market where he is effortlessly moving in and around, looking keenly at the available trash to pick up and use it as an object in his work. He frequents this place, he admits, as what people often discard as trash finds a new meaning in his ecosystem. He had touched upon the topic of urban waste and second-hand goods in the exhibition, “Trash” and he recollects how once he had brought “tons of garbage into his studio and it all had become a palette for him”.
It is the last shot of the film that aptly encapsulates Vivan’s though process. In a repetitive loop, the artist is seen walking the same space of the drawing room in Ivy Lodge, and as Pankaj points out, “the reason for this shot is that I observed his mind is always walking… thinking several things. So, the repetition tries to capture this aspect,” says Pankaj.
Pankaj, whose previous films like A Landscape of Neglect , Texture of Loss and Manipur Song — all dealing with conflict, is often credited for executing such sensitive topics with great finesse. Last year, the 67-year-old filmmaker had chronicled the life and poems of celebrated Urdu poet Nida Fazli in a documentary titled, Yeh Kahaan Aa Gaye Hum . However, he admits that filming the craft of an artist required a different kind of artistic wizardry.
“At any stage, I didn’t want the artist and his creation to overpower each other. It was important for me to ensure that they are in harmony with each other,” he says.
While the discussion entirely revolved around the craft of art making, it was at some point when Vivan pointed out how creating installations is a collaborative effort as the process involves several skills and hands before the final creation is revealed to the public, Pankaj lamented how the process has reversed for documentary filmmakers. “Now, a filmmaker has to edit, write dialogues and think of several small aspects because the price of a project shots up if too many hands are involved. And in the restricted budget, all a filmmaker can do is — multitasking.”
