Channapatna dolls, which are usually associated with heritage and tradition, are now being brought into the contemporary in a new way.
bangalorREsident at 1,Shanthi Road, George Demir, is using the wooden toys of Channapatna ‘as an artistic means to explore and survey a contemporary and pluralistic representation of India today’.
“I have been working on having conversations and interactions with people on their lives, not just asking questions or taking information but communicating with them.
And then I realised that many of the things they are talking about are issues that I am facing back at home in Germany or are aspects of society that I am interested in. On the basis of these interactions I am getting the dolls made to resemble the people I had conversations with,” explains George, who is in India on a two month residency programme with the Goethe Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan.
Using visual references
George has been studying at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne since 2013. This year, he was awarded the scholarship of the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes. Since 2016, he has also been working as undergraduate assistant to the Chair of Media Art/Transmedia Spaces by artists Ute Hörner and Mathias Antlfinger.“In my work, I usually use visual references of events, often historical references or traditional crafts. I see the whole world and all of the different cultures, nationalities, religions as a huge pool of material that can then be explored through re-contextualization.”
“Though in Germany I produce some things myself, I feel that something like a Channapatna doll needs to be crafted well. Two months is not enough of a time frame for me to master the craft and I so have collaborated with a toy maker from the region, who now lives in Bengaluru.”
At the tipping point
George is still working on the prototype of the doll, based on the conversations he has been having.
“I would say that I am at the tipping point of going from the interviews into the production stage. I have spoken to different kinds of people, they all have different lifestyles, different sexualities, different gender identities and of course, different stories. Most of them are from the artistic field. I have asked them to send me photos of themselves, based on how they would like to project themselves in the dolls,” he says.
Representative sketches
“I am not trying to choose how they are going to be portrayed, it is important, for me, to able to let the people (re)present themselves. But I make sketches based on the photos that people have sent me and merge the references I have gathered from my study of the dolls with the details that people want me to include.”
George says he could deeply relate to the issues that his interviewees touched upon in their conversations and found they were reflecting many experiences he had in his country.
“I learnt that people around the world experience similar things. In the beginning, it was difficult for me to interact with people I hadn’t met before and be open to them. But that fact that we were each being so open and vulnerable and receiving the same reaction from the other, somehow remained with me.”
Colouring judgement
Discrimination, was one such issue that his conversations explored.
“I come from a background of immigration and I have encountered discrimination. One of my interviewees, as a person of ‘colour’, shared her experiences with discrimination in India and I could relate to that.
Also, I wasn’t targeting any particular social group, I simply ended up talking to people who worked in the creative field — painting, drawing, sculpture, and performing arts — and I think that was meant to happen because of the structure of my project. So it felt natural.”
George will host an exhibition of the Channapatna dolls as well as excerpts from his interviews at the end of October, after which he plans to go back to his studies and work on his master’s thesis.
