Jaya’s Black Story gets bouquets and brickbats in equal measure

P.S. Jaya got bouquets and brickbats in equal measure when she related her experience of ‘performing a black body’ in a public space over the past 131 days, at Layam Ground in Thripunithura on Monday.

“It has been an overwhelming experience and I don’t claim to have understood even a fragment of what an underprivileged person goes through in our society. But it has given me a great learning curve. My effort, as an artist, was to be in solidarity with the subaltern people, their struggles,” she said at the event organised by the artists’ collective Kalakakshi.

However, not everyone was in agreement with the way the artist went about the performance. “Weren’t you trying to appropriate the identity of the Dalit and reinforcing stereotypes identifying them as having a particular skin tone?” asked Mruduladevi Sasidharan during the interaction.

“It’s to the contrary,” maintained Ms. Jaya, arguing that she was just trying to fathom the degree of alienation arising from caste stereotyping. She was aiming at turning the motif of complexion on its head!

The performance also came under attack for trivialising the social engineering aimed at fighting caste-based ills catalysed by the likes of iconic Dalit activist Poykayil Appachan centuries ago. Ms. Jaya averred that there was no undermining the history of the long struggle, but an artistic subversion of the continuing stereotypes was what she sought. “True, the real Dalit experiences are always more hard-hitting,”

But there’s always the problematic relationship between artistic expression and reality, chipped in artist Anita Dube. “It’s a cultural space in which we are challenging each other, debating the discreet ways in which caste and colour operate in society. But the real manifestations of this in real life are different,” she added. Ms. Dube also cautioned Kalakashi, which has been engaging the public on contemporary socio-political issues through art, against the ‘artivism’ dying out for want of planning.

Poet Kureeppuzha Sreekumar commended Jaya for her bold and secular effort. “She has an outright secular outlook and for a woman, it was really a bold step to paint herself in black and lead a different life in public for these many days. “When my attention was drawn to aspersions on her performance on the new media this morning which hinged on her caste identity and real complexion, my response was like, ‘I was the first to write a poem on P.K. Rosi, the first female protagonist of Malayalam cinema and a Dalit. I had not taken any Dalit activist’s certificate before writing it. Any criticism of her art from a fundamentalist standpoint is condemnable,” he said.

Oorali band strummed up evocative pieces of singing while Gothramozhi and Grand Drape Stage Entertainments (Nalima) presented protest theatre pieces.