In Navjot Altaf’s video, Tana , Bastar-based weaver Vijay Das prepares the warp, completely focused on making sure each thread is separated and stretched perfectly. The threads spinning on the loop are hypnotic as Das goes about his work in silence, which is only punctuated by the sound of falling trees. That contrast — the meditative focus on the abstract beauty of a loom in action, occasionally jarred by the sound of real environmental damage — is the central theme for Altaf’s exhibition, How Perfect Perfection Can Be , which opened this Thursday at the Chemould Prescott Road Gallery.
Man vs NatureThe show, which first opened at The Guild in Alibaug early this year, also features 22 watercolours showcasing the architectural grandeur of New York City. But much like the video, the visual pleasure of lines, symmetry and human architectural achievement is undercut by weather charts and carbon emission graphs superimposed on the canvases, depicting the existential threat represented by climate change and environmental destruction. These concerns about the human and environmental cost of development, as defined by capitalism and the modern state, have been a running thread through Altaf’s later works, as is evident from her engagement with the Anthropocene Project, which focuses on artistic and academic investigations into the relationship between man and nature in the modern age.
Art and activismA graduate of Mumbai’s JJ School of Art and Architecture, Altaf was influenced by the ideas of Joan Miró and Paul Klee, specifically the notion that art must be accessible to all. “I was conscious that art cannot only be for an elite [audience], it should be seen by more people,” she says. On graduation, she and her would-be husband, Altaf Mohamedi, joined the Progressive Youth Movement (PROYOM), a radical student group founded by Dev Nathan and Kiran Kasbekar, both sympathisers of the CPI (ML). The group, which lasted for a decade, included students, academics, writers, journalists and artists such as Navro Mody, Adil Jussawala, Pravin Nadkar and Darryl D’Monte. As a PROYOM member, Altaf made political posters and illustrations, taught language in the Matunga Labour Camp and worked on alternative strategies to take her art to the wider public.
These would be formative years for Altaf. “The kind of interactions with people from different disciplines and the exposure to the world outside our own comfort zone happened through PROYOM and its study circles and field activism,” she says.
That strong link to the idea of social justice would endure in Altaf’s work, even as it evolved to look at other issues beyond the classical Marxist obsession with class above all. By the 1980s, she was immersed in the then-emerging feminist discourse on art and society, and her work started engaging much more with gender issues. “Even though the CPM and CPI (ML) didn’t talk about gender, or even caste, PROYOM did engage with gender,” she adds. “We started raising some questions, like why were the women the ones making the tea and washing the dishes? Then I came across Griselda Pollock’s book, Vision and Difference, in 1988 and I think that was the first time I read a feminist discourse on art. I was very intrigued and I started doing more reading [on the subject].”
Collaborative projectsAround the same time, Altaf also gave up painting to work with installations, attracted by the collaborative possibilities opened up by the new medium. “Suddenly, I felt that this was not the medium I want to work in,” she says. “I needed a medium that people feel drawn to, where their voices can be brought in as participants — if not directly, if not collaborative, then at least with a two-way dialogue being possible. For me, that came through installation art and cooperative, collaborative projects.”
These different strands came together in the late 90s, when Altaf, then working with wood sculptures, was invited by acclaimed Adivasi sculptor Jaidev Baghel to visit Shilpi Gram, his centre in Bastar. Altaf got talking with the local artists there, who complained about not being taken seriously as artists and not having the space to experiment. Around the same time, Altaf got a letter from the India Foundation for the Arts, soliciting proposals around the possibilities of and problems in collaboration between artists from different socio-cultural and economic backgrounds. “I went to the artists and said, let’s write a proposal together. I’ll write my part and we can tape your voices explaining why you want to do this project,” she recalls. She continues, “We got that grant for one year and started making our sculptures together, to see what we [could] learn from each other and engage in an artistic dialogue.”
That initial grant started a collaborative process between Altaf and Bastar artists, such as Rajkumar and Shantabai, that is still ongoing.
Over the years, Altaf and her colleagues have conducted art workshops for children, site-oriented projects and bell-metal sculpture workshops for women artists, and designed and constructed pilla gudis (extra-curricular spaces for children) as well as the Dialogue Centre in Bastar. It was also in Bastar that she found herself deeply immersed in a landscape where you can see first hand the consequences of the Indian state’s single-minded focus on development. The natural devastation and human wreckage of this unsustainable Molochian drive to exploit our natural resources are as much a part of How Perfect Can Perfection Be as are New York’s skyscrapers.
In the present“I was in NYC for three months on a fun project where I solicited people online to participate,” Altaf says about the initial inspiration for the project.
“We asked them to come meet the artist, have a chat and tell us about their favourite places to be photographed in New York. For me, this was discovering very different parts of New York. But me being me, I also got into deeper issues. At one level, [it’s] how you get a kick out of that kind of perfection in architecture. A kind of visual pleasure, you know. But at the same time you’re also conscious that New York is producing more greenhouse gases than the whole of Central America and Mexico combined. What do you do with that knowledge? What do you do with that pleasure?” she asks.
The answer to that question is for the viewer to grapple with. But as the line graphs of economic and environmental damage — imperfectly mirroring the lines and curves of New York’s buildings — suggest, we’d better find those answers fast.
The author is a freelance journalist
‘How Perfect Perfection Can Be’by Navjot Altaf will show at Chemould Prescott Road till September 30
