We are taught from birth to ascribe meaning to all that we see around us. But the artistic eye has the potential of imbuing objects with symbolic meaning, allowing viewers to engage with deeper, hidden narratives through the tangible properties of materials. This was the theme of the sprawling show, Material as Metaphor: A Dialogue of Art Forms — it showcased 240 works by 53 artists — that was organised by the National Gallery of Modern Art, executed by the Basu Foundation, and curated by Sayantan Maitra Boka at the Old Currency Building.
A perfect example of such a search for alternative meanings of material would be Prasanta Sahu’s Harvesting (picture), a series of moulds taken of various vegetables on paper. At first glance, the artwork looked like vegetables put on display at a local bazaar but look closer and each paper revealed unsettling truths about the agricultural crisis. Mallika Das Sutar found a potent parallel between the human bone — the femur — which carries the weight of the body, and agriculture, which carries the weight of humanity. In the hands of Kallol Datta, fabric and clothes became powerful metaphors for the politics surrounding the body — whose body, how much of it is shown and how much is covered, and what are the fallouts of transgressing such codes of clothing.
Janhavi Khemka takes the eye and, like a Luis Buñuel film, turns it into a witness of the horrors that eyes take in daily. Pradip Das imagines a cycle put together from odd mechanical parts as the body of a quack hawker with a familiar recording of his sales pitch ringing through the cavernous corridors of the Old Currency Building. Prabhakar Pachpute’s enduring imagery of
farming equipment morphed into semi-human farmers toiling on
the soil was powerful. Anjan Modak
did something similar with the bodies of labourers and the weight they bear. Ujjal Dey blurred the lines between art and the daily, domestic labour of women by using dyes made from natural ingredients like turmeric and cow dung. Deena Pindoria used the kota doria fabric as a lens to provide glimpses of the world as it appears to women behind veils. A strikingly archival
piece was Chhad Petanor Gaan by Sanchayan Ghosh, who captured the now nearly-lost practice of women singing songs as they prepared terraces with a mix of lime mortar and brick. The rhythmic thump of their beating mixed with their looping songs filled the upper reaches of the Currency Building, which too has a terrace that must have once been built using a similar technique.
Another piece that was rather poignant was Roji reti by Mrugen Rathod who made a montage of small crabs digging in the sand; in the background, one can hear trucks and labourers and clear sounds of sand mining and as the video progresses, blocks of sand and crabs start disappearing and getting replaced by a black void. Ruma Choudhury, too, records natural devastation in Birbhum where mines are changing the landscape irrevocably. Milan Lunagariya’s carved print harked back to a more verdant past where agriculture had a symbiotic relationship with nature. Fishermen and the Ocean by Museum of Goa (Subodh Kerkar) captured the hypnotic, ritualistic rhythm of those who live their lives out on water. There were other pieces that are more well-known, by veterans and masters alike, where material and metaphor were interestingly juxtaposed — Raja Ravi Varma’s oleographs of Indian gods and goddesses, posters of Himmat Shah’s robust sculptural geometry, Manu Parekh’s vibrant and bold portraits, Krishna Reddy’s fantastic experiments with viscosity printing, and Gigi Scaria’s panoramic documentation of temporality at the Ardh Kumbh among others. Also on display was a rather large and splendid collection of sohrai-khovar artworks by tribal women from the collection of Bulu Imam.
The experience of such a well-thought-out exhibition was marred by the bureaucracy involved in accessing it — this reviewer had to submit photographs of her press card, state the purpose for her visit (one would think it is obvious), and suffer repeated queries by the security guards. These intrusions make the work of a reviewer even more challenging.