Perhaps nothing quite prepares you to see a garland, of `5 notes ,carefully coerced into a neat pista-toned wafer whimsy decoration. But don’t let the look fool you, this show is rich with allegory and philosophic meanderings. Vishal K. Dar, the design genius, opens a solo showing at Gallery Espace with a show that defines the art of display in a minimalist mood of carefully wrought renditions that build thought, history and the art of weaving nostalgia driven impetuses into an inchoate leaning of new media and the power of animation. The currency notes with Gandhi’s iconic ingenuity become the abacus for Vishal’s thought process even as he titles the first work a dramatic Hindi tenored Mera Jeewan Hi Mera Sandesh Hai. “It symbolises the secular ideals of our Constitution,” says Dar, as he gets Muslim karigarsto embroidered in real gold zari Gandhi’s immortal line “Mera Jeewan Hi Mera Sandesh Hai” on a hand-stretched canvas that is then adorned with a `5 note garland made of nearly 2,000 notes!
“Its mockery and a mood of utter disillusionment,” he says as he plays a satiric stance on the money-laundering politicians of our country, in a direct in-your-face reference to Mayawati’s mala-saga. It is intriguing too see how he empties the canvas frame of Gandhi’s picture instead of using only his message. There’s no spirit, no philosophy, no ism, just the text of history between the leaves of a book.
He calls the show a wry and cynical signatured “BROWNation” even as he seeks to address certain issues that we deem important in the above context and within our experience of contemporary India and the South Asian peninsula. BROWNation bolsters our belief that art, among other productive forms of human work, will not cease to be socio-politically engaged, and the hope that its experiments will travel farther and wiser.
Dar, who places himself as a “citizen-artist” in the context of the South Asian socio-political flux, uses the iconic figure of Mahatma Gandhi to delve into issues of corruption, farmer and jawan suicides, agrarian unrest, Kashmir conflict and intra-national identity. Dar’s new-media works, which have an overpowering political connotation, have been made using materials as diverse as animated video, salt, heater rods, tin sheets, currency notes and zardozi threads.
Enticing and heady is the installation, Great Deal More Than A Pinch of Salt — a huge installation with salt and a single side of the weighing balance, Dar uses common salt, and nearly 20 kilos of it, to create a 3-feet high mound of salt piled on a 6 feet wide balance (tarazu) in fibre glass. Suspended from the ceiling of the gallery, the work encompasses his reflection on the relevance of the Gandhian way of life. The work re-evaluates Gandhi’s act of breaking the salt law and takes it a step further by putting the salt in a weighing balance! Look closer at the two little men on top of the salt, miniature men who hang in the wing of time’s testimony. Strange how you stand at the lower level looking at this installation and then your eyes go to the animation on the `500 note with Gandhi’s face turning into a phantosmagoric illusion, in which everything related to death and guns and eerie seraphic connotations seep in as the rays of green light travel far and wide, and Gandhi’s head opens with the third eye peeping out in a ghostly incantation.
On the top level is a charming set of five photographic postcards named Travels of The Little Brown Man. This is a series of five photographic postcards that take us through the various sites that the little brown man has been to. Dar has used world-renowned icons like Abraham Lincoln, Michelangelo’s David, Auguste Rodin’s Thinker, Saddam Hussein among others in each of the postcard that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi seems to have interacted with much before he became the revered Bapu. Each postcard bears a title that is a dialogue from Sir Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi. The titles of the postcards are “Bapuji, the whole brownation is moving!”, “he has become quite good at this”, “you’re an ambitious man, Mr Gandhi”, “it takes a great deal more than a pinch of salt”, “I am a Muslim and a Hindu and a Christian and a Jew and so are all of you”.
This show has a dense, fascinating philosophy, yet I can’t remember any art that has made me so strangely queasy. Dar’s mammoth constructions of canvas and currency quiver with power and evocative, disturbing contradictions. These iconic references, their scarred and striated history frequently darkened with silent recurring questions, are monumental yet intimate, ruthlessly honest yet delicate. Dar is an artist who works on a dauntingly heroic scale while the underlying content of his pieces and videos is intensely personal, even haunted by his memories, for he is a veteran survivor of real world intensities. The success of this show is its design, its sparse strategy, its face of simplicity and elegance and its ability to make the viewer a part of an aesthetic experience.
The beige brown canvas with elemental details and the chakra, make an inspiring reading of history always being suspicious of memory. Gandhi in this architect-turned-artist’s hands is an icon who becomes a poem, a posture, a nostalgia, a hope, a possibility and a dream. Catch this show and ponder over the possibilities of art and history weaving into each other a tale of many tragedies.