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GALLERY OED COCHIN, 10 DECEMBER 2022 - 10 JANUARY 2023
CURATED BY PROF. Y. S. ALONE
"Inhibition" is a generic term that needs interrogation. Its political impact has been too widespread and is connected with the normative and many presuppositions. The psychological factors in art practices are pivotal in understanding the nature of creative realms. However, as a part of the political democracy, it becomes pertinent to see how sensibilities have developed over a period of time and resulted in adoptions, appropriations, replications, duplications, and reproductions. Brahmanic modernity has created aesthetics of ghettoization and the fact that pictorial modernity being confined to mere formalistic plasticity persuasions rather than getting engaged with the political and a part of being a democracy. Contradictions have been existing at a social, political, economic, and cultural level which are never addressed through the pictorial mode, reducing art practices to transcendental realms.
HISTORICAL TRAJECTORY
ARTISTS: Savi Sawarkar, Shukla Savant, Pinak Banik, Navin Chahande, Riyas Komu and Sunil Nambu.
Is our democratic nation modern? This is the biggest challenge that we as citizens of the Republic of Government of India are struggling to find answers. Pictorial persuasions are immensely deepened into cosmetic modernity as well as Brahmanic modernity. The idea of svalakshana and hetudharma and hetuswabhav are important critical categories drawn from the seminal texts of Dharmakirti’s Nyaybindu dated to the fifth century. These critical aesthetical terms are pivotal and interrogate the cosmetic nature of art practices. The artworks enter into the interrogative process to address contradictions in contemporary times. Thus, the very ideas of normative and presuppositions get dismantled, interrogated, and allow a free-thinking that has no transcendental realms but is more humane, progressive, constitutional democracy and highly motivated by the Ambedkarian thinking to come out of ghettoized ideas and historical narrative of nationalism of a certain kind.
CASTE, CONFLICT AND THE NON-SUBLIME
ARTISTS: Aupam Roy, Naresh Suna, Lokesh Khodke, Jaya Daronde, Sajan Mani, Sanjeev Sonpimpare, Rambali Prajapati.
The term "Ambedkarian Aesthetics" is a world free from prejudices, inhibitions, and metanarratives of Brahmanic modernity. Its historical trajectory is to subvert the narrative of the "given" and propose to get into a process of dismantling several inhibitions that have been nurtured over a period of time. Historical past both ancient and modern are constant reminders of ideas of contradictions that have been part of lives, including the life of works of art.
THE QUESTION OF BODY AND PERSONAS
ARTISTS: Mayuri Chari
For many, it is a constant engagement to kill "protected ignorance". Public perception is another problem that has created many "protected ignorance" in everyday life, including in the field of visual language. Normative understandings are constantly being propagated that have caged many of our ideas of canonization of aesthetics, resulting in the structured thought process of "protected ignorance". With the aesthetics being political, there is always a conscious choice towards the pictorial signifiers that have evolved through the means of political understandings. Ghettoized perception has created hindrances to remaining categorically restrictive and produced its impacts on visual productions. The postcolonial lens is often used to justify the aesthetic canons of ghettoized perceptions as well as marked with the silence of the aesthetical process of alternatives and the meta-narrative of modernity. Hegemonic discourse has resulted in shaping our perceptions to restrict to the hegemonic Brahmanical metanarrative of modernity and nationalism. Cultural creative realms have adhered to the Brahmanical cultural nationalism and have produced terms like "Gandhian sensibility", "aesthetics of ahimsa", and "aesthetics of objectification" but could not become part of dismantling presuppositions and the normative.
CONSTITUTION, PREAMBLE, DEMOCRACY
ARTISTS: Mansoor Ali, Malvika Raj, Vikrant Bhise, Ranjita Kumari, Prabhakar Kamble. Sanjeev Sonpimpare.
The objective of this exhibition is to showcase how some artists in India moved out of the Brahmanic narrative of modernity and its hegemonic aesthetic discourse to address contradictions in society, which Dr. Ambedkar had pointed out while submitting the constitution in 1949. Their objective is to articulate the representations from the Ambedkarian understanding of the social as well as the political and questions the very practices of cultural productions. Their narrative of being different has the power of enabling process in understanding, dismantling inhibitions, and the normative, speaking the language of diversity and adhering to the constitutional ethos of the nation.
STATE, NATIONALISM, CITIZENSHIP
ARTISTS: Sudharak Olwe, Arun Vijai, Palani Kumar.
For these artists, nationalism, secularism, diversity, globality, internationalism, and fraternity are not individual categories but are connected categories that are part of the fraternity based on compassion. Their creative realms explore such diverse nature of subjective fields, where the pictorial means are diverse and aimed at killing "protected ignorance". They have certain signification processes connected with the self as well as the non-self. Speculation is avoided consciously, keeping away from transcendental metaphysics and its aesthetical forms, is in a real sense a representation of their plasticity, having rooted in social as an engaging process and not getting trapped in constant inhibitions. Revisiting history is their choice to reflect upon their perceptions which is in non-celebrative terms.
THE EXHIBITION IS DIVIDED INTO FIVE SECTIONS: A) Historical trajectory; B) Caste, conflict and the non-sublime; C) The question of body and personas; D) Constitution, preamble, democracy; E) State, Nationalism, Citizenship.
CURATED BY: Prof. Y. S. Alone , School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University New Delhi
CONTACT: aloneys@yahoo.com
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