Whenever I have to be interviewed regarding my work I
go through withdrawal symptoms….and wish I could be the proverbial turtle that
can pull back my head into my shell and let the world not see me. The reason is because I can close my eyes and know (on most occasions, the questions
that will come my way. Feminism as a politics of choice isn't always understood and so
besides the more superficial enquiries regarding the obvious, I am left to find
insightful ways by which to negotiate how to share the territory that defines
my ideas and produces my art despite questions that are repetitive and pretty inconsequential.
In recent times I can recall very few conversations
where I felt I was being engaged in a discourse on my art where I
personally could establish a connect for myself, and more importantly, where the parameters of
discourse were not narrow or predictable but originated from informed
curiosities of the interviewer. One such conversation was with Prajit Dutta of
Aicon Gallery in New York at whose gallery my exhibition The Rituals of
Memory:Personal Folklores & Other Tales was presented early this
year. The conversation was over two occasions - one in my drawing room in
Baroda and the other the day before the opening of my show in New York.
Perhaps because his childhood was in India within an
environment of art influences and then later that he
steeped himself in a learning process of European and Western art, literature
and music by choice, that he is able therefore to come into a conversation with
empathy. This factor alone offers a bridge that bypasses the tedious tendencies of pegging conversations with artists on their
bio-data information alone.
Diwan Manna an artist himself, who was in charge of
the Chandigarh Lalit Kala did a magnificent job of getting very substantial
interviews of artists recorded. He would assign people he trusted to conduct
the interview and would personally be present to oversee that the interview was
conducted with intellectual integrity. In the interview that was conducted with
me Ms. Parul kept her questions simple and brief which allowed me a space within
which I could include and articulate areas of information that could build
up a coherent overview of my art as well as my personal journey as a woman.
Bhavana Kakar of Gallery Latitude 28 who also brings
out the magazine TAKE on art has been conducting seminars and workshops on
writing. She has conceived and curated The
Book Ensemble which will be a two-part program - a workshop for young
writers and a seminar on the 18th and 19th of December at Sanskriti Kendre in Delhi, that focuses
on (and I quote) …the endurance and material legacy of the book, including
the ways in which it continues to influence contemporary processes of
knowledge, community and history. I am personally delighted that Bhavana
has so consistently constructed forums of discourse that
are multidisciplinary in nature,
and which cater to factors of communication being addressed.
Today the press-of-the-button culture of the internet as
the means of information leaves many believing that facts can substitute knowledge.
The subtle difference isn’t perceivable and we have a vast section of society
today whose brains function only by the click of their index finger, and not
from the journey of discoveries through serious research. Am I being too
harsh? No I don’t think so at all. The time needed to be spent in acquiring
knowledge isn’t what many desire to invest in, and so the short cut to merely
gaining facts for immediate consumption only to then purge it from their mental
system once it has served its instantaneous need, is what we have as the
general practice in the blueprint of learning these days.
Writing is a practice I encourage all to pursue. Not
for any other reason except that it allows us to learn more about ourselves
through the areas of concerns we address. I write because it teaches me to
“hear” myself. I grew up with many oral traditions of learning. To hear a well
researched lecture or to sit in the company of
people who are erudite is an experience of imbibing that is precious. Listening at night to the stories recounted by the women in my mothers family as I dozed off to sleep still bears its imprint in my psyche.
When my adopted granddaughter Aditi was very young, I
would make her write stories, essays and letters. This simple exercise of the play
with imagination brings forth a sifting of real life experiences that translate
either into factual anecdotes or fictionalized narratives derived from reality, and forms a mirror to the world we live in for us to look at.
At 18 today Aditi still holds value to those months of bring her
writing to me and for the discussions that we had about why knowledge empowers
us, even when one is at the tender age of 6,7,8 or 9.
It takes very little to make the effort to empower
oneself with knowledge that stays with us for a life time. What it requires however is
for us to have the humility to recognize that we have so much more to learn than we have already imbibed.
*Photograph of my granddaughter Aditi Kim Karolil in conversation with me at Sakshi Gallery Mumbai
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