‘Kaikoo Banayaa?’

Art gets ready for questions on the street
(first published in Art Concerns )

For the ‘Kala Ghoda Art Festival’ (KGAF) that packed more than 150 films, dances, plays and street acts in nine days (February 3-11, 2007), the stationery aspect of the visual art segment was perhaps a respite for those who wanted an experience in totality, at their convenience. Here, too, one could list down some 33 projects by various artists or art galleries. With such a scale, the KGAF surpassed every other art-happening in the city, Dayanita Singh’s show and ‘Soft Spoken’: the 6-person show curated by Bose Krishnammachari, or the less-celebritised ‘Bombay Art Society Annual show’ included!

For the KGAF art segment to be talked about, the aspects were many. A street-art experience in Mumbai still retains its novelty. The other aspect was multiplicity (or the happy absence) of focus, and a good mix of young and established. As Brinda Miller, co-ordinator for this year’s visual art segment put it in pukka Mumbaiya hinglish, ‘Iss baar class bhi hai, mass bhi hai’!

The questions arouse when a discerning observer took to the streets to experience the class-mass responses to the class-mass art. The local (read vernacular) media made the same mistake of carrying the photographs of some artifacts for sale in the adjacent craft-stalls with naive captions like ‘an artist shows his beautiful art in the kala ghoda utsav’. The confusions about crafted beauty and communicative visual data remained intact, even without the share of such ‘beautiful’ photo-captions, while there were some other joys, rather contemporary to this year. People fell for the monumental scales, but were not afraid to ask, ‘Yeh Kya hai? Kaikoo banayaa?’ and a dialogue started.
Parag Tandel, the Thane-based lad supported by Pundole Art Gallery for his installation ‘Ambivert Space’, rendered an everyday object (the Nimboo-Mirch concoctution that, traders in the city believe, wards off evil) in a crafty way with threads. The work inspired many questions like ‘Kaikoo banayaa?’, and Parag or his friends would talk of this ‘unbranded product’ that serves the shops that sell brands, or the plight of nimboo-mirchi makers or sellers. Parag was also delighted that people, who otherwise would not touch a ‘real’ nimboo-mirchi fearing the axis of evil, dared to touch these crafted objects. This debutant artist won offers for a solo!

‘Jogya’ a nickname for Prashant Jogdand, is an artist who makes his presence felt at every KGAF. Jogya’s sculptural interventions implant human life on the trees surrounding the Jehangir Art Gallery. His trees with feet (2005), or with hands (2006), or lips and utensils (2007) can be thought of as an ongoing project with public memory. This artist who keeps a low profile also reflected on the importance of the unseen: his team displayed ‘snails on a tree’.

Natraj Sharma and N. S. Harsha, were the two cutting-edge artists who took to the street this KGAF, thanks to the Bodhi Art Gallery. Natraj’s ‘Alternative Shapes for planet Earth’ needed an open sky backdrop which it did not get, but the work was nevertheless appreciated. Helpful and tempting was the concept note that spoke and illustrated an artist’s journey back and forth painting and sculpture. Harsha’s work, biggest ever at any of the last nine KGAFs, confronted the laypersons and uninitiated eyes with equal awe.

A common visitor went rampant in his/her ‘photography spree’ at Harsha’s Aircraft, as well as Prashant Narvekar and Laxmi Nair’s ‘Helicoptook’: Prashant and Laxmi, a duo who graduaded from the JJ School of Arts and chose to exhibit after 5 years since, worked with the fantasy of an Autorickshaw equipped to fly. The most-asked question to them was, whether this three-wheeler with a stylized back-hood and wings to decorate, really flies.

Some less-interacted, yet potent works were displayed behind a row of stalls. Among them were three works by Himanshu S. and his team. ‘This revolution is for display’ sought inspiration from the Nineteen Sixties, while a direct take on the present-day was posed by ‘ Booked Street’, a re-enlivenment of the book-selling pavements that died at the hands of Municipal Council. ‘In Dog we trust’ had an interactive appeal, to lift the stuffed-toy doggies and do ‘whatever’ with them. Yet, the work was tucked in a place where there were a bit more ‘usual’ works on display, like the fantastic ‘any for six thousand’ offer by Tao Art Gallery.

Showcasing opportunities were aptly taken by some galleries, some lesser known to the city. Their shows this time were comparatively eloquent for the street-setting, even as they relied on wall-mounted or pedestelised stuff. The buzz word here was ‘reiteration’ of what one specializes in. Aakar Prakar of Kolkata came down to KGAF with ‘contemporary artists from the east’ and had pleasant surprises like (Delhi-based) Samit Das, the newly-opened Osmosis gallery reverted to brilliant-but-lesser-known artists like Madhao Imartey and Nitin Kulkarni, and ‘Red Dot Art’ stood steadfast with showcasing graphics.

Thirty three exhibits were a bit exhausting, too. The wit and wisdom in some works, like Kanchi Mehta’s ‘Smoker’, Hina Khan’s ‘Our old Scooter’ or street sculptures by Shailesh Dudhalker, seemed a bit sidelined because of the exhaustion. While these works attracted comparatively less interaction and Q-A sessions with the artists, a new dialectics of what and why to exhibit on the street was surely visible in these works. Some works, like ‘Hoardings’ by Prajakta Potnis-Ponmany, lacked the dose of supporting information in the absence of the artist.

In my opinion, the KGAF is about facilitating a ‘Pedestrians eye view of art’. It has been doing so for last nine years, but kudos! It did better this time.

- Abhijeet Tamhane, Mumbai.

Related link:
http://www.kalaghodaassociation.com/2007/