Interrogating the Concept of Everyday: A Public Art Project in Guwahati

In this essay on an interesting public art initiative that happened in Guwahati, Assam, art writer Rikimi Madhukaillya is continuing her enquiry into the contemporary art scenario of the North-Eastern States of the country, which has been witnessing a series of vibrant cultural activities braving the turbulent political scenario prevailing over there.

As a part of my ongoing process of introducing the contemporary art scene in Assam and the north eastern states, I am sharing viewer’s experience of the Art+Public, a public art camp held in Guwahati by the Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi.

‘ART + PUBLIC Interrogating Everyday,’ is a combined initiative of Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi and Periferry, Guwahati as an experiment set within the public spaces of Guwahati. The ambition of this project was to interrogate the concept of everyday through the prism of different practices of the participants. Through a number of art interventions in various public spaces around Guwahati, the workshop attempts to test the constellation of ‘everyday’ within the critical imaginary of public art discourse.

Within the central debates of recent decades, it become important to draw a distinction between the physicality of space and the meaning of a space as it is constituted discursively (how physically is the expression of specific network of social relations: power, economy, racialisation, gender, sexuality). The artists associated in the workshop were, Sharmila Samant (Mumbai), Sambhavi Singh (Bihar and New Delhi), Showket Katjoo (Srinagar), Prayas Abhinav (Bangalore), Debananda Ulup (North-east), Pravin Mech (North-east), Dorendra Waribram (North-East), Bhaskar Hazarika (North-east) and Samiran Deka (North-east).

The genre of public art in the North-Eastern part of India is not a much-explored area except for a couple of initiatives by Desire Machine and Periferry through a range of Artists Residencies and discourses. Though the participating artists have already made a mark with their public art interventions, they had to face many challenges in the case of this camp. Lalit Kala Akademi also, stepping into the area of Public Art for the first time, had faced challenges, as their normal camp pattern generally consists of seven to ten days only. And the basic structure of a painting or a sculpture camp is such that the group of participating artists generally confine themselves into specific shells inside the venues with their colours, brushes and other tools, whereas, in a public art project, the artist needs to get into the lives of public as the initial process before an intervention. As the name suggests, public art is something which spontaneously occurs in midst of the public with the intervention of the public itself.

The ambition of this project was to interrogate the concept of everyday through the prism of different practices of the participants. Through a number of art interventions in various public spaces around Guwahati, the workshop attempts to test the constellation of everyday within the critical imaginary of public art discourse. Within the central debates of recent decades, it become important to draw a distinction between the physicality of space and the meaning of a space as it is constituted discursively ( how physicality is the expression of specific network of social relations: power, economy, racialisation, gender, sexuality).

As the first step towards the camp, the interns (with the help of and discussion with Desire Machine and the critic-in-residence) had marked some important public spaces ready for such interventions. A quick research and documentation of the same was also done. As the artists arrived for the camp, these interns were ready with their materials in hand which helped the artists to know the city and the public life.

Sharmila Samant’s work deals with a variety of issues like that of globalisation, identity and consumer culture. As Samant herself says “Art, to me, is the conscience, a kind of awareness and a reflection of my experience.” Sharmila Samant was a founder of Open Circle Arts, an artists’ initiative which aims to create a platform for a meaningful dialogue among artists in the city on an intercultural level addressing current issues. Transnational workshops and projects were organised through Open Circle.

As soon as Sharmila reached Periferry for the camp, her sensitive mind could sense that the path leading to this very significant place of the city has inconveniences because of the changes and shift of the ferry in different seasons of the year. Throughout the camp she had marked and devised a flight of stairs with locally available material, the matured bamboos, with the help of the local craft-men. Her stairs, though not absolutely permanent but something that would last for some time, has been devised in such a manner so that when the water level of Brahmaputra rises during the rains and the Ferry (Periferry) goes up with it, the stairs can automatically get adjusted to the level and the direction. Aesthetically beautiful yet useful stairs are at the same time addressing the concept of the camp and meeting the immediate need of the common people.

Sambhavi Singh’s works, although dream-like, depict emotions quite contrary to their appearance. Raising questions about hope and re-birth, and at the same time, recognising the fears of the unknown, Singh’s oeuvre provides an introspective journey for the viewer. Sambhavi, hailing from a semi rural-semi urban kind of a background, got intimated by the presence of the small hand-driven boats on the huge river. Soon she made friends with some of them and developed a conversation. Sambhavi had arranged over a thousand kerosene oil lamps and three tiny hand-driven boats with their boatmen. She, along with her boat men friends, had decorated all the three boats with those lamps and lit them at the daybreak on the open day and like any other day of their life the boatmen drove back home on the other side of the river, but on boats full of glowing lamps as signs of their dreams.

The teacher cum an artist-activist, Showket Katjoo has seen violence from a very close context. Being in this part of the country, he on one hand could relate to the socio-political problems and in another, was enjoying the freedom of creative expression. With the help of one of the interns, a young student Imon Raza, Showket had found an army dump-yard. From where they both had to bribe the keeper and had bought a number of old war helmets. Showket had kept on arranging and re-arranging the helmets in different installations and invited the visitors, fellow artists and the other men around to interact with the helmets and intervene into the army sphere. Sometimes a Phallic symbol and sometimes a throne, Showket’s helmets with the innate cynicism and humour had left behind wonderful memories of common mass interacting with Art.

Prayas Abhinav, a witty, young artist yet very intelligent, has earned a good name in the contemporary art scene since his entry into the art world with Khoj Peers, 2008. A technically sound Prayas was literally connecting every human and computer present in the Periferry. He had collaborated with another local artist Samiran Deka (North-East). Both the artists in unison with their extreme witted and creative peak had struck upon on a project called, “Humne to apni sharm bech khayi aapka kya?” Both the artists, with spy cameras in their pockets, have started walking around the city in different public spaces like malls, streets, cinema halls, colleges etc. and kept approaching people that they were part of a research about who has the longest nose (not sharpest but) in the world. And the interested candidate’s nose used to be measured with the help of tools very seriously and let them fill in some forms. A mixed reaction from the public was recorded in the spy cam.

Debananda Ulup, along with his performer friends, had a performance on a sand bank in a hand made set of painted fish scales. The performance in front of huge audience of both invited and passing by was meant to create awareness and re-build a relationship between the river and the city. An impersonated river Brahmaputra kept singing in a tribal dialect about her agony, whereas the ignorant people have realised slowly about their mistakes and their affect on the river.

Pravin Mech, a young and shy artist from the region, was addressing the water-related problems of the region. With over a hundred sub-rivers, including Brahmaputra and Barak, and thousands of water reservoirs and ponds, the region still has problems of drinking water. The municipality, which failed to preserve some of these historical ponds, is covering it up with tall walls or many other idiotic activities. As, according to them, the water of these ponds is useless and they, in a way, pollutes the environment by being the breeding ground for the mosquitoes. Pravin has chosen one such pond called Nak-Kata Pukhuri. He first found that the original name of the pond was Nag-Pota Pukhuri which with time has become Nak-Kata. He devised a system of purifying the pond water which can easily be utilised for different household activities. On the street, throughout the camp, he patiently kept on working on the devise all alone and people passing by used to stop to understand what was happening and some of them also had discussed issues with the artist voluntarily.

Dorendra Waribram has worked with his usual medium – video. He has found an old area in the city called Manipuri Basti, which has a long history. The ruling king of Manipur used to own this piece of land and gradually he has given different people ownership of smaller plots of this land. Now almost in the heart of the city, the Manipuri community of Manipuri Basti lives like a smaller Manipur in the heart of Assam. Culturally and linguistically they preserve their lineage. Bhaskar has captured various videos and sound tracks of different places of importance of Manipuri Basti. On the Open Day, he had projected his video in the shape of the road map of the entire Manipuri Basti. Instead of projecting it in any conventional space, the video was projected in the common field at Manipuri Basti. The local people gathered to witness his work like they do it for any traditional festival or performance.

Bhaskar Hazarika was quite anxious about the issue of the littering of the river and the river bank. He did a small performance and created two canvases almost like the action painters, where he has pulled and picked up various objects all rotten in the river bank, which was a result of the practices and worship of Navaratra which concluded just a day before the camp. With the rotten objects like, banana plants, rotten fruit, flower etc, Bhaskar splashed them in his canvases to leave stains. After the layers dried up, he sprayed fixtures and framed them properly to remind people about what they were doing to the river.

Modernism’s confrontational orientation resulted from deep habits of thinking that set in opposition the society and the individual as two contrary antagonistic categories, neither of which could expand or develop except at the expense of the other. The free and self sufficient individual has long been the ideal of our culture, and artists especially, have seen themselves as quintessential free agents, pursuing their own ends. But modernism, and the art that emerged with it, developed around the notion of a unique and separate self, the art generated by connective aesthetics.

The fresh and new effort of the central Lalit Kala Akademi has brought new rays of hope to the new media and alternative practitioners from not only this region but also the country as a whole.

(Rikimi Madhukaillya writes extensively on various aspects of art. Though her area of interest lies in Modern & Contemporary Indian Art, she has been teaching and working on Indian art (including Ancient and popular) as a whole for the last couple of years. Rikimi's latest interest and work involves the contemporary art scene of North Eastern part of India. Email: rikimi.madhukaillya@gmail.com)