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Articles
Art Along the Green Valleys
Art writer Rikimi Madhukaillya provides an overview into the contemporary art scene in Assam and the art activities taking place in spite of the political tumult in the land of the green valleys.
Aesthetic and creative senses mostly gets stimulated in avert conditions. Assamese artists, along with their national counterparts, have been creating art works for ages. But in 1980s, the so-far calm and quite land had witnessed a series of movements and agitations splattered with blood and burnt smell of human flesh. Artists, writers and singers had suddenly woken up from their slumber in the green valley. A section of educated youth forming and joining groups like ULFA was another characteristic of this decade. The intervention in a common man’s life by the militants and the military force had become routine.
The academic systems and the environment were deteriorating significantly. Most of the teenagers and youth growing up during this time were sent out of the land (mostly to Calcutta, Pune, Delhi and later Bangalore) for better studies, most of them had never returned. With MBA, MBBS and Engineering courses, the love for the fine Art courses were also increasing. A couple of the older generation artists had already got trained from institutions including the M.S.University, Baroda, Shantiniketan and Govt. College of Art, Calcutta, like for example, Shobha Brahma, Neel Pawan Baruah etc.
There were art institutions coming up in Assam also with the initiatives of these artists. Guwahati Arts College, with a well equipped graphic studio, has been producing fantastic graphic artists as well as sculptors. Kokrajhar Arts College, Guwahati Artists’ Guild, Assam Art Society etc. are also significantly contributing towards the art awareness and creating an atmosphere for art education. The new generation artists, graduating from the art institutions, specifically the lot who decided to return, had joined the different Government and private jobs while continuing their art practices. They included Raj Kumar Majinder, Kishore Kumar Das, Simanta Jyoti Baruah, Munin Bhattacharya, Prabin Nath and Abanta Borah. Some of them, like Prafulla Kumar Mushahary and Maneshwar Brahma, had sacrificed significant years of their career in building up institutions like Kokrajhar Art College. Maneshwar Brahma, a living example of those days of blood shed had opted to learn to draw and making prints with his left hand after having more than a dozen bullets in his body and right hand. Though in his earlier works, he directly used to express his pain and helplessness of the incident, his later works now opens up ways to site his body as the new space for the violence and disturbance outside.
The next generation, the products of the 90s, had largely emerged out not as followers but leaders who had developed a diverse taste with the film societies like Assam Cine Art Society and the rich and revolutionary literatures from across the world. Samudra Kajal Saikia and Moushumi Kandali are some of the products of History of Arts who had contributed significantly towards the documentation and reading through the scenario at the length through the daily and weekly newspapers and magazines. ‘Chihna’ and ‘Sabda’ are the only two scholarly magazines which have been publishing write-ups and articles based on art practices and art discourses of the region.
Another group trained technically from the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad, Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune and National School of Drama (NSD), New Delhi, had had also taken up the craft of making art with their languages of new media, multi media and metamedia etc. With this group of artists, there has been a visible shift from pure paintings and sculptures to videos, installations and performances. Mriganka Madhukaillya and Sonal Jain through their artists collaborative Desire Machine and their project ‘Periferry 1.0’ had opened a new space and ambience for experimental work inside a ferry on the river Brahmaputra. Other younger artists are also coming up with their interesting projects most of the time to Periferry knowing about a separate audience who would reciprocate to their ideas of art making. With the regular symposiums, student residencies and international residencies hosted by Periferry they are successfully balancing the art atmosphere with newness every now and then.
Internationally acclaimed printmaker Dilip Tamuly had taken up installations while in Denmark and Spain. Just after returning from abroad, he did an installation in Assam in 1990, which could be considered as the first effort of its kind in the region. Later, in 1999, the same artists had hosted a performative installation also, as an early attempt of a performance art. Though lots of experimental works have started emerging from different corners, there is no such evidence of performance art until this year, when Periferry had invited an NSD graduate Rabijita Gogoi (who was collaborator of Dilip Tamuly’s performative installation) to have a performance art session at the ferry.
The generation coming up, passing out from different institutions, had already been showing their early signs of creating ripples in the Contemporary art scene. Mahan Jyoti Dutta who passed out from NID this year has been working on videos and short films. Ajay, who came out of College of Arts, has impressed his viewers with his outdoor wooden sculptures wearing formal shirts and ties representing the tribal of his community getting modernised with Western attire. Dolendra based in Guwahati has recently been a part of Khoj Residency at Delhi and produced interesting works with his film making skill.
Lots of expectations have been laid out to the region in coming days. The central Government and the Ministry of Culture have allocated a huge sum of money towards the art and cultural activities of the region this time. The need to give ways and acknowledge the experiments is a biggest necessity now.
(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 is presently serving Osian’s, as a part of the Research Team. Email: rikimi.madhukaillya@gmail.com )
