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Review
The Unknown Families
Delhi-based Vadehra Art Gallery has recently hosted the most awaited solo show, ‘Family/Families,’ by Ashim Purakayastha from December 12, 200 – -January 9, 2010 in their Okhla gallery. Art writer Rikimi Madhukaillya takes a look at the show.
A socio-political activist artist, Ashim Purkayastha has been engaged in thought-provoking representations that deal with questions of land, language and identity crisis in the post colonial Indian landscape. Speaking about the recent series, in an interview with the same writer more than a year back in September 2008, the artist had said, “I am calling my new series ‘Unknown Family.’ These are done as a photography series which I did a couple of years back with the people who had seen violence from close perspective, who had lost one of their family members, who are going through mental trauma. I have been quite close to them ever since I have started working on this series that I was no less than a family member. The drawings of these people, I have given those smudged and hedgy effects. I will have a show of my drawings of unknown families.”
The exhibition includes paintings and a series of photographs of masked and unmasked families put together side by side, enabling contrasting revelations around hostile bigotry, perfidy and despair. The black mask symbolises the protest against their socio-political situation. Purkayastha uses the double image of the families with and without masks to juxtapose the inconsistency of their identity, the mask which is used to cover the faces of convicts before they are shot or hung. “These are my neighbours, who were caught between the State and the rebels, and whose lives changed forever.” Seen side by side on the gallery walls, the double imagery becomes a powerful, even eerie, statement of the conflict.
The paintings on canvas are visual metaphors of mangled or shrunken skin; with brown as a background. “I have grown up seeing these military barricades along the roadsides, with queues of people lined up, their hand raised to show that they weren’t carrying weapons. They (army men) would not even spare the very old, or women,” says Purkayastha. “…. this concept called nation…if you re-think you would realise, we as a nation never existed. The entire subcontinent was fragmented. There were zamindars, rulers, kings who used to rule separate fragments. Ahom rulers were the exceptional, having ruled the region for more than 500 years. It had no connection to the rest of India. When the British rule had come what they did was to centralise the system for their convenience, which is still not distributed. I feel because of this centralised power system these different extremist groups had come up. Be it the economic crisis or identity crisis. My falling figures are almost like the opposition of that unification as one nation. I juxtapose different ideas. For example, North-East is always rich in weaving and stitching. That’s why I have used these weaving like patterns which will be broken down. I feel the word ‘nation’ itself is the problem. I don’t believe in nation, I believe in fragmentation. That’s why people call me separatist. But supporting fragmentation doesn’t mean being separatist. And thus this concept of fallen nation has come.”
After the partition, The East Bengal (Bangladesh) got separated not only from the rest of Bengal but also from the other bordering areas like Assam. People speaking the same (almost similar) dialect, bearing same culture, wearing same dress, singing the same song woke up a fine morning to discover a new line, a Line of Control in the land. In most of the cases, there are smaller rivers or hills, so the line becomes more ambiguous. The flow of poor people from the other side of the land has started then, to never stop. The Government of India has decided to accept the people who had settled in this part of the land till the early 1970 and the terms like ‘Na-Pamua’ and ‘Na Asomiya’ has been accepted for these new people. They have been allotted new lands in the fertile Brahmaputra valley near Dhubri. These people got merged with the land and adopted farming. But even after 1970s, the immigration had not stopped, which, time to time has resulted in conflict with the native tribes and Indian migrant labourers (mostly from Bihar and Orissa).
The hatred for the Bangladeshis has become such deep-rooted that it removed the distinctions between the Na-Pamua/ Na-Asomiya with the illegal Bangladeshi migrants as they speak the common dialect. Earlier the State forces and now even the innocent-looking neighbours have become violent and intolerant. Violence, brutality and bloodsheds have resulted in a long and never-ending list of missing people. Almost every household had a story to share. Ashim being an Assamese, whose forefathers had also migrated to Assam from Bangladesh, has marked his statement through his work in this latest exhibition.
(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 )
