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‘Three Storey House’: In a new solo, Anita Dube uses her art for political commentary
Summary
In an ongoing solo, artist Anita Dube paints a picture of the unsettling realities of our times, and the perpetual human desire for the sublimeMetaphysician, historian and philosopher Ananda Coomaraswamy’s aesthetic theory advocated the role of art as a contemplative tool to understand the divine. The theory finds an unintended yet nearly accurate visual representation in Anita Dube’s ongoing exhibition, with a bilingual title, Three Storey House or Timanjila Ghar. Except that Dube, self admittedly, is not interested in the religious but the sacred. “As a secular person, I am interested in finding out if I can make an icon, something that has the same qual ities as a religious thing; it takes you to another place. Why do people need religion? To get out of the mundane, and reach another level… spiritually. So I wanted to make something that is spiritual but not religious," she says.
Experiencing Three Storey House, exhibited across the three floors of Delhi’s Vadehra Art Gallery, is indeed akin to embarking on a journey towards a pure form of expression. While the ground floor represents the grimy realities of human existence, the first floor is dedicated to the great thinkers, poets and lead ers, whose words packed life lessons. The viewer is then led into a completely abstract field of colours on the top-most level, prompting introspection and inducing a state of equanimity. Coomaraswamy, in 1928, termed the culmination of such an ascend salvation; Dube calls it “a meditative sublime celebration of love in all its wondrous hues".
Dube is an art critic/historian-turned artist, and throughout her practice, text has served as a cue for her visual lexicon. Her latest body of work, which she has created over a period of nearly two years, is no exception. She turns to George Orwell’s seminal text The Animal Farm to lay the foundation of the exhibition on the lowest level. Here, she taps into the Freudian phenomenon of Thanatos or the death instinct. She goes on to explore the carnivorous (read self-centred) nature of human existence through motifs of the wild—zebra, leopard, snakes—and delivers a critical commentary on the dirty politics of survival. Take for instance, Big Mountain. Small wooden pieces, spelling “main" in Devnagari, are placed on top of each other to form a pyramid like structure with a larger “main" on the top.
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The work is a poetic visual of human ego. “The structure resembles that of a dahi handi, where people climb on top of each other to break the handi, which is a type of jackpot. My interpretation is that the “main" (on top) is like a supreme ego, and beneath it are these small people climbing up to produce this kind of a mountain. For me, that was an important comment about how things are today," says the 66-year-old artist. The animal-like instincts of humans are brought to the fore in Half Leopard A & B. The two halves of the animal are placed opposite each other, while exposing the insides of the beast. Interestingly, what lies within is a chopped hand of a woman. “Everyday in the news, we read about some woman or the other being chopped into pieces and stored into refrigerators and suitcases. The work is a portrait of the violence and misogyny that is prevalent today," elaborates Dube, who is among the very few Indian artists today who continue to use their art for political commentary.
Her choice of texts is proof. Big Zebra for instance has Aamir Aziz’s poem Sab Yaad Rakha Jaega (which talks about resilience in the face of caste- and reli gion-based inequality and discrimination) carved into wood, all of which is uphol stered in zebra printed velvet fabric. The black and white stripes, combined with the textile’s sheen, make the text almost illegible. One needs to train their eyes to read the text, every word of which lands in the viewer’s consciousness with renewed emphasis. “The works do bring the texts back into reckoning. But, the fact that things are not legible is also because I want to stress that I’m a visual artist. Producing visuality is my number one priority. Text is just part of my visuality. I highlight it as and when I want to, or not, 2018. It is also an exhibition with which she establishes herself as a visual and conceptual artist, rather than her previously dom inant identity of textual and political artist. I want to, or not, because I’m not reproducing anything. I’m just transforming things into a visual. And, this I have done throughout," she says.
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The text-based visuality continues on the next level, which houses velvet tapes tries in bright colours superimposed with well-known quotes by personalities such as Nelson Mandela, Mireille Kassar, B.R. Ambedkar, Martin Luther King among others. While she uses the visuality of the chadars that are used in shrines, the juxtaposition of powerful text renders the works evocative and intimate—a sensation which is heightened exponentially on the top-most level, where the text disappears leaving behind serene velvet can vases in a multitude of hues.
Three Storey House is a landmark exhibition for more reasons than one. This is Dube’s first solo exhibition since she curated the Kochi Muziris Biennale in “As I’m getting older, I’m opening up the field for myself. I don’t want to be boxed as just a political artist. Through the (three levels of the) show, I’m actually making a declaration that I want to be an artist on all these registers of functioning, thinking and being. As and when it’s necessary for me to make a commentary, I will. Sometimes I may actually be working with movements in society, and make banners for them. Through this (show), I’m actually declaring what the possibilities are for a non-alienated artist’s life," she says.
‘Three Storey House’, which features a total of 27 works, is on till 19 April.
Trisha Mukherjee is a Delhi-based writer and arts professional
