Democratisation or Denudation?

Premjish Achari asks searching questions about the relationship between art and the public sphere in light of the recently concluded India Art Fair in New Delhi The India Art Fair 2012, with a new name and a new venue at NSIC Exhibition Grounds, New Delhi, held from January 26-29 apparently saw a turnout of more than 80,000 visitors. This edition witnessed a remarkable increase in the participation of blue-chip galleries and an increase in the number of international galleries. While painting took a backseat, photographs, installations, text-based works and videos dominated the fair. Well-designed and spacious booths with white backgrounds provided the perfect viewing experience. If the India Art Fair was all about selling and buying, and if we go by the initial reports in all the mainstream media and social networks, then we have to congratulate Neha Kirpal and her team for this great success! But if, as sections of the media and the art world also claimed, the India Art Fair was all about art, education, increased viewership, democratisation of art and outreach, we have to be more critical and ask fundamental questions about whether any of that is possible at such a fair. Any critical response is missing in the initial responses to the gala event which is symptomatic of our times where the media specializes in dumbed down encomium and concentrates only on the money. What we are getting to hear is something similar to what Kunjan Nambiar, the Malayali satirist and social critic wrote in the 18th century about elite sycophants that could be roughly translated as: The deepasthambham (lamp-post) is a real wonder and I should also get my money. So the lamp-post or the India Art Fair 2012 was spectacular in scale and many galleries and artists boast significant sales in the end. But what gets undermined amidst these mindless eulogies for IAF 2012 (formerly India Art Summit) is a critical discussion or debate centring on

the nature of such events and their repercussions on the reception of art works and the art world in general. The highlights were Subodh Gupta, the poster boy of Indian contemporary art, topping the list with his work being sold at $263,000 to Hauser & Wirth Gallery. Pakistani artist Rashid Ranas works were bought by Bangladeshi collectors Rajeed and Nadia Samdani on the first day itself. As per the official IAF version: Eighty percent of galleries reported sales, bookings, serious interest. The postmodern, capitalist dazzling lamp-post completely outshine or obscure discourses on the cultural and aesthetic-political significance of such events. Otherwise why would an artist be more worried about an increase in the number of houseboats, increase in the booking of hotel rooms and foreign tourists than focusing on the cultural relevance of Biennales across the world? Why is there a silence on the production-reception aspects of these fairs? Why are we not witnessing any important art historical and cultural discussions around the upcoming Kochi Biennale apart from personal mudslinging and the rhetoric about artists and the tourist sector benefiting from it? When the art community has shied away from a single critical remark about the fair how could we expect our sensationalist media to cover the politics behind the show or these works? Why does the reporter of an online portal keep on saying Amazing and Wonderful while the gallery owner of Salva Zedan from Saudi Arabia presents her an extremely repressive picture of Saudi Arabia? Shouldnt she be asking her about how these photographs taken by the Princess of Saudi Arabia respond to the ongoing agitation for voting rights, driving rights, and many other struggles for political empowerment in her country? Unfortunately, it has become quite fashionable and cool to talk about and fight abstract entities like global capitalism, patriarchy, caste, surveillance, censorship and so on and be passive about these when it happens right in

front of you. Isnt it important for art to respond to the political and revolutionary uprisings across the globe last year? Isnt it important for art to act as a signpost to imagine and envision a utopian possibility of hope and a better life (Daanish Faruqi)? Isnt it important for contemporary art to respond to the renewed political consciousness of our times and to anticipate that art will emerge from these revolutionary times? (Hamid Dabashi). These two scholars have written passionately on art and the Arab Spring. Does art have to challenge hegemonic and repressive structures and conventions. Hamid Dabashi writes: Public space is not just an idea; it is also a physical form. The great advantage of conceptual art lies in its thematic contemplation of form, which uses its performative disposition to challenge public consciousness and destabilize received notions of time and space. Was there any of that at the IAF? Where are our art critics and historians engaging with our own repressions and rebellions? Which art writing on the IAF engaged with issues of caste, gender, economic crises, displacement, censorship, surveillance, political repression? How can one talk about the democratisation the art world/democratisation the viewership and engage with no larger mass than the usual niche crowd? Who are the new audiences on whose behalf claims are made that they have entered the world of art-viewing thanks to the IAF? It is really sad to say that the IAF 2012 offered a spectacle of based on harsh gradations and hierarchies that kept most people out. The very presence of an exclusive VIP Lounge, over-priced food stalls (prices which were far more than a corporate movie hall and a cup of tea was impossibly prohibitive) and an expensive entry pass defeated the exaggerated claims of democratisation. Many students starved and survived for all the four days just because of their honest passion for art. An artist from Bengaluru mentioned how certain gallery owners are not happy with students hanging around in the booth since it doesnt give enough space

for the buyers to observe their prospective purchases. Many art students, directly arriving from railway stations carrying their baggage, were denied entry while VIP pass holders got entry with whatever they were carrying in front of them. Students were asked why are you here? by the security guards. While the fair was bustling with these elite practices of the organizers, speakers were busy discussing how to decode the Indian market, the driving factors behind collecting art, and corporate involvement in art and culture (some of the burning topics from the speakers forum). Instead of the attempts to democratise viewership, the IAF 2012 stood for the assertion of the fact that art is elitist and it is still too inaccessible for not just the economically deprived sections of this country but even the middle and lower middle classes and certainly for students and researchers. What we also missed in the post-Fair media obsession with the priciest gods and poster boys was any scholarly observation on the art works. Some contemporary artists worth mentioning from IAF 2012 were Marina Abramovic, Gigi Scaria, Rashid Rana, Manjunath Kamath, Varunika Saraf, Sumedh Rajendran, Vidya Kamat, and Anita Dube. Their works might not be boasting high prices but they speak a great deal through re-imagining aesthetic impulses and rekindling radical political aspirations but none of their work was discussed critically at the fair or in the media. Marina Abramovics video The Onion and her photo performance from The Kitchen series re-define domestic space. The Kitchen is her homage to Saint Teresa of Avila and through this indirectly to the women in her life. By depicting the kitchen as the centre of a girls world, Abramovic highlights it as the foundational training centre in a womens life. She says: In my childhood the kitchen of my grandmother was the centre of my world: all the stories were told in the kitchen, all the advices regarding my life were given in the kitchen, all the future-telling through the cups of black coffee took place in the kitchen, so it was really the centre of the world, and all my best memories

come from there. Photographs from the series are set in an abandoned Catholic convent through which she re-articulates gendered space. Gigi Scarias No Parallels is a video showing the parallel lives of two leaders, Mao and Gandhi, of the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the Indian national movement. Scaria juxtaposes the images of Mao and Gandhi from various stages of their lives but also plays on their ideological differences. Rashid Ranas pixelled video and photographs use thousands of images from Lahore. He sees it as an archiving of various graffiti and political slogans from Pakistan. Ranas works also offer various frames of references but the most important one is the art historical. Manjunath Kamaths videos of his animated drawings are humorous and witty but still lurk with tension and anxiety due to the unexpected. Varunika Sarafs large-scale water colour Aasman Se Gira Khajur Me Atka modelled on Rajput and Mughal miniature traditions uses forests as a background to narrate the hideous violence and repression carried out by the state. This beautiful forest acts as the cover to silence dissent and gruesome murders/encounters. Vidya Kamats photo performance Wish Bubble deals with the constant urge to consume in the globalised market by equating the tendency with bubbles floating on water. Sumedhs Leather and Steel series displayed in various booths, and also in Lalit Kala as part of the Skoda 2011 show, articulates the shifts in perceptions, beliefs, human behaviour and value systems in the rapidly morphing contemporary conujuncture. Anita Dubes dark Kal questions the linearity of time by a wonderful depiction of variants or corruptions of the word in Devanagari through the use of black velvet on metal rods. Among the collateral events The Skoda Prize Show with a selection of works of the shortlisted artists put together by Girish Shahane and Eesha Phanse at Lalit Kala Akademi was exceptionally potent, especially L.N. Thallurs engagement with historical artefacts and his use of classical sculptures,

juxtaposing the ancient and the modern. Jitish Kallats bamboo scaffolding illustrates an engagement with the history of colonial architecture and motifs. Almost none of this was located in context and spoken about in terms of commentary on the present. The primary focus of the Fair and the coverage of it were on the question of spectacle, scale and money. Instead of bridging the gap between art and the general public, IAF 2012 has consolidated the elitism and exclusivity of contemporary Indian art and showed that at the heart of the art world is the drive for money and corporate sponsorship. Arts engagement with and commentary on the public sphere, the need for art to shape the public sphere are lost in the blinding light of the neoliberal moment which has enslaved art to Mammon.