Thursday 26 May 2011


Thinking About Concept

Unfortunately the popular term in the art world, “concept note”, by itself is sometimes disgusting and sounds like a ready made stuff that one should carry with them to vomit anywhere. In practice many times the concept develops with work of art itself because the way you display might change the entire concept of your work. Till this day all the evenings go with frantic visualizations of works and criticisms amongst the peers. It’s easier to figure out what kind of work a person is doing and the ideologies one has, but it can entirely change while materializing or make use of the faculties of sound, video, performance and light. Things are changing sometimes, accidental or by deep contemplation. The most interesting attitude I found in this residency is opening up to each ones visualization and ideas about others works. This platform you might not get in a college studio or in gallery shows.

 I often go to Aarti`s studio to see her sketches and to discuss them. I found them interesting only because it doesn’t need any explanation. The way she discusses the condition of being uncomfortable while waiting for something is vibrant and poking . It questions the physical and mental existence of humans strongly with very minimal forms. While talking to her about her sketches closely, I feel she is working site specifically; she might correlate the plain wall in front of her and the struggling of existence in a truly slippery area.
Working with the real space will be challenging for her. How to use the real space and how to make it a part of the work. How to relate the real object with the idea, without losing its existence. It’s very difficult to solve these confusions because this is the matter of co- existence of different objects, rather than putting a new `work’ inside the gallery. So her sketches can be seen as a part of exploring every aspect of the studio space. Sometimes experimentation will throw you into hell but it will give you more pleasure than anything else in this world.
Aarti Sunder is from Tamil Nadu and  we used to talk about the refugee camps filled with the Sri Lankan Tamilians, their existence, their struggle for identity and the government`s filthy cold silence regarding this group of people who look similar and talk the same language as “Tamilians of India”.
I think Aarti`s works respond to these human issues -
What do the well-established so–called nations think about thousands of refugees? Are they filthy junk? Don’t have children to bring up? Artists should be aware about what’s happening to humanity and try to shift the focus to marginalized peripheries. Select and frame them.





Waiting for tea: Aarti and I went to Kotla to buy some wires and i took this photograph while we wait for  tea.
   

2 comments:

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  2. The more I think about this the more I feel the need to express my opinion. Both, Kundo and Aparna have, in their blogs, talked about my work in relation to social and political unrest (particularly the Sri Lankan issue and casteism). While there is freedom to interpret any work in any way, I need to stress upon the fact that I do not see this direct link as true. What I am looking at is human-human interaction, but with no specific issue at mind. My attempt to understand these two issues is a recent act and it has been through people around me, a few articles. I don’t believe I’m in the position to comment on/use them in my work and I haven’t yet even tried to understand how I would incorporate these issues in the work. Having said this I do understand why Aparna and Kundo have written the way they have.

    Aarti

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