Artist Rohini Devasher explores the science of astronomy through art in her latest exhibition. She explained the concept to Karan Bhardwaj
Rohini Devasher was born in 1978 and lives and works in Delhi. She received her MA in printmaking from Winchester School of Art in the UK and her BFA from the College of Art in Delhi. Her work has been exhibited widely in India and abroad. Two years ago, she began a project that looked at unraveling the hidden world of amateur astronomers in Delhi. Beginning as a form of collective investigation with ‘astro-nomads’ or amateur astronomers in Delhi, stories, conversations and histories came together in a slowly building chronicle of the almost obsessive group of people whose lives have been transformed by the night sky. Titled Deep Time, her exhibition will be held at Khoj Studios during October 4-13 and then, will travel to Project 88 gallery in Mumbai. Excerpts from an interview:
How did you get into astronomyIJ
I joined the Amateur Astronomers Association in New Delhi in July 1999 during my second year at the College of Art in Delhi. What I discovered was a diverse, dynamic group of mathematicians and astrophysics students, photographers, entrepreneurs, academics and dreamers, who came together every Sunday on the roof of the Nehru Planetarium over chai. Conversations ranged from the latest telescope or new electronic observing aid to the latest science fiction film (or lack thereof). For four years, I was an active member, learning a lot more about navigating Delhi’s night sky both in the Planetarium dome and on field observations during our monthly ‘Star Parties’. Huddled around telescopes, we would gather in fields, rooftops and parking lots to enjoy celestial light shows in the night sky.
How did Deep Time beginIJ
In July 2009, India was witness to the longest total eclipse of the millennium and I went down to Patna to see it. We sat there on top of the Planetarium and stayed up through the night in preparation for the early morning eclipse. But by 3:30 am it was clear the weather was going to play spoilsport. Clouds rolled in and when the eclipse began it was completely occluded. It started to rain, everyone raced around covering telescopes and cameras. The atmosphere on that roof was electric. It was pitch black and we could see nothing, but in spite of that I have never been as aware of my position on the earth as I was at that moment. And I had this intense sense that there was something here, something tangible, something that could be channelled. later the same year, Sarai in Delhi put a call out for their City-As-Studio Fellowship Program inviting applications from artists, architects, authors, scientists to look at the city of Delhi as their studio. I submitted a proposal which was accepted and the project began as a form of collective investigation with ‘astro-nomads’ or amateur astronomers in Delhi. Gradually stories, conversations and histories…came together in a slowly building chronicle of the almost obsessive group of people whose lives have been transformed by the night sky. As an amateur astronomer and an artist, this was also an exercise in self reflexivity. Where did I position myself within the material, or perhaps where did astronomy position itself within my practiceIJ Deep Time is one vignette within this project, which is looking to map common points between astronomy and art practice, through the lens of metaphor.
What is the link between astronomy and artIJ
In 1610, Galileo published his extraordinary Sidereus Nuncius, the first scientific treatise based on his observations of the moon, the stars and the moons of Jupiter through a telescope. His drawings describe a moon pitted and scarred, an astonishingly irregular and not-so-unfamiliar surface. The images Galileo conjures to describe the lunar world are themselves a species of ‘chimera’. These images and metaphors, stemming as they did from ancient myths and fables are at odd variance with the astronomical frame onto which they are mapped. They are one thing standing in for something else, pushing the limits of the known and the imagined. What Galileo was trying to do was to create a physical world out of images. To establish some kind of similarity between earth and the moon, to try and translate these images from the telescope into something that could be understood by the reader.
In rendering the strange conceivable, projection has its limitations. But studies on creative problem solving have shown that one way of gaining new perspectives on a problem is to juxtapose it with something completely unrelated, thereby making the familiar…strange. The proposition, both geographic and metaphoric offered by the work in this show is in this direction. These maps will be an attempt to imply the unobservable on the basis of what can be observed.
Share some experiences of travelling with the amateur astronomersIJ
Beginning in July 2009 through to August 2010, I traveled back and forth across the country with different individuals as part of the process, each trip focused on a stellar event or site — from Patna in July 2009 for the longest total solar eclipse, Varkala for the annual eclipse, the leonids Meteor shower to Mecca’s of astronomy such as the Indian Astronomical Observatory at Hanle, ladakh and the Giant Meter Wave Radio Telescope array just outside Pune.
All these trips were extraordinary, these sites, hidden away from most civilisation, far from any towns and villages are almost symbolic of the individuals that populate them. The astronomers too escape the city as often as possible to find the stars, unspoiled and comparatively untouched. I realised while in leh and Pune that I do a very similar thing right here in Delhi. I drift through or rather across the city, never really touching down completely. Astronomy offers that form of escape, offers these sites of pilgrimage; (I can call an eclipse chaser’s journey nothing else) far from people and place.
Tell us about your artworks.
The works in the show — Monographed Geographies, Parts Unknown, Surface Tracking and Reading into the Stars — are explorations of strange terrains where myth and fiction blur the boundaries of what is real and imagined.
Parts Unknown, set in the high latitude desert of ladakh at an altitude of 14,500 ft, the Indian Astronomical Observatory (IAO) at Hanle, one of the world’s highest sites for optical, infrared and gamma-ray telescopes, is a suite of seven videos which offers a window to a strangely mythic landscape, populated by instruments of both fiction and fact, gazing up and out, transforming our imagination of remote objects as physical places in the imagination. Monographed Geographies are a series of three hybrid print and drawing works that will examine different frames set in astronomical observatories in India. These particular frames are set in the high latitude desert of ladakh at an altitude of 14,500 ft, home to the Indian Astronomical Observatory (IAO) at Hanle. My interest in these ‘alternative maps’ is to try and create a descriptive map of new terrains and fictions, created through the layering of photographs with satellite images of the other spaces on the earth, completed by drawing once the image is printed.
Surface Tracking are a set of 12 drawings where the watcher becomes the watched. The observer is now the observed. These 12 hand drawn maps are aerial views of one of the most important observatories in India, the Giant Meterwave Radio Telescope Array (GMRT) just outside the city of Pune.
Reading into the Stars is a 19-minute audio piece constructed from the interviews and audio recordings with 30 amateur and professional astronomers from India and abroad. The piece is divided into three sections: Reading into the Stars, which explores the deep psychological attachment between the astronomer and the night sky, The Social Imaginary, which questions the idea of the astronomer as a solitary figure, and The Strange, which explores the poignancy and strangeness of some of these histories.
Your forthcoming projects...
I am making a research visit to Scotland in October as part of a project called Below Another Sky. It is a first collaborative programme developed by the Scottish Print Network, a partnership between Dundee Contemporary Arts, Edinburgh Printmakers, Glasgow Print Studio, Highland Print Studio, Inverness and Peacock Visual Arts, Aberdeen. They have invited 10 artists from Scotland and 10 from Commonwealth countries to undertake research residencies during 2013 and 2014. I have also been invited to participate in the fifth Fukuoka Biennial which will be held next year so I am looking forward to that.
