Art is inaccessible. It is high brow. It’s for the classes. How often have we heard these words thrown around without giving a thought to everyday lived aesthetics? The film, Contemporary Art within the Visual Cultures of Italy & India, looks at chipping away many of these assertions by exploring contemporary art in both countries. The curators of the panoramic project, Davide Quadrio and Myna Mukherjee, brought National Award-Winning filmmaker Onir as the Director of Photography to ensure that it could take the viewers on a visual journey that is both layered and simplified. In a discussion with Saimi Sattar, the trio talk about the project, its reach and the conversations that it can ignite
How was the project conceptualised?
Myna: I had worked with Davide on an exchange programme of ideas and art between Italy and India at the India Art Fair two years back. We enjoyed this cross-cultural exchange tremendously where there were women artists, three each, from Italy and India. What was surprising was the resonance among them. It was a universal and hybrid moment. While the contours of work were specific to the location, there was a shared universality as women artists.
From there came the germ of an idea. As the resonance was big, we wanted to share it with a wider audience. Things quickly fell in place as Davide was invited as a curator to Aartissima, Italy’s most pivotal art fairs, for India. As a larger narrative formed, we got more ambitious and wanted to communicate the idea behind the curation. We wanted to share this and a film, because of a wider and diverse audience as well as those who are new to art conversation or aren’t art enthusiasts but have an inclination towards it, was considered the best way to do it.
For me, talking about India and its aesthetics can’t be separated from the specificity of location. Instead of explaining this to the audience, they get to peek into the aesthetics philosophies, history and the contemporariness of everyday living, landscape, crafts, arts and political situation.
There is poetic resonance in both countries in terms of themes, materiality, form and more. There are several intersections in the intellectual thought process, the time, the duration and the way artists work and the way nature interacts.
Davide: We were at a stage where we could truly have an exchange. There were questions, about our roles as cultural mitigators and that of culture in the contemporary world, especially in the pandemic. Human beings aren’t just consumers or survivors but are cultural beings. This isn’t just a journey but also critically thinking about the role of culture and art. There’s a strong idea of presenting what it means to be in a cross-cultural environment and presenting your own culture through a contemporary spectacle. The idea isn’t to simplify but to make it more layered.
How much does the ruling dispensation and their outlook affect arts?
Onir: For independent filmmakers, censorship has been there for years and we’ve negotiated different kinds of dos-don’ts. When OTT came, we thought it had more possibilities but now there are new laws. You’re always being told to be sensitive about religion and more but somewhere the artiste has disappeared in the scheme of things. However, art is a compulsion that doesn’t let you stay quiet as is evident from Iranian cinema. It’s about finding a new narrative to tell a story.
D: I think, radicality is happening globally. This situation is conducive to art and culture not being secondary. There’s a strong will to find solutions and ways to do things as well as support creativity in people.
M: One of the most interesting things about art, when you’re looking at radicality, is the origin of the word. The etymology of radicality is roots. So you’re essentially going back to the roots philosophically and symbolically.
I spent 20 years in New York and the burden of representation there was very frustrating. For example, if you were a dancer, suddenly everybody would say this is South Asian dance but we know that there are so many dances in India alone. This means that if you’re leading someone into an exposition of culture, its multiplicity is so enormous, that unless the viewer willingly embraces its complexity, nothing can be understood about culture.
Going from Kashmir to Gujarat, there were so many surprising stories and encounters that there’s no fixed way to think about them. The documentary looks into the multiple truths at this particular moment in time. The wonderful thing is that it looks at both references as well as departures from these historical and material references. It hopes to glimpse at multiplicity in all its glory.
So, do you think these multiple locations add to the storytelling?
M: Yes, of course. There are similarities and differences between — Gujarat’s Maharaja Sayajirao University and Shanti Niketan, Bengal — the two best-known academic institutions of art. Then there are many smaller ones besides folk and craft traditions, weaving traditions or patterns or references, philosophy, spirituality... there is so much. Even when you’re referring to a simple landscape, it is varied across different parts of India.
D: The overlapping of feelings or relationships is communicated by putting together extreme things or differences. This explodes into an emotional reaction rather than a historical or intellectualised analysis. Onir is extremely important in this as the world he comes from and his way of thinking is very different. It’s a journey through feelings, ideas, sketches of ideas, doubts and that is actually what will make the film very appealing as it’s not about a linear idea but a complex journey through references and aesthetics of actually connecting or disconnecting India and Italy.
So you would say that multiple locations and multiple artists are adding to these voices of diversity?
M and D: Yes sure.
D: This is of course a point of view and a rhetorical decision. It isn’t always about absolute. It’s about tentatives, absorbing things and getting back. The idea is to bring all those images and edit them to the minimum and maximum possible.
M: The reason for bringing Onir is that we wanted to bring in an outsider who would also see it from the audience’s perspective with fresh eyes. So if it made sense to Onir, it would make sense to the audience. He’s an outsider to the process while being a part of the journey.
Is this an attempt to bridge the gap as art is considered high-brow and inaccessible?
O: When Myna approached me the idea to make it more “accessible” was exciting. This wasn’t a technical documentary from the point of view of someone superior talking about things you don’t understand but it was the journey of experiencing and understanding the long history of art and contemporary art in the context of nature, culture, tradition and everything else. For me, starting from Kashmir and going to Gujarat changed the way I started seeing form, design and will affect the way I shoot films. To make art accessible needs a small step. This journey helped me take that step and I hope that it does so for other people too.
What were the challenges in bringing everything — the journey from Kashmir to Gujarat and the Italian as well as Indian influences — to one platform?
O: For me, the beauty is in finding threads that are diverse while having a commonality because that is what humanity is all about. It is like poetry, where you are using different languages to convey the same emotion. You see nature, tradition, patterns, forms and colours of Kashmir resonate in Gujarat while being different.
Is the focus more on contemporary artists in the documentary?
O: It is contemporary but comes with thousands of years of history. What’s beautiful is that we are talking about the works of contemporary artists and showing the milieu that brought about their art.
D: What’s interesting isn’t the conflict between past and present but how the present is coming from history. When you’re talking about how tradition is preserved, you also see professionals who build on that tradition. We’re going to alphabets of creativity and showing that art is a discourse and a practise which isn’t in conflict but a natural consequence even though it might go against tradition.
M: I don’t think of history as a progression in a linear way but much more as a continuum. Everything in South Asia is elliptical. What’s new today is old tomorrow and what’s old tomorrow is also suddenly new. Whether it is the materials, colour, the way it is constructed and used by artists on tempura and frescoes. Similarly, while references to metaphor and myths happen in ancient cultures but are also made by very young contemporary artists today.
What is the audience you are targeting and what should they be looking at?
M: We hope that the film serves as an entry point for someone who is interested in art but never has had an exposure to different conversations or some of the different histories of art. At the same time we want artists to find a resonance with other artists either from their part of the world or other parts of the world. It isn’t a historical text but more of symbols and signs that give an entry point into aesthetics. It’s a plural history.
D: We want to have a film that goes beyond the intellectual language that contemporary art had in-built globally and to try to create a narrative that talks to people.
O: It provides an experience to someone navigating art but not so familiar with it but at the same time it has layers and subtexts woven in silently which will give a much more refined narrative to artists who are familiar with the discourse.