Curator Dr Jyotindra Jain views art as a process that could initiate a conversation. He speaks to S.S. Balan on how being contemporary is a natural reaction to a creative environment
From the wooden bhootha (ghosts) statues made by villagers of south Karnataka to the Mughal period architecture by artistans hailing from Uttar Pradesh, curator Dr Jyotindra Jain will display the lesser known art works of the country at the Serendipity Art Festival to be held in Goa in December.
There will be cane craft works from Bengal that include life-size reproductions of cycles and motor rickshaws, iron works from Chhattisgarh, textiles from Odisha that have saris with episodes of the Gita Govinda woven on pallus and port works by a Delhi-based artiste, to name a few.
Curating the festival is just an extension of what Jain, who loves to intertwine folklore, craft and traditions of various communities with art, has been doing for decades. An eminent cultural historian and museologist as well, he has always sought to bring lesser known art forms from the hinterland of the country to the forefront. He has been instrumental in chalking out an identity for traditional artisans who otherwise would have been restricted only to their village.
“The works that I try to promote are not innovative but these do not enjoy much recognition. In the case of craft, there are five to six million people across the country associated with craft works with access to various platforms. There seems to be a craft bazaar everywhere. For the Serendipity Festival, I was asked to curate folk, art and textile and I wanted to do something different,” he shares.
On zeroing in on Goa as the venue, Jain says that the aim is to assimilate the Goans too into the country’s cultural fabric. “Everything in Goa has been taken over by tourism, and everybody is geared up for tourism alone. There is a kind of metaphorical isolation. In other cities, people get to see artistes and art shows quite often, whereas in Goa, there are hardly any museums. In places where tourism becomes the dominating factor, even the body language of the locals change, as they become so used to bowing before everyone,” he observes.
Known for Other Masters — a stunning exhibition curated at the Quai Branly museum in Paris, in which the best of contemporary Indian tribal art form was showcased — Jain believes that art can be degraded by a bad artiste. “In a big country like ours, only a few people — usually those based in big cities — occupy art space. We then tend to identify them with India as a whole, even though deep inside, we do know to the contrary,” he notes.
Jain strives for artistes like Janghar Singh Shyam, a Gond from Madhya Pradesh, who took his own life when felt overwhelmed by the demands made on him by the modern artistic milieu. Jivya Shoma Mashe of the Warli tribe in Maharashtra, Jain says, has, on the other hand, gone on to transform traditional Warli painting, giving it a whole new form.
On his attempts to make art a process that can initiate a conversation, he says that the works of village artistes are at times autobiographical. “Hence, their creation becomes a personal process, imbued with a lot of originality. A village artisan does reflect contemporary art. Traditional art becomes contemporary, when you have the freedom to experiment. For example, Madhubani artistes in the initial years had the opportunity to paint solely on walls or as part of wedding or religious ceremonies. When they were exposed to alternative canvases like textiles, the said constraint disappeared with amazing results,” he elaborates. He avers that individualism comes with modernity and democracy….rather individual subjectivity is modernity. Being contemporary is the way traditional artistes naturally respond to a creative environment: “It’s like a live, responsible process. And it’s a language that comes from the contemporary environment. It eliminates barriers. There is an explosion of creativity that creates an opportunity for the public to see art forms, which are not repetitive or mechanical in nature.”
He asserts that the moment the artistes deviate from tradition, they actually expand the scope of their tradition. By reaching out to them, promoting and bringing them into the limelight, Jain is doing his own bit.