The cosmos and the everyday

As you walk through Jitish Kallat’s mid-career retrospective Here After Here , currently on view at the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), New Delhi, you pass by some bamboo poles tied together with ropes resting against a wall. You are almost a little offended that someone left scaffolding material inside an exhibition till you notice the wall text which informs you that ‘Circa’ (2011) is a carefully assembled sculpture made out of pigmented resin. You look closer and begin to see the details of the animals that have been carved onto the poles. You are not sure whether they are eating each other or nuzzling but they look like they are going about their daily business as the poles stand by as a marker of a temporary phase. ‘Circa’ manages to convert every space that it has ever been installed in — whether it is the majestic halls of the Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai, or the corridor of NGMA — into a work in progress. It acts as an intervention, making you stop and reconsider your perception of the world around you.

It is a similar principle that is at work when Kallat presents us with the image of a roti as the waxing and waning moon. But his insistence on the connection between the celestial body and our daily bread doesn’t always lead to interesting results. ‘Epilogue’ (2010-11), for instance, is a sequence of photographs depicting 22,889 rotis as phases of the moon, each moon-roti representing a day in Kallat’s father’s 62-year lifespan. While the sentimentality associated with the work has some impact, visually you are left standing before a series of particularly flat computer-generated images devoid of any possibility of engagement. On the other hand, ‘365 Lives’ (2007), a series of photographic prints depicting 365 bumps, dents and scratches on cars, is operatic in its feel. A part of the work is installed in a corridor at the NGMA, and going through it feels like swimming in a colour field till your eyes begin zeroing in on the dents and scratches. None of these scars is big enough to be a cause for concern and instead appears as an ode to the daily mishaps that all city-dwellers endure.

Kallat is one of the most prominent contemporary artists in India. He has had several international solo exhibitions, including a recent one at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and was the curator of the 2014 Kochi-Muziris Biennale. The exhibition at NGMA, curated by Catherine David, showcases more than a 100 works from a career spanning 25 years. It offers the viewer a glimpse into the wide range of media that the 43-year-old has straddled and some of his recurrent concerns as an artist. The effect the city of Mumbai has on its inhabitants is one such enduring concern in Kallat’s oeuvre. While he has created several grand works revolving around the city, only a few offer a new perspective on the over-represented megalopolis. One such powerful work is ‘Ecto’ (2005), a sculpture made of black lead that depicts a naked boy holding the spout of a kettle to his mouth. He strikes a pose that is at once innocent and menacing. One moment he deserves our sympathy for the thirst he tries to quench and the next he stirs up horror as his act resembles a sexual one. In material terms too, the smoothness of the black lead appears inviting to one’s touch but at the same time the prospect of being smeared on feels repulsive, making the seemingly simple sculpture enigmatic in form and content.

Apart from urbanisation and the relation between the cosmos and the everyday, Kallat has also looked towards history as a source of inspiration. In his intervention ‘Public Notice 3’ (2010), he spelled out a speech by Swami Vivekananda using LED lights on the risers of the grand staircase at the Art Institute of Chicago. The speech was Vivekananda’s plea against fundamentalism and bigotry to the 1893 World Parliament of Religions in Chicago, and the colours of the LED lights were the ones US Homeland Security uses as codes to denote levels of threat. While the work feels all the more relevant today, at the NGMA it finds representation only as a photograph of the initial installation.

One work that suffers because of its installation is ‘Covering Letter’ (2012), another plea against violence. The work consists of a dark space where a letter written by Mahatma Gandhi to Hitler on the eve of World War II is projected on cascading fog. At the India Art Fair 2013, it was displayed in a passage, making it necessary that you walk through it. And as you did so you experienced the anxiety of walking in darkness with strangers and wondering if the vapour will have any effect on you. The work is one of Kallat’s masterpieces because of the simplicity with which he manages to remind us of the horror of gas chambers. At the NGMA, ‘Covering Letter’ gets monumentalised in a large space, making it easier to read the text, but if you cross the fog you end up in a store room.

Here After Here reminds us that though Kallat’s oeuvre consists of several production-intensive, lofty works, it is his sleight-of-hand interventions, often playfully tucked in corridors, that leave a lasting impression.

(Here After Here is on view at the NGMA, New Delhi, till March 14)

Blessy Augustine is an art critic based in New Delhi

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