Threads of light

As the Indian art world rallies together— the sixth India Art Fair (IAF) received record footfalls and considerable sales — the traditionally non-traditional projects continue to find an audience, even if it was smaller and less focussed on buying and selling. This can be seen at INSERT, an art project that began parallel to IAF in the capital, with a well-attended preview on 31 January.

Featuring participants such as South African artist Kendell Geers, Indian conceptual artist Zuleika Chaudhuri and Israeli architect Eyal Weizman, INSERT runs till the end of the month, with a hop-skip-jump of performances and screenings ranging from the beautiful to the mundane and even the alarming. In ‘Last Minute Exercise,’ for example, participants prepare for death, in an unusual interactive project. Presented by the Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation and the Raqs Media Collective, INSERT2014 highlights that everyone is an artist in the new model, especially the viewer. It is the kind of art initiative you can now find anywhere in the world. While Delhi might be their stronghold, the show’s artistic directors — Raqs Media Collective — consisting of Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula and Shuddhabrata Sengupta present their work the world over, at places like the Tate Britain, London and the Venice Biennale.

Much of the artworks focus on innovation. ‘New Models for Common Ground’, part of the ongoing exhibition, features 25 artists, curators, writers, poets, journalists and lawyers who responded to an open call for submissions around re-imagining the cultural life of Delhi. Though it is difficult to decide if cultural life need necessarily be city-specific, Delhi is the show’s natural home. For, perhaps one of the stars of the show is Mati Ghar, located at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) in the heart of the capital. At the preview, an architect told me that the circular building was constructed as a temporary structure in 1990, for an exhibition — the cracks seem inevitable yet almost affected, and perfectly apt. The charming, weathered building proves that local context is significant, and I heard several visitors more excited about it than they had been by the Fair.

At the centre of the exhibition is Swiss artist Mai-Thu Perret’s ‘Balthazar’, an installation of a donkey surrounded by striking, geometrically patterned blue and yellow walls. Elsewhere, shadows are caught in light by Argentinean Tomas Saraceno; T-shirts are being selected and printed by Thailand-based Rirkrit Tiravanija’s ‘T-shirt Factory’; Delhi’s Gauri Gill gives you mini-books of her photographs. Upstairs is my favourite: Berlin-based artist Ivana Franke’s soaring installation, weaving many threads of light through the darkness. Viewers circle around the room, bending back to see each line twist and start again. As I entered, I saw someone I hadn’t seen for years through the scattered light, and we were both stunned anew. This too is Delhi art culture, of course; recognising people, even in the dark.

While most of INSERT seems loosely connected, perhaps the closest tie is between this installation and the ‘death project’. “If you want to think about death, you shouldn’t do it alone,” says artist Hannah Hurtzig, who put together ‘Last Minute Exercise’ (with Mobile Academy Berlin), an interactive four-hour installation on mentally and physically preparing for death. “Death is a bad topic. It is too big, those who have experienced it aren’t here. But it’s also banal; we will all die at some point.” Hurtzig takes this project around the world and was particularly struck by the responsiveness of participants in Delhi; as opposed to some projects, where it might take her twice as long to elicit a response. “Often people wonder, why would an artist want to talk to a doctor? They may not understand the interdisciplinary quality of this project,” she says, adding, “In Delhi, people really embrace things intellectually.” At INSERT, participants can listen to and interact with surgeons, scientists, academics, filmmakers and journalists and even book private consultations with performance artist Inder Salim or filmmaker Q for ₹10 on how to spend eternity. 

I am among those traditionalists who are curious about work like this, but am not likely to revisit it. Many at INSERT and IAF enjoyed the experimental but preferred the traditional. As Madhu Jain, editor of the arts and culture magazine Indian Quarterly says, “There is a lot of exciting work, but Marcel Duchamp did it all. Have we really gone any further? What is earthshaking today?” Ultimately, it’s still the effect and not the experiment that impresses the audience.  

(Rajni George is a writer and editor based in Delhi)

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