Body as a Mediating Element - Murali Cheeroth on Performance Art (Part 2)

This is the second part of the interview that was published last week. Click HERE to read the First part.

Murali Cheeroth

Deepa: I am reminded of the performances of Marina Abramovic. The ones I have seen most is perhaps hers. Whether it’s with Ulay in “Rest Energy” or “Rhythm 0” and all her other performances she places herself in situations of extreme endurance, the acceptance of physical violation as if she wants to test how much self-affliction can be endured; the limit of it.

M.Cheeroth: Performance art has various traditions in it. The works of Abramovic and Patty Chang are mostly issues related to gender, spiritualism and matters connected to that. I would like to recount one of the recent accounts of a Russian activist-performance artist, Petr Pavlensky. People usually notice a protest when it’s done collectively as a mass. Here, it just shows how an individual can make a powerful impact with Pavlensky’s nude performance in front of the Russian Secretariat by nailing his testicles to the Red Square. It is a challenge to the police and the officials and the law and justice. The life of the artist is perilously at stake. People like Pavlensky cannot be moved, a mass can be made to flee by firing or something but to move someone like Pavlensky the nail has to be pulled out. This single performance made the world aware of those critical issues and triggered the discussion internationally. At another instance, he also performed by wrapping himself with barbed wires and the police couldn’t do a thing to remove him which obviously wasn’t an easy task. They had to bring cutting tools to release him out. He is single-handedly and powerfully challenging the State and the System. From mass-level to individual-level, the protest turned out to be a potent one in recent times. The performance is called “Man and Might”. There are many cases registered in Pavlensky’s name in many countries. I would say he is one of the great role models and inspiration. Such prevailing impact can be brought about only through performance and is not possible through some other medium like painting.

Deepa: Physicality, being in the moment, temporal and immediate are some of the key factors to the soul of this form. How do you think that this art would withstand the test of time? Do you believe in leaving such footprints? (Of course, there’s videography yet...there’s a kind of ephemeral aspect to it.).

M.Cheeroth: I don’t believe in documenting and archiving my work, but, it happens, as part of the current technological era we are living in.

From Colombo Art Biennale 2016

Deepa: Depending on what you explained earlier about body and space, all the components that you mentioned were realized in “Memoir/Collecting the Artists”, it probably came a full circle there. Tell us something about that performance of yours held in the Kerala Museum.

M.Cheeroth: That was one of my favourite performances. When I started it out I never knew that it would take such an innovative intensity. As a student, I thought I will do what I can when the Kerala History Museum reached out to me and not many art collectors were there at that point in time when we started. During those days, the idea of contemporary art museum did not exist in Kerala. There are many personal notes too like with Somnath Hore, K G Subramanyan, Ganesh Pyne. Beyond that, the relationship with all these artists was a great learning experience and they had provided qualitative time which aided my personal growth as well. It all started with my connection there.

We never knew the business aspect of the museum at that point. But when the concept of the museum was beginning to take shape for the first time in Kerala, we were pretty excited. My relationship with, be it the Founder of the Museum or the artists they were more on a personal level than as a mere mediator. Mr. Madhavan Nayar was said to be a strict person but with us, he was always simple. In our early days, he used to place the money in between the pages of the books and used to gift it on occasions instead of handing it over by hand. He used to extend that kind of respect to us. It was after 10-20 years that the Curator asked to present a program where I was to talk about the works presented in the Museum since I was part of establishing it. It was then the performance evolved and I thought about how to bring about freshness and a variation in presenting it and the ‘Walk Through’ materialized.

Not many artists have been part of such museum production initiatives, luckily I got such a chance and to reinvent such a space with the curator. There didn’t arise any need to discuss the process on how to go about it because all these works went through our hands during the selection itself and so it did have our aesthetics, negotiations and encounters. Each work had its own story to narrate and I just used that poetically, that’s all. The audience was a part of it and probably the audience turned out to be more of a performer than I was. The entire story took one hour and no one left in between and later everyone, even many artist friends approached and appreciated me. It was autobiographical and I have used a story-line that not many people knew about. The mindset of the collector, how artists finally bring their work to the museum collection; I was able to tap into their heart-beat and gain insight into it by being part of the selection process. With that insight, I, as a performer, was trying to reinterpret and retell that entire story. It was more like a continuous engagement with space and art objects as well as reinventing the entire narration of making a museum with museum painting being part of it along with the beauty and pain of art making. Now, I have an existence as a performer as well apart from being a selector.

('Memoir/Collecting the Artists' - the performance walkthrough can be viewed in these links - Memoir-Part1 and Memoir-Part2 by Madhavan Nayar Foundation)

 From Memoir at Kerala Museum, Edapally

Deepa: Do you feel that an artist is a conduit?

M.Cheeroth: More than having a kind of feel, it’s continuously having that kind of experience. When you see the artwork and when doing the artwork, there arises a creative surplus...that surplus is what takes you from a conceived idea to an explorative state. If that surplus isn’t there, then it would only make the work dry. That creative surplus is what gives us delight. The continuous activation of this experience is what makes the artist vibrant and on the move.


Deepa: Is it painting or performance where you feel more at ease with the artist in yourself?

M.Cheeroth: Painting is a studio based activity and in that studio-based activity, during the preparation, probably I am a performer. Once the painting goes out of your hand, I am just a person responsible for its creation. But as a performer, you are in the complete experience of it. The success and failure that you encounter in performance are not the same when it comes to painting. There’s a natural element of performance in the preparatory process of painting; you become emotionally engaged and that is translated in the work as well. But once it is packed and leaves the gallery, the engagement ends and the translation comes to a halt. As a performer, the engagement is possible anytime, anywhere. Also, we can bring about all the political dialogues in our performance.

In one of my performances at the Morni Hills Biennale, I used my bag which I had been using for some months with all the bills and tablets and everything else stacked in there. I just emptied the contents onto the table for the audience - for them to see all the objects used during all that time – each object, the imagination of objectifying and how it politically influences my life and the consequent evaluation of why it’s being used like why am I using ayurvedic tablet and negating allopathic medicine? How I organically conserve my body? etc. We can create many such dialogues.

Deepa: Tell us something about “Mind Games”, your recently held show in New Delhi?

M.Cheeroth: It was part of the group show called “Voiceover” curated by Meena Vari. The protagonist is me and it is a faithful search of self-awareness in an urban landscape representing a character who looks back at a lifetime of political activism and politically intrinsic life; a perspective. Images hover in the mind and hence the name. It predominantly questions the political situation of the times.

Pages from my Silent Mind Games/5.6x14ft/Acrylic on canvas/2018

Deepa: You completed your MFA in Santiniketan. The system there is entirely different from the regular fine arts colleges anywhere in India (though the scenario is changing now). How different is it do you think? What is your thought on the current educational scenario particularly with respect to Fine Arts? How engaging and enriching is the teaching-learning process today? Are the students well-equipped to start a career in their chosen path by the time they step out of the colleges?

M.Cheeroth: It’s a really good question. These days I am working a lot at an educational level particularly in architecture. This is a time when we are reinventing and bringing together the basic foundation courses in architecture trying to bring about a difference. In many schools where I have taught, we have brought together 2-3 subjects, integrated it and have come up with a Common Integrated Studio. The base for all these springs from Santiniketan. There we were continuously questioning dialectic and materialistic values of life. If we fail to process that we would never be able to stay there even for a month. Instead, we need to focus on the learning process, learning from life - each and every observation like even the dropping of a flower while walking can cause a lovely sensation and how the sun lights up the land each morning. Throughout the year even in summer, you will find flowers there. In each season the landscape responds and it is manifested beautifully. We enjoyed this during our education there and this experience enriched us once we left the place and provided a positive learning state.

Teachers like KGS, Somnath Hore, Nirmalendu Da have helped us to clear our day-to-day confusions and dialogues that now we can clearly capture the basic skill set, Knowledge, conceptual areas etc. needed for the overall development of a student. This is one of the greatest endowments received from Santiniketan and it is the product of the educational quality of Santiniketan. When we look at micro-macro family setups, these days, in nuclear families communications, challenges, critical meetings, cognitive aspects etc. within the family being absent raises the students to be selfish. Being brought up in such nuclear families makes the students lack social challenges, critical thinking and the like. So when such students enter a college for education and are in this space, they tend to respond negatively from the onset because they may not be able to mingle properly, may lose spontaneity to act and many would have cognitive behavioral disorders - they may be dyslexic, many suffer from insomnia. To some students, the impact of “No” also takes on a dangerous one as they fail to realize the real sense of it. So we need to coordinate really smoothly and well to bring together architectural design and art because architecture and art have the ability to engage...through this engagement the critical thinking, evading social fears, taking up challenges, cognitive development, imagination, etc. can be nurtured. It is based on this study the first year foundation course has been co-ordinated. 

It has been found successful and is being appreciated by many major architectural institutions and we have been called for presentations. People have started realizing the importance and value of such an education. That recognition has been possible because of Santiniketan. Whatever flaws were there in our (Kerala’s) art educational system at that time – the merits and demerits – and what to rectify were also made aware because of Santiniketan. It is an institution that has stood the test of time and has contributed immensely.

From Colombo Art Biennale 2016

Deepa: One performance of yours that had the greatest impact on your art and life (probably it was the most critical one in your life that changed your perspective, your insight, your root deepened in the field) and a performance of another artist that influenced you the most?

M.Cheeroth: Boris Nieslony, Petr Pavlensky – he has greatly influenced me; immensely daring, Patty Chang, Marina Abramovic to a certain extent, Joseph Beuys’ contribution is huge...it’s extremely difficult to pinpoint one. Performance art can’t be anchored at a single point within a structure. Performance art that is connected to activism is what interests me more and not just a body expressing. It needs to propagate and carry forward ideas.

Regarding mine, there are many instances that really influenced me...in one of the public spaces during a performance in Chandigarh, the urban crowd challenged a lot entering into the space, and causing a lot of disturbance but the security guards who watched it all later came, hugged me and said, “You did well that such matters are brought to light in public. It’s a huge thing.” The way they hugged and mentioned that moved me.  Similarly in Bengaluru too, after a performance, some people from the audience and a caretaker and his family from the nearby construction building came and appreciated a lot. There have been many such beautiful moments and experiences when least expected people approach you. Many often come and ask questions too. With each performance, we become a different person. We get to know ourselves more. We realize that every stance, our body, every minute expression, even silence has so much importance attached to it and can be read closely as well. It is amazing actually.

Deepa: In your own words “Building up art practice as a sustainable livelihood model in a country where art market conditions are not very favourable / supportive to young budding artists was the most difficult challenge that me or any Indian artist face.” What else would you like to add to it?

M.Cheeroth: I think I will go back to one of my favourite teachers, Somnath Hore, who once asked my plan after BFA. I said that I may look for a job or that I may join MFA. To which he replied (the gist of which was something like) - Do your work. Work is important. Everything else should coincide with your work; work until you gain that consciousness. Only then will you realize that our life moves forward accordingly. When you indulge in other meaningless things, you deviate from art. Art is our constant companion, our friend...work until it becomes that.

Format your life accordingly and it will move forward consequently. When you start realizing that, you will understand that the greatest thing in your life is how you synchronize your entire life with that activity. Once you get that, your life will go on smoothly. That is where day-to-day challenges and sustainability arise.  I have noticed one thing be it KGS or Somnath Hore, they will be working all day long in their studios. Anybody who requires their assistance approaches them in their studios. They don’t move out. To make art a way of life is the greatest challenge and not how many likes one gets on Facebook, or your picture in the newspaper, or the number of shows one has been part of. Art is always there with you everything else that appears in Page 3 is transient.

Still from the recent video ‘The Pledge’

Deepa: What are the new works you are engaged in right now?

M.Cheeroth: I am engaged in painting right now. Performances are also on the way. I was part of the discussions at the Mathrubhumi Literature Festival that was held recently in Thiruvananthapuram.  It was about the political challenges of our times.
I have been invited to B V Doshi’s Vastu Shilpa Foundation who will be conducting an International Studio with students from the University of Michigan and from India. The Studio is entitled "At the Cusp of Land and Water". It’s from 26 to 28 Feb and from 4 to 6 March 2019.

You can reach Murali Cheeroth at cheerothmurali@gmail.com

I am assured that this interview will be beneficial to all the students of art who wish to know about this genre and to the fellow artists and of course everyone else who would like to have an idea of what goes on in the art world particularly the work and process of an eminent artist like Murali Cheeroth.

Part of this conversation was by email and part of it was recorded which was then translated, transcribed and edited by me. Thanks to Murali Cheeroth, for the enlightening conversation that made this interview possible.  I sincerely hope that I have been able to do complete justice here. 

Hope you found this interview useful and informative. You can send your feedback to mail.huesnshades@gmail.com.

This interview was recorded from our phone conversations (in our native tongue, Malayalam and English) and later I translated-transcribed and edited it.

Image courtesy: Murali Cheeroth

Body as a Mediating Element - Murali Cheeroth on Performance Art (Part 1)

A well-known name in the national art scene and internationally as well, Murali Cheeroth has become almost synonymous with Performance art in India. Currently working with major architectural institutions across the country, Cheeroth completed his BFA and MFA from Kalabhavan, Santiniketan. He started with painting and later diversified into video and performance art. He has exhibited both in solo and group shows across the globe and has won several awards and scholarships. An eminent artist with theatre background he immerses himself in ‘space’ entering a trance-like state engaging with his audience and the urban landscape. His paintings too depict an urban landscape that reminds us of photo-realism and yet is more of a graphic representation with the elements of cinema, architecture and predominantly characteristic neon colour codes. Murali Cheeroth’s works are a visual imprint of what lies around him which is perceivable and yet sometimes which is hidden in plain sight and needs the insight to formulate it; they are overlapped realities. There is an underlying streak of violence lurking all along which keeps the viewer/audience on edge. His works are not just about city life but an exploration of the physical and psychological impact of the immediate environment as well. Cheeroth’s ideals and his true humanitarian spirit to engage with the soul of the mass and the essence of the land makes his art much more than just an entertaining practice. It calls for engagement, involvement, participation, dialogue and connection in every form possible. The honesty and genuineness in his voice speak for itself. He is here to propagate ideas, to disturb the comfortable, to stir the viewer into action rather than just be a bystander of an event.

Here, my emphasis is on Murali Cheeroth’s performance art and the interview is devised accordingly to know more about the genre of art that is becoming the fast-focus of many of our current exhibitions.

Murali Cheeroth

Deepa: Let us begin from the beginning, can you give us a brief about yourself – education, family, work etc.

M.Cheeroth: I was born and brought up in an agrarian family, in Mullassery, Thrissur district. Temple rituals and Ayurvedic practices were part of our daily lives and childhood learning.

My art education includes a Diploma in Fine Arts from Government College of Fine Arts, Thrissur, BFA and MFA from Santiniketan, West Bengal and advanced computer diploma in digital media. I am currently based out of Bangalore.

I have exhibited my works in over 100 significant shows across the globe in the last two decades. Among my collectors are corporate institutions, museums and private art collectors. In the past I have worked extensively with printmaking and theatre, now I primarily work on painting, video and performance. My visual works refer to a wide variety of sources in the cultural sphere and contain within them a deep conversation with the history of representation in visual media, fine art, cinema, music and architecture. Within the context of the history of visual representation, my current explorations include the architecture of the city, urbanization and urban cultures. They look closely at the ideas of re-construction, infrastructure, technology, speed and change, intersections of local and the global, multiple layers of urban identities and so on. I situate each work within larger thematic explorations in humanities, social sciences and in visual art media.

Deepa: How would you describe your art?

M.Cheeroth: As a creative practitioner, my mind is always occupied with constant research and reading that I am engaged in, and my work is a natural progression of these thinking processes. So, when I begin a painting I have great clarity about what I want to do and I don’t face any challenge.

Live art completely negates studio practice. It’s challenging to simultaneously run studio practice and performance art.

It also makes a lot of impact on the artist as a social activist. It also brings a lot of new tools for your practice. As Gramsci mentioned, it’s a question of the human encounter - the encounter of body and space.

Terrestrial verses I/4 x 4 feet/acrylic on canvas/2019

Deepa: Since you mention Gramsci, body and space, do you think art is a passive revolution or how effective is its intervention? The body serving as a political arena in itself, does it resonate with dominant political ideologies and structures?

M.Cheeroth: It’s said more as a resonance. If we look at that aspect ‘Body’ is like a cliché. We still continue exploring the possibilities of body and space. I was just pointing out a basic analogy and the feel that it provides. It’s more about a strong standpoint. But it doesn’t stop there – in the thinking or conversing or the ideas that we conceive. It goes beyond that; the day-to-day experiences or challenges are entirely different from the earlier ones. The current time calls for a more research-oriented approach. Body is not just a tool, it is a mediating element too. Body and mind has its nuances like the psychological aspect, body as a mediator that sparks the interaction or dialogue with the audience, identifying the spaces and the different aspects of these spaces like the communication, movement, continuity, the functionality, body as a measurement, body as a user – all these are in function during a performance. From 50s-60s, Body is the strong element of performance art and it has reached its maximum richness, the peak now. Many artists like Patty Chang, Joseph Beuys and so many others have used the body in a way that it has become a reference point for the later artists. That is how I see it.


Deepa: What according to you is performance art? Is your performance spontaneous or scripted, at times?

M.Cheeroth: Performance Art is live, it’s spontaneous, and it reveals itself in the present, in front of the audience. It also engages in the act of creation as I perform. Where I engage my body, space and other cognitive articulations. I work on a human scale and its manifestation and outcome cannot be known in advance.

I don’t do much planning for my performance. I will have a very simple idea or a seed in my mind. Once I am familiar with the space where I am going to perform, I arrive at a broad concept that I want to touch upon in my performance. When I start performing I start exploring this concept and at times, it’s more of an evolution, wherein I spontaneously evolve many aspects/layers in the performance - as thoughts and space interventions unfold itself each and every moment. It’s spontaneous. Scripted ones become a theatrical activity.

Conversations -1/Morning Hills Performance Art Biennale/2018

Deepa: Do you think activism is an inevitable part of performance art - as it does question social reality, the politics of identity, the constraints-no constraints of space and physicality, the cause and effect of the world/situations around and much more - or is it activism itself that is performance art?

M.Cheeroth: Historically yes, it’s a commitment towards the art fraternity and its historicity. Many artists’ works reflect a historical conflict between activism and image making or visual simulacra. In contemporary art today there have been a number of artists engaging in works that attempt to collapse the relationship between art and activism, aiming to create a democratic and historically integrated motion of political practice.


Deepa: Do you think this visual simulacrum - since it is supposed to not have a base to cling on to - can be misleading? Do you think they misconstrue the facts/truth of shared existence that they project?

M.Cheeroth: We cannot stand aloof and make an existence. There is an aloofness as an artist in the query which is not possible. There’s a spontaneity while painting and that spontaneity comes from your political leaning and political consciousness. The commitment or responsibility of my earlier days is not appropriate today because the question of originality and organic spontaneity was broken there – the existential questions were all different then. When we say that we are ‘ecosophical’ - ecological and philosophical, our vision is made clear. It is clearer when you take into consideration the education scenario where when a teacher nurtures the student, the teacher ideally touches upon every aspect that the student needs. In today’s art world, everything from the boundary itself gets redefined and it’s probably the position that we take that makes the questions relevant and it’s that relevance that we impose or question in the contemporary and post-modern times. In today’s times, instead of becoming a part of any art movement it’s better to generate a local and global context to your work. That is what creates the peculiarity of your work and practice. It is because we’ve redefined the practice of our work, the practice of running our economical side that we are able to make a sustainable contribution. Unlike the social commitment some 20 or 50 years ago; it’s more gradual, spontaneous and organic. Each artist needs to practice it with more verve than ever. I am someone who likes to see it in that light.

Conversations -3/Morning Hills Performance Art Biennale/2018

Deepa: Do you think performance art is marginalized since it is non-traditional in the so-called-mainstream visual art world, specifically in India? What do you think is the scope and range of Performance art in India in the near future?

M.Cheeroth: Earlier it was very much marginalized and part of alternative art practice. After the economic recession in 2008, many innovative art programmes, many artists’ collective or artists’ commune and individual artists started reinventing the gap between art and art practice. The popularity of performance was an offshoot of this and many artists transported performance art to a higher level.

On the other hand, the gallery sponsored performances started to take place. In a nutshell, we can say that performance art was scaled up outside the gallery, but, now it has become a part of the gallery activities also. The individual artists try to demark and reinvent the thin line between the market and the new audiences. The audience is a part of each of the performance. The happiness is always gained through a small gathering with flexible techniques introduced and performed so that the viewer could engage as much as they want to. However, the political performer always tries to negate and eradicate the conventional notion of the audience and viewership. 

That said, it has now become an integral part of the mainstream. Now even international art performance festivals take place in India and major galleries promote performance art, even the major platforms like India Art Fair, Kochi Biennale etc. have started to hold performances.


Deepa: You say that you are building “...a new visual experience that is clear and vivid.” Would you base it on reality or fantasy? Which one do you prefer? Or is it a mix of both? How much clarity would you like to offer to the audience? Would you like to comfort them or cause discomfort and stir them up into action?

M.Cheeroth: Social and historical layers are very important in my work, intangibility which comes out of the mixture of all these things create new visual reality for my spectator or audience. Art becomes part of their ownership. It’s a question of freedom, wisdom and liberated spectator comes in a very dialogical way, which is more or less, like Barthes said: “Author is dead or author is absent”. Who is the author? Who creates that authorship in an artist? What is the intra relationship that he built up with his inspiration and subjectiveness? Or, how he extracts the authorship from the process of creating artwork from the sociological issues? What are the values we give to an authoritative object maker? And since an object is re-interpreted, re-oriented and replaced, from the history of contemporary art, the question of collectibles comes to the picture. Where does the question of the audience or the spectator become the participator in your practice? A matter of democratic viewership and non-democratic elite viewership comes in. Why it’s important to give value to an art practitioner? Who said everyone is an artist? Everyone is an artist. Artistic activity is a game, game without object and toys and without memories, the moment of shared communication is the realization of the artwork (Rikrit Trivanija). What happens between the people and the so-called ideologue in that case?  If the public is not there, the piece of artwork doesn’t exist.

Notes from Other Side of the River /Crimson Art Gallery/Bangalore/2016

Deepa: How do you think your art impacts the audience? What are the varied reactions that you receive during and after your performance since it would be more questions that you would raise? Sometimes the performance gets extreme causing anxiety, discomfort even pain and probably depressive environment by risking one’s own body making it the medium. What’s your take on that since you have done performances like “Frequency (Hz)” and “Unmarked” (video series) etc.? Any memorable recollection?

M.Cheeroth: Performance art is always a risk because you try to overcome body dynamics and articulation, even space and objects are very challenging. Once you start to do a performance, you visualize and enter into a very imaginative and intangible world. However you think and articulate, certain things will happen and certain things can’t…so you start getting into your own norms of the world, and you become a practitioner of those norms.

I have gone through various experiences in my performance. As part of Colombo Biennale, I was performing on the floor, where I have been using different tools like books, broken pot, fabric, knife etc. In the middle of the performance, I was negating my body using different situations and objects, the challenge was object-body-space co-ordinations. In action, as I was pulling out my skin layers, one of the audience interfered and handed over a very sharp knife to me. It was a challenge as a performer to perform with a sharp material like that. Your immediate impulse is not to withdraw from the situation but continue your action. I continued. I cut a part of my body, it started bleeding slightly. I took the challenge and I achieved perfection, I believe. 


Deepa: Causing harm to oneself – do you think that’s essential to art? Does that validate the act? The viewer giving you the knife to see whether you would get realistic, is that act on the part of the viewer permissible or acceptable since he’s trying to intensify the pain that is REAL? So where is the line drawn in performance art or is there a line at all?

M.Cheeroth: See, these are accidental matters. When we start a performance somewhere, it is time-based interventions that we conduct and the challenges there are real and to accept those challenges are essential. ‘Body’ and ‘life’ are different, the body is just a tool...it’s a continuously engaging and a mediating element. If you ask “Will it hurt?” The answer is “Yes, it will.

Chris Burden did it all the time. In one of his performances, he coaxed a friend and stood in the freeway where vehicles sped at 300-400 km/hr. It is a kind of self-infliction. When the body is on such challenging spaces, the way it’s used, converted, referenced and expressed is the engagement of body dynamics and performative time. I am not saying that the performance artists’ are to be celebrated for this reason, just stating the kind of intense involvement present in it. If I attack the audience in between my performance they can’t say anything to me.

During Pagan Festival in Kochi, there was an uproar saying I literally tried to ignite the space and was verbally attacked saying there were a lot of priceless works which could’ve been destroyed. But I just said one thing if lighting up space was part of my performance I would’ve done that.

I am reminded of Douglas’ work “You Killed Me”, a powerful one in that it was placed just outside during one of his solo shows in front of the gallery. Nobody dared to touch it. Art is a political dialogue, a political practice and whatever is right for it has to be done. That is why when a knife is handed over you just slip into a trance-like state. We don’t think anything else during that point in time.

(This is a two-part series.  The second part of the interview will be published next Monday ie. 18 Feb 2019)

Image courtesy: Murali Cheeroth

Profile Pic: Mathrubhumi Lit Fest @Dwijith

This interview was recorded from our phone conversations (in our native tongue, Malayalam and English) and later I translated-transcribed and edited it.

The Weight of the Body

When you consider how much you weigh not on the weighing scale but otherwise – emotionally, mentally and in every visceral way possible; the question takes an entirely enigmatic turn than you can't foresee it. There are such instances I have come across when you weigh more than you can turn out to be when you no longer can bear your own weight, when you feel over-powered and burdened by the burgeoning weight of your being. Recently I came across an article in 3:AM Magazine (Thanks to Joseph Schreiber and Mini Menon for introducing me to some incredible writing) titled “The Weight of a Body in a Photograph” by Elisa Taber and that set me into profound thought for I have experienced it in an altered and elusive way myself.

You can read Ms.Taber’s article in the link mentioned to get an idea of what stirred me into this post. The article put me on course reminding me of paintings and/or people whose weight I felt at least for a minuscule of time. But that minute time was intense enough to leave its unflinching mark on me; to which I get back often whenever I think of them. They range from Amrita Sher Gil to T K Padmini, from Sylvia Plath to Virginia Woolf, from Paula Rego to Hopper.

The Epiphany

Hunched back frail nude seated on a wooden chair with a hat near her right hand, and framed by a morose and obscure curtained backdrop, gazing into the unknown as if she is no longer present in the room but has been transported into a yearning past. Her melancholic eyes speak manifold. Amrita Sher Gil’s ‘The Professional Model’ doesn’t appear sensuous or vulgar or tantalizing but just a vulnerable lost soul, humane. “There is nothing erotic about this. Only stillness and a nudity that conceals so little she nearly seems dressed.” (Elisa Taber, ‘The Weight of a body in a Photograph’ Elisa was speaking of a different image there and yet it perfectly fits here.)

The Professional Model – 1933  

Pic: Pinterest: Mike Catalonian

T K Padmini’s embracing couple, for am unsure of the title, though apparently romantically involved weighs more than meets the eye. There is a sense of the pulsating breath, an eternal longing in the gaze and the embrace as if they were meant to be and yet would never be. The apparent omen is deepened by the passionate red. It is definitely a story left unfinished – a fragment, wherein the lovers never ‘lived happily ever after’. It’s more elegiac than a sonnet. If you consider Padmini’s own life, she has been weighed down and forgotten in the lanes and by-lanes of the past than all her contemporary artists who apparently weren’t women.

Pic: www.edasseri.org

Virginia Woolf’s ‘A Room of One’s Own’, ‘To the Lighthouse’, ‘Mrs. Dalloway’, ‘The Waves’ etc. were part of my Masters’ and I felt distanced from it. They were pretty intense for our understanding or so we felt at the time. We used to think why should the writers write something that shakes up our very existence providing parallel worlds that’s disconcerting, miserable, often times alienating. You enter and you are totally lost and yet you find your way out somehow by the end of it dragging yourself through the labyrinth. But Virginia herself couldn’t and the way she closed on her life by stuffing stones in her coat pocket to ‘facilitate’ herself drown, visualizing that always weighed me down to suffocation.

Pic: bbc.co.uk

Immediately Sylvia Plath comes to mind, I think of her more often than Virginia though. One of the most talented Confessional poets who should have lived to realize her unparalleled potential. Suffocation from carbon monoxide, her body always weighs down many a soul. It crashes upon the reality of revelations and confessions. No one could help her in spite of it all happening right under their noses. Her 'words' often cried for help. "Placid exterior and turbulent interior" Plath's quote often repeats itself in several situations.

"Dying
Is an art, like everything else.

I do it exceptionally well.
I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I’ve a call."
(Sylvia Plath’s poem “Lady Lazarus”)

Pic: Poeticous.com

Paula Rego, I feel, prefers ‘bodies’ that are rotund and muscular in frame, not frail, lean and lanky and yet they appear weightless or more than their bearing depending on where they are placed. They are subject to all sorts of cavernous, dark, mysterious and sometimes structured violence. ‘Snow White swallows the poisoned apple’, the ‘Dog Woman’ series, ‘Abortion’ series, ‘Love’, ‘Flood’ and almost every other work of Rego imbues with the harassing weight – drifting, floating, crawling, slithering and/or static.

Pic: Saatchi gallery

In Edward Hopper’s ‘Summer Interior’ even though the woman’s face is obscured one can read so much emotion curled up in the folds of the sheet and bed and the lady herself. Semi-nude, she sits slouched on the floor dragging the white quilt from the unmade bed. She has a lowered, despondent gaze; entirely absorbed in her thoughts and is unaware of her surroundings. The patch of streaming light from the open window on the right end is the only sign of relief from the otherwise sullen setting. The white of the sheets and her sleeveless shirt adds to the light which otherwise would have engulfed in darkness. There is a craving to let go off everything they are holding onto though that seems immediately impossible because either something is brewing or just ensued. Edward Hopper has not only ‘his people’ but the very structure – whether it’s an old barn, a house by the railroad, a lighthouse, an office, a diner or even a street – weighing down on itself.

Pic: edwardhopper.net

(Though there are still many more in mind, I think I will halt here.) 

Whatever the image... ‘those faces’ cease to exist, it is like unmasking and making it apparent. The bodies themselves cease to be and beyond the natural forces in control. You feel both weightless and more in weight depending on where you place yourself both in context and out of context.