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.

Where Art Happens - Thought is also a Matter - Kochi Muziris Biennale 2018

I chanced upon Vaishali Oak and Raju Sutar at one of the exhibition Openings in Gallery 27, Mattancherry two years ago. Vaishali and I connected instantly, and from then on we have met on and off at a couple of exhibitions. Raju had curated a show “Roots/Routes” during Kochi Muziris Biennale 2016. It was one of the best shows and it was part of the Collateral project as well. This year Raju Sutar is back again in Jew Town with “Thought is also a Matter” as part of the Collateral project organized by artexperiments.com. The artists include Vaishali Oak, Sandip Sonawane, Rajesh Kulkarni, Hrishikesh Pawar and Raju Sutar himself.

“How does it (thought) work on our minds and on different levels, conceptual or otherwise; or does the thought go beyond? I think it is important to question/challenge the very idea and go deeper instead of adopting it as it comes to you.” – Raju Sutar (from the Concept Note)

Enormous canvas paintings, huge fabric assemblages, colourful canvas on wooden mounts in basic shapes, languidly floating terracotta ‘matters’ in steel wires and culturally-transmuted performative pieces are not what you expect when you hear the title “Thought is also a matter.” Time and thought go hand in hand. Not a moment passes without a thought as we, humans, as are so cluttered with thoughts. While the sages had enlightened thoughts, we normal mortals have chaotic ones. It’s an exploration into this day-to-day seemingly mundane and unconscious process which is made exciting, colourful, humungous, surreal, performative and gestural in “Thought is also a matter.” Each artist reflects on the effect of thought in their lives and brings out their exclusive perspective.

Vaishali Oak and Raju Sutar

Entire Existence is a Thought Except Now – Raju Sutar

Raju Sutar explores the concept of ‘NOW’ and what this ‘now’ can offer. It’s an interlude between past and future. What is now will become past in a moment and it shapes the future as well. So 'Now' is crucial. He has made seven enormous 12’x42’ canvas with ‘action paintings’ as Raju calls it as his focus was just on actions of the now and not on the movement. The movement would have needed more organized thought and he was just living the now, capturing the fleeting thought by thought. There is also an animation that captures the movement of his action paintings like scribbles that web out of a plain surface projected onto the wall.

“...by avoiding movement of thought I am trying to look at the possibility of mutation to happen in the moment of ‘now’. Is there a possibility of mutation to happen in NOW? Which may change the course of the future. Yes, that is the quest going on...” ~ Raju Sutar

Seed Post – Vaishali Oak

An age-old thought revisited. A seed has always been associated with life and propagation of life and ideas. To Vaishali thought is a seed that when sown at the appropriate time sprouts into a sapling, which when nourished and nurtured would grow into healthy 'beings' providing food, shade and shelter. All life processes begin from that seed and ends in the seed. Follow its journey and you can journey along into the depths of your being. Vaishali’s fabric assemblages are intensely colourful drawing our eye and prompting it to move from one end to the other and back again. You could see the layered fabrics, the tear, the threads, the peeping warp, the in-between muted tones and you see the evolution of her thought. She has a black seed installation hanging from the roof ready to burst to life. Vaishali has even devised a Seed Postcard embedded with seeds that are available at the counter which can then be sent to your loved ones who can sow these cards and there you go with a ‘life’ sprouting from within.

“There is a great significance in the evolution of civilization. We are the products of what has been sown yesterday and this process will go on. When we dream of a brighter future we have to sow seeds ‘now’. ...Just as the way seeds travel and propagate, our thoughts do travel and propagate in our minds.” ~ Vaishali Oak

Breaking it Down to the Basics – Sandip Sonawane

According to Sandip Sonawane, we break down a complex image into simple shapes in the initial process of drawing for a better rendition of the image, for a proper grasp of the proportion and details. Whether it’s a circle, a triangle, a square etc. they are but the joining of lines to form an object/shape. So any complex picture can be broken down into basic shapes and can be seen en-route formation. They are also the boundaries that project an exterior and an interior; the field within and without. At first glance from a distance one could see monotones of shapes – circles, squares and triangles – in red, yellow, black etc. but as you near you could easily discern the layers of paint beneath; a camouflage of thoughts in 6’x6’.

“The idea is to break down the thoughts in a similar way. The thoughts are complex in nature we try to break them down to make sense. Whether it makes sense or not.” ~Sandip Sonawane

A Thought about a ‘Thought’ – Rajesh Kulkarni

Rajesh Kulkarni’s take on ‘thought’ is much more dreamlike and esoteric. Thoughts are like particles that hang around and once it steps into the past it immediately transforms that energy into enigmatic, abstract and clustered forms. Rajesh’s “Thought” is 15’x45’x28’ where beautifully sculpted terracotta forms float indolently in space through thin steel wires at the slightest breeze. One can even walk around it absorbing the sight of those gleaming earthy forms as the sun hits the roof, seeps through the pores of the warehouse and falls on its ‘raw skin’.

“When I thought about a ‘thought’ I thought that the thought that travels with speed, that has fickleness of present and at the same time, there is a sense of strong flowing reality. Present that annihilates the moment it creates itself. There is a grasp of multi-faceted analysis of the moment and amalgamation of mixed illusions co-existing.” ~ Rajesh Kulkarni

ITIAN – I/Travel/I/Arrive/Not – Hrishikesh Pawar

Hrishikesh Pawar's pertinent question here is where do thoughts originate and where does it end? It plays with time and space; a space with characters performing postures and gestures that have been imbibed, altered and metamorphosed not from any single individual or the performers themselves but from a “library of personalities” or “a pile of flesh, living a metaphor of turmoil and conflict of the surroundings affecting the present “Thought.” “ This performance is the melting pot; a layered deconstruction of various traditional dance/performative forms from Maharashtra and Kerala. With the help of 4 assistant choreographers, 25 dancers, they are to perform 48 shows by the end of the Biennale. The performance dates can be sought after at the exhibition venue. I am yet to see the performance albeit I did see their video in the gallery.

“A weaving of story-telling between the performer and the audience with abstract rhythmic poetry of sounds, gestures and forms. The performance is a first draft of re-imagining the physical aesthetic of the body and its thought which creates matter.” ~ Hrishikesh Pawar

photo courtesy -KMB

“Thought is also a Matter” is on view at VII/35, Jew Town Road, Kappalandimukku until Mar 29, 2019.

Where Art Happens - Enunciation of an Enigma - Juul Kraijer - Kochi Muziris Biennale 2018

One of the artists’ whose works I could relate to most at many levels is perhaps Juul Kraijer, the dynamic Dutch artist. Her works are mystical and quite uncanny and it’s hard to explain its effect on us; they have this haunting mystery about it. Juul Kraijer started with drawings, progressed into sculptures and extended into photography and even short films. The instant I stepped in and laid my eyes on her works I felt connected. They are pretty intense and amazing as they reflect the emotional perceptions of self (whoever is looking at it and most pertaining to women, I feel). I probably felt this deep connection more so because I myself am often exploring the inner realms and the emotional-spiritual space than the external one. That doesn’t mean I am doing the same kind of work but it is women’s psyche that I am pretty interested in. That said the inner self is not exempt from the outer one and is always a twisted-reflection of the exterior (not generalising, this is often subjective). It is those very actions that take it to the inner-most suggestions and experiences all through our explorations.

Juul Kraijer

“The eloquence of my drawings I can't match with words. In spite of this, I'm asked so regularly and with such persistence to give a specific explanation, that I don't want to refuse out rightly doing so...Personally, I shrink back from interpreting my work, considering the fact that the meaning of a drawing is always ambiguous. If it were unambiguous, I would have chosen a more direct form than the poetic-associative one of visual art.” ~ Juul Kraijer

Photo-Archival pigment print on Hahnemuehle Museum Etching -38.6x50.7cm-2014-15

The awkward-contorted poses, the bleak-eerie look, the suggestions of duality, the connection of man and nature at the very core, the unusual juxtaposition of animals and self probably mentioning the basic animal instinct that man is supposed to possess, minimal and yet a taste of the elaborate is all served in one plate. Even when we try to understand others, we often fail to understand self. But then these days trying to understand others is not much in vogue; we often close doors at the slightest of misgivings. Only when we realize who we truly are will others stand a chance, I suppose. As it’s said: “How can you love others when you don’t love yourself?” It stands true for any other sentiment too.

“I seem to be the type of artist who recognizes a small field as his or her domain, to be explored in depth and detail. In the drawings made during those twelve years, the main principles remain the same. Changes do not occur in the form of an abrupt break; instead, they appear as gradual shifts, leaving the core intact, like landscapes at the turn of the season.” ~ Juul Kraijer

Charcoal on paper/pastel on paper - 2013/2014

Juul’s drawings are in charcoal – sometimes with wiping and rubbing that traces the earlier patterns, her earlier drawings are less linear and her isolated forms loom out of emptiness or the black undefined background. Time, space and context remain absent in this landscape of the mind that just stretches far and wide, there is conciseness, lightness and brevity, female body borders on androgynous without explicit details like eyebrows, breasts and pubic hair, expressions are unmoved and reticent; a posture adopted for eternity, her forms are completely self-absorbed as if in a profound sleep or death, bodies are neutral and they mark the domain of the spirit rather than some reality and all that is there is ambiguous. Impermanence is the perpetual cohort or rather a confidante in Juul’s works. Some works also feature swarms and flocks that contours the human forms, and some have the twin form – the play of duality. Japanese, Indian and classical influences and that of Balthus as she herself mentions can be traced in her works.

“I frequently have the feeling that I am no more than a conduit.” ~ Juul Kraijer

Photograph-Archival pigment print on Hahnemuehle Museum Etching-2014-15 edition

The eeriest, however, is her works with creatures. The medusa-like figures, the bugs, scorpion, snakes, owl and chameleon crawling, slithering or standing over, the face with tiny faces on it. The woman with her half-snake hidden face teases our senses. It could be facing our inner fears while baring ourselves to the world for them to see and yet stay aloof, impenetrable. There is a kind of violation in her images that is always endured and accepted. It most certainly raises the question of “Why such disconcerting endurance?” The inner turmoil while maintaining an external inertness is all too evident. The presence of these sinuous creatures seems to accessorise and become an inseparable and inevitable part of the form also indicating the beast within us. Juul’s figures evade gaze as they are in their own realm, pre-occupied, in monotone surroundings mostly black and luminous white. Her mutating figures may speak a thousand tongues and yet be silent, oblivious to our visual investigation.

Sculpture in bronze - 2007-8 edition

“The world is miraculous without our filter of rationalism, but as soon as you try to express that in words, it immediately turns into mysticism.” ~ Juul Kraijer

In photography, Juul is inspired by Surrealist photography where she can employ alienation, mirroring, fusing of incongruent beings, objectifying body parts and/or casting an incredible snare of shadows. She is also inspired by *fin-de-siècle (end of the century especially nineteenth century) medical photography and Julia Margaret Cameron photography. For some photo shoots, Juul hired animal trainers to supply the reptiles, snakes and owls as they were specially trained to be draped on bodies and not be provoked by the human presence or of the glares of the photo shoots. Her photography like her drawings are concise and share the qualities mentioned earlier.

Photograph-43.6x34.5cm-2013edition

Juul’s figures are more of an abstraction or an apparition than an individual in flesh and bones. They are in a transitional zone somewhere between the transient and the timeless. It could probably be that searing desire to unite with the Universe which of course is unattainable unless one conquers the discord within.

*fin-de-siècle medical photography – In the second half of the nineteenth century the new media of photography and film gave way to a new understanding about mind – psychology and psychiatry. They became the mirrors of the unconscious, capturing the inner state of people who were troubled which paved way for an indulgent understanding of consciousness and sanity. 

An Update as received from Juul Kraijer on 14-01-2019:

Happy to announce to my readers that Juul Kraijer has won the 3rd place in the Lensculture Black and White Awards 2018 for this series:

In April there will be an exhibition with works by the winners and finalists at Aperture Gallery in N.Y.C.

This is my second post for "Where Art Happens - Kochi Muziris Biennale 2018 series". The first post can be read HERE.

You can send your feedback to mail.huesnshades@gmail.com

profile pic- www.fondationdfguerlain.com

Ref & Images: http://www.juulkraijer.com/
(I've edited the first and third pictures for the post.)
some info from Lensculture and cttheory.net