Art From Terra Incognita

Awards don't make a man or woman but they just may make an artist. Especially if the painter, sculptor or photographer lives beyond the metros - in villages and small towns of the country. So Kolkata's Centre for International Modern Art, best known as CIMA, instituted nine CIMA awards for visual artists. About 2000 people competed, of which 159 were short-listed. The works are on display at four galleries across the city - at CIMA, Studio 21, Academy of Fine Arts and Ramdulari - and are drawing huge crowds.

 

The top CIMA award went to the 'Anatomy of an Unknown Chair'. An old chair, taken apart, its parts put together in a random order and framed. The 37-year-old artist, Mansoor Ali Makrani, was born to a farmer-turned-truck-mechanic in Gujarat's Wachesar village. He now lives in Delhi. "What if I ask the chair, what are the stories that you hold, what are the conversations that you have recorded? So, it was in a way animating the object. A dead object which could be animated, it could speak and unfold histories and stories in the truer forms which we don't know of," he said, trying to explain his work. 

 

Tarpaulin, a work by 29-year-old Pitambar Khan's, got the jury award. He still lives where he always has, Samudrabad, a village in Bengal's Howrah district, about three hours by bus from Kolkata. On a piece of blue tarpaulin, he has painted a staircase and a gift-wrapped heart. For him the tarpaulin is something everyone uses at one or another point of time in one's life.

 

Pitambar's father was a carpenter and his father's work was his first brush with art. "My father was a carpenter. When I was in school, I used to see him make wood reliefs. In a temple, once he made Hindu goddesses in wood relief based on stories. It influenced my drawing and my father encouraged me," he said.

 

There is a wide range of work on display at four galleries across Kolkata, from towns including Nasik, Surat, Rajkot, Gaziabad, Mednipur to Chenganacherry. That was the idea: to give these artists a platform.

 

Rakhi Sarkar, director of CIMA said, "In the course of my several years of being in this art world, I felt deeply disturbed that art was being dominated by the metropolitan cities. But outside of that, somehow Indian artists never really got a platform."

 

The jury included artist like Jogen Chowdhury and G Ravindra Reddy, author Amit Choudhuri, filmmaker Shoojit Sirkar, actor-collector Victor Banerjee and photographer Dayanita Singh. They are all glad to be part of an effort to give little known artists -- all strapped for money and studio space - some much needed attention. Each piece of work was hotly debated. Even on the winner they agreed to disagree though the majority won.

 

Dayanita Singh, photographer and jury member said, "A lot of the artists have gone too far put too much over laden the work. And if one could learn from Hindustani music how to hold back or from Michael Ondachi how to restrain oneself. How to edit, I think that one word has come out clearly to me that the one word I would take back is lack of restraint."

 

Jogen Chowdhury, artist and jury member added that, "It is not always necessary to be retrained. Then you cannot sometimes, some artist cannot grow. Even you see Picasso, He is not restrained at all."

 

The CIMA award winner received a trophy, Rs five lakh and a promise to hold a solo show at CIMA within two years, while the Jury Award winners received a trophy and Rs two lakh. It was a mammoth exercise that CIMA worked on for months. So mammoth that CIMA has decided the awards will be given once in two years instead of annually. After all, art is still not instant, especially art from terra incognita.