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Interview
Distinguished by Circumstances
‘Ore/Substances of Earth-I,’ was a multimedia exhibition by Rajan Krishnan, consisting terracota and metal constructions, paintings and a video held in January, 2007 at Bodhi Space, Mumbai. Its main component, ‘ORE,’ a terracota construction of 11feet height, 20 feet length and 18feet width, made of more than 6 lakhs of hand-made terracota figurines, was the result of a three-month-long community art project, involving around 200 people from different walks of life, conducted at a traditional potter’s studio in Kochi. The contemporary Indian artist Baiju Parthan, in an interview conducted during the exhibition, traces the artist’s process of reshaping his autobiographical material during the making of this work. Parthan points out, “The deftly composed paintings and the installation with their sense of drama and the collision of imagery are reminiscent of the atmosphere which Marques and Ballard are able to craft through their literary offerings. But Rajan goes one step further by sowing the seeds of an undefined ecological sensibility while carefully balancing the decadence of an urban dystopia with a herald that intimates the triumphant return of the organic realm bursting at the seams with the promise of redemption.”
Baiju Parthan: You mentioned that you were toying with the idea or concept of this show for quite a while. If I remember correctly, you mentioned a span of more than ten years of pondering upon this idea. Why did it take such a long time to translate it into a fully articulated show?
Rajan Krishnan: To tell the truth, I had carried this idea in my mind probably for 15 or 20 years… Most of the time one carries an idea for a long time because one doesn’t have the courage to do it. So I was waiting and learning. About twenty years of my life, I lived in a Kerala village, surrounded by forests, vast paddy fields and a most beautiful river ‘Nila’ flowing through it. That was one of the most gorgeous and mythical landscapes, chock-full of myths, legends and folk lore, a place defined by heaps of coal, lumber and the unending stretch of steel rails. And it is a place or space I carry within me as the backdrop of my being!
I once read about Salvador Dali’s landscapes and how the Catalan landscape is his prime source or prototype for all the landscape elements in his paintings. It is as though he is incorporating various new elements into the Catalan landscape. Though not consciously following that approach, I think I’m doing something similar in my work too.
While doing my Bachelors in Economics, I had no idea what I was going to do once I was through with my studies. I came into art through students’ movement, by designing posters, and writing slogans. It was the late Eighties, through students/campus movements I got to know a lot of people, who dreamed about bringing themselves to the forefront. Ironically, it was the time when the intense cultural and political activity among students in Kerala was coming to an end. But for me, it was almost like living in a dream world, having the chance to meet so many exceptional individuals, and the college I was studying at had around three thousand students, so it was very exciting to meet all those different individuals from different backgrounds having dissimilar interests and attitudes and exchanging ideas and views with them. It also expanded my idea of the world when I understood that the world could be experienced from various vantage points.
BP: I am wondering if your idea of intimate collaboration as a constructive paradigm for creating works of art has its roots in this campus experience. I mean, it seems to have emerged from your knowledge that understanding the world is a collaborative or consensual enterprise…
RK: That is right… Because this collaborative environment on the college campus literally fine tuned my sensibilities, and I do believe that the personal is in actuality collective. Even this shirt which I am wearing, a very personal item, is a product of collective effort. There are so much of histories, traditions, experiences of different people entwined with practically everything that I use. The sensibility I claim as mine also is actually something which comes from elsewhere and is passing through me while acquiring clarity and definition and evolving in the process and then connecting and passing onto someone else. At times I see myself as an assistant or a collaborator to my own work. I like to think that I am assisting the painting to happen which allows me to exercise more freedom than otherwise. Coming back to this installation which I had to wait for more than twenty years till it was ready to materialize. And it happened one afternoon while I was working on the painting ‘Red Hill’ and all of a sudden I felt it was time, the wait was over and I am ready for it. I immediately called my friend who is a potter and told him I am coming with few of my friends to do some work. But I still did not have a clear idea how the work was actually going to be organized, though I had tried making small clay figurines sometime back. So initially I collected ten of my student friends and went to the potter’s studio to make the clay figurines that would eventually grow into the small hill which is the installation. Once I had made arrangements for them to work, like providing long work tables and benches, more people turned up and so the workshop kept expanding to accommodate the collaborators. Finally we had around five work tables and thirty people working at the same time.
BP: Speaking of these collaborators, did they know about the lore or the narrative you were weaving into the installation?
RK: No, they were not aware of it.
BP: What instructions did you give these collaborators? Were they all artists or arts students?
RK: A few of them were art students. But the thought which I was holding on was that the ancient heap of terracotta figurines on the vanished hill of my childhood was most probably made by people who were not essentially artists. So I was more interested in bringing out the hidden core of all those who were working at the studio through those small terracotta figurines. The only guideline I gave was to keep the figurines small and keep them solid. For instance, there was this rickshaw driver who was dropping off some of my friends at the studio. He saw what we were doing and wanted to be part of it and he took a break from his job and practically sat the whole day making these figurines. Only towards the completion of the figurines I revealed to them what exactly is the purpose of this activity. I then told them about the red hill and how this collaborative activity is bringing that memory back into present time etc.
BP: Was the original location or site of the hill anywhere close to the studio you fabricated this installation?
RK: No! The original site is in the village where I was born, and my studio and this workshop are in the city. And that separation is essential for me to actually see and notice things from the village that get glossed over as mundane or ordinary if I live there. So there are things about the village which keep coming back to me, not as intentional recollections but as facets and qualities that are extraordinary and unique to that place.
BP: Now let us move onto the paintings that are part of this installation. I am intrigued by your palette, which is definitely high contrast but at the same time there is a dominance of black, a kind of luminous twilight black, if I may say so. How did this palette come into being?
RK: As I mentioned earlier, I was not a painter to begin with. And my initial art activity was in the field of design. I was mostly working with typography, designing fonts and as you would expect, I was most familiar with black colour. This was before computers came into the picture and then, when I joined Art College, I had problems handling colour. In the college, all around me was an explosion of colour as my friends were all into experimenting with pure colours. I was told to look around and see the outburst of colours around me, but I was searching for a palette that was within me and not derived from the space outside of me. It is more like I need to absorb what is around me and then create a palette within myself. I consider myself to be eclectic and I need to bring that into my work too. So I would like to work more like a film maker than a painter. For instance, I’m fascinated by the way Andrea Tarkovsky would employ different themes and treatments for each of his movies. It is like beginning from a centre and then moving to various directions but still referring to the centre from where it all began. Life is so diverse and nonlinear.
BP: Looks like films and film making are the chief influence that has shaped your thinking?
RK: Certainly! In fact for a period of seven years or so I was immersed in the world of movies. I watched intensely movies made by the World Masters, by attending film festivals and visiting film archives. And they did leave a mark on my thinking and my work. So my compositional devices are derived from films and film making to an extent, and the tendency to work from a center and then radiate in various other directions has come from an understanding of cinema.
BP: Most of the artists we know as prominent figures in the art scene chose to settle in arts centers like Bombay, Baroda or Delhi but you and a few others chose to return to Kerala? Why did you choose to return to Kerala after your art studies in Baroda ?
RK: The period immediately after my art education was a difficult time for me. My father passed away while I was in Baroda and my mother was not keeping well. So I returned to Kerala and stayed on to be with her in her last days until she too passed away. Also I had been away for a while and I wanted to connect back to the land of my childhood. It was during this time artists like Aji V. N, Jyotibasu, Alex Mathew and Rimzon returned to Trivandrum. I too shifted my base to Trivandrum and we would all meet and discuss and spend time together. So, in a way, all of us were trying to connect back to our work and the scene in general.
But the monolithic cultural environment in Trivandrum was not that conducive to my temperament though it was a very comfortable place to live. So I shifted to Cochin which is more like Bombay, very plural in its cultural makeup and edgy and restless in its own way. Also I felt that I need to experiment a bit with my life instead of following the tried and tested path. So staying away from the major centers and still being in touch with what was happening and working was more challenging. As I was constantly in touch with my friends in Bombay, Delhi and Baroda I never felt isolated from the mainstream. In fact I feel staying away gave me the distance and provided a better view and grasp of what was happening. And now, with the communication revolution, it does not make much difference where I am located.
Once I moved to Cochin, I started to work again as there were a couple of new galleries who were focused and very clear about what they were doing. So I started showing with a suite of drawings which I called ‘Little black drawings’ that took me around three years to complete. The drawings were about how we judge each other based on our attire. They had little fictional aspects in them. They were conceived as documents, or handmade visual documents. I consider all my work as visual documents instead of art in the conventional manner. I want to do work that would excite me as a spectator and a critic. Once I go through this process, then I can share my work with the rest of the world.
BP: That is really interesting! Let us say that once a work has passed your scrutiny and has satisfied you, it wouldn’t matter to you if someone criticises it? So if someone passes a judgment or remark about a completed work would you consider or accommodate that observation when you move on to a new work.
RK: I do consider all such responses, but I try and see why and how such a response has occurred. Most of the time in my studio I have visitors from all walks of life, and I seek and encourage responses from them about my work. But in the end the work has to satisfy me and pass my judgment.
BP: Would you say that you are documenting the events and the shift in perception happening in the society and around you through your work?
RK: Yes, certainly, that is what I am doing. I know painting has its own limitations and it has possibilities also. I see my work more as an entity, a document that has a wider reach allowing one to see what came before it and what could come after it. It is about the impact of ideology and how ideologies bring in hope and then fail to deliver, and we keep discovering or arriving at newer ideologies that brings in and sustains hope for a while. I think we have constructed this whole world in this process of discovering and testing ideologies, and belief systems. So it is a mixed sentiment, of ideologies, hope and failure, and then again hope and so on.
BP: Some how that reminds me of Anslem Kiefer’s work, the stress on documentation, and history and the lament about the impotency of ideologies… The trauma experienced by entire societies, and the continual rebirth and renewal in life. Is there a particular artist who has influenced your thinking?
RK: Definitely! Recently I was going through my sketchbooks and I found something I had written long ago, “ I like the profound darkness painted by artists like Francesco Goya, Gustave Courbet, Anslem Kiefer, and Francis Bacon.” I think that such an inclination grounds me solidly to reality. Even if I paint a flower, I will be more interested in the milieu in which it exists, so on the whole, I’m interested in that which is behind what is obviously or visibly out there. I could also say that it is not the meaning but the experience that one gets from a situation I’m interested in.
BP: Let us talk about the shift or change in scale that has happened in your work, which has culminated in this massive installation of the Red Mountain of terracotta figurines.
RK: I had a tendency to work with scale even when I was a student. I remember a work titled ‘Substances on Black Moon’ which was done soon after I left Baroda. The work was made up of small frames depicting the moon in blacks and browns. When I started the work, I had no idea of the scale it would attain. But in the end, all the frames added up to make the work fifteen feet long and nine feet tall. It is more like building with bricks, you keep stacking things and the scale keeps shifting. The process is very intuitive. The same thing happened with the ‘Red mountain, ‘Ore’. With ‘Ore’ I had to get the result of a real hill I was familiar with. So I worked accordingly.
BP. After looking at and engaging with your work for a while, there are times when I wonder if there is some kind of nostalgia for a something that was grand and marvelous embedded within your work. Is there something like that?
RK: It is not about nostalgia. Rather, it is about the paradox we have created in our life within the process of building or seeking our Utopia. The village I grew up and the environment as I experienced there had some kind of Utopian quality to it. I had never seen anyone quarrelling or engaging in destructive activities there. I don’t remember ever seeing a policeman there in those days. Today, when I think back, it feels unreal, almost like an illusion. Around four years ago, I went back to the village and it felt like an empty shell. Almost all those who belonged to my parents’ generation had passed away. Though the village was still a blessed place in so many ways, the younger generation, the current domiciles, were not a happy lot. It was as though discontentment had grown amidst the wealth of nature, forest and paddy! The crisis definitely appeared to be more of a spiritual kind, of losing faith and the connection to the land where they were born. They never felt they belonged and they never cared for their land!
The escape, from the imposed misfortune and obscurity of belonging to an agrarian society, became suddenly possible when some of the villagers got the opportunity to go to the Persian Gulf countries to take up jobs there. Soon the paddy fields sprouted a rash of brick kilns heralding the boom of construction. You can see these brick kilns cropping up in some of my paintings. Initially the locals got jobs in these brick kilns, but gradually they were displaced by low cost labour brought from outside the State. Along with the brick kilns came sand mining, which destroyed the river bed and it was overrun by weeds. But I want to make it clear that my work is not at all about nostalgia. It is about what remains in the present! It is like sharing something great and magnificent with the present. Or it could be also like an ideal, imagined future brought into the present, a strong message of hope, life as a continuum, where things are told and retold.
BP: When I look at these works I see a major change from the earlier works. Earlier I saw a predominance of industrial landscapes or I could say wastelands and landscapes laid waste through industrial activity. Now I see that nature in the guise of this large red mountain or hill is reclaiming that wasteland and populating it with pulsating life. Is this a reflection of some changes in your person and your thought process?
RK: I am trying a juxtaposition of the Industrial and the rustic… I am trying to sense and express a balance, between the urban and the rural. You could be in a cozy urban setting and stop thinking about the rural, but that doesn’t mean it does not exist, but just outside of your sensibility, your life, it is very much there. You are actually making a selection, that is all. Reality cannot be one dimensional, and even when you say no to something you are acknowledging its existence.
BP: Let us get personal and look into your routines and work method… Do you follow a strict timetable while in your studio?
RK: Well, I am more of a night person. I sleep very late and keep working till it is two or three in the morning. And there is no strict timing as such, when I am working I would like to keep on at it. I would read or surf the net and then scribble down something in my notebook and then get back to painting and this activity could go on well into the night and till early morning. And when I land on my bed, I would like to stay there as long as I can, but generally I sleep only for four hours or so and work at a stretch for around twelve hours. These twelve hours of work could begin at any point in time during the day, either morning or in the afternoon. Usually I do a lot of socialisation in the studio as I have friends dropping in all the time.
BP: Acrylic is a medium which one usually associates with slick surfaces and hard edged planes. But in your paintings you have managed to bring forth a very tactile voluptuous full bodied surface which resembles oil colour application. Is there any special treatment given to the canvas to extract this tactile paint surface?
RK: There is no special treatment like building with gel or modeling paste on the canvas. I tend to work in thick layers of paint and there is a lot of under and over painting that is happening in my work. There are a number of hidden layers of paint as corrections, passages, additions and deletions on the canvas suggesting a history of the image and my activity on the canvas.
I love oils because I like to build layers and use colour like clay in very thick consistency, but had to shift to acrylic as I lost quite a few good works done in oils due to fungus growth on the paint surface. It left such an impact on me that I gave up painting altogether and shifted to making only drawings in charcoal for a few years. And for some reason I didn’t like acrylic paint at all! Then by chance I discovered the plasticity of acrylics. I found that I could use acrylic too in the same manner of oils, and get the same expressive edge, and acrylic is immune to fungus growth and I simply got back into painting. Of course it took a while of experimenting etc. before I could gain the same command and confidence in painting with acrylics.
BP: Given the intimacy you have towards the world around you and the intensely personal engagement with the objects, animate and inanimate which populate that world, what is your relationship with the institutionalised world of art?
RK: It is a relationship with its ups and downs. The same restless relationship one has with the rest of the world. But I use this restlessness as a tool to communicate, or it is the restlessness that drives us to communicate with each other.
BP: With this installation you have arrived at a watershed. You have evolved a very unique community-based collaborative method or paradigm for realising your art. In a way I think you could be reclaiming your lineage of the master builder which is the role your father played in the now vanished idyllic village reality. Am I right?
RK: I think so. When I look back I remember how during the New Year – (The festival of Vishu) according to the lunar calendar we used to follow in the village, our home would become the site where fresh tools and ploughs were forged as a community activity under the supervision of my father who was the master builder of the village. Actually I too received training in forging these implements. It was important that the land was tilled with brand new farming tools as an expression of the adoration towards the land. And all that work was done as a goodwill gesture not expecting any monetary rewards. The sentiment that it is for the welfare of all concerned was definitely the motivation.
BP: Now that you have an accomplished sculptural installation in terracotta to your credit, are you planning to focus less on painting and more on three dimensional works employing clay or terracotta?
RK: Yes! I will be working with three dimensional installations and paintings as a balanced unit. And I intend to work mostly with naturally occurring materials like clay, metal or wood rather than synthetic materials like plastic.
(Baiju Parthan lives and works in Mumbai. Email: baijuparthan@gmail.com)
