|
Minimums of the Maximum City
Urbanization is an unresolved discourse in Indian sub-continent. A
typical Indian citizen, when posed with the issue of urbanization,
tends to move towards a zone of ideological conflict regarding
conscious choice and nostalgic moral agitation. The reason for
being double-minded on the issues of urbanization should be sought
in the discourse of modern Indian history where urban spaces had
always been handled not as pointer of socio-cultural growth but as
a menace that eats away the resources of the rural areas.
Prophetic, aspirational, political and fatalistic propositions
like, “one day the cities will be surrounded by the villages,’ or
‘the soul of India lives in its villages’ have underlined the
anti-urban (ization) position taken by politicians, planners and
historians.
Today, with the globalization becoming a reality in this country,
we have developed a new perspective on this issue. The
contemporary social thinkers, planners and politicians no longer
envisage urban spaces as a menace. On the contrary, they look at
urban spaces as potential possibilities for socio-cultural growth
and playing fields for equity politics. Dalit politicians and
thinkers ask their communities to migrate to urban spaces where
the caste and class hierarchies are no longer the social markers
of dignified existence. Urban spaces, in this sense are more
democratic and there people can work towards making their
individual dreams into reality. Considering the growth rate of
urban spaces, it is observed that by the mid-21st
century the majority of Indian population would be living in urban
areas.
This optimistic dream on urban spaces however has not yet
completely wiped out the prescribed historical notions about
urbanization. Any socio-cultural, economic and political debates
finally zero in on the discrepancies and unevenness that the
process of urbanization would offer to the citizens. This doubt is
going to be there, even if urbanization evens out human lives at
least cosmetically. The reality and the projected vision of
growing urban underbellies constantly disturb the flowery
scenarios that we script on the growth of urbanization. Film
makers, writers and visual artists of the contemporary times
continuously voice their doubts while pitching their respective
discourses on the available and the perceivable realities on a
growing urban space. This lingering doubts attempt to touch upon
all the possible scenarios of urban growth, right from exercising
moral/ethical parameters, distribution of resources and wealth to
infrastructure development and technological flourish. The art of
Rachana Nagarkar originates from this ‘discourse of doubt’ and
through various visual techniques she exemplifies the
discrepancies that still linger on in the urban spaces.
Born and brought up in Mumbai, the ‘maximum city’, Rachana calls
it a ‘fast lane city.’ She qualifies it in that way mainly because
this city has a certain pace that helps the people to convert
their dreams into reality faster. Obliquely the artist comments
that the fastness of the city does not translate directly into its
traffic, which is extremely slow due to congestion. In Rachana’s
artistic vision, the generic urban space appears as a doubled
headed organism. Like the mythical Janus, its one head looks
towards future and the other looks towards the past. The future of
the city is full of possibilities and it is conjoined to the
present growth of the city. The head that looks at the past sees
all what is refused to change. Generally speaking, every city has
a tendency to retain its past intact even behind its fast changing
facades. In every city there lives a past and its memories, both
inspiring and hurting, that refuse to budge from its new contexts
of discourse. In this sense, Rachana’s Mumbai is a metaphor for
any urban space that conserves and preserves while letting itself
open to the changes.
Unlike the other Indian contemporary artists who forward critiques
on urbanization, Rachana looks at the sunny side of it. She does
not want to implicate all the forces that add to the speed of
urban growth. On the contrary, she looks at the nuances where the
human aspirations mingle with physical striving and in due course
she locates the areas where the aspirant being is faced with the
problems of hierarchies. For Rachana, the urban space is an
imaginary pyramid in which the upward and downward movements are
not restricted notionally. However, she identifies the locations
where artificially created restrictive orders are in place; this
could be a street, an office space, a slum or a high rise. She
finds the balancing acts of urbanization failing, but she is
hopeful that one day, those who are deprived of the fruits of
urbanization now, would reap it completely.
This could be a romantic vision of the artist but she likes to be
romantic as she does not want to highlight the gap that exists
between the urban rich and the urban poor. For Rachana, both these
sections are complementary to each other. According to her, urban
spaces have the tendency to treat the rich and poor alike when it
comes to the life threatening situations. Citing 26/11, riots and
floods in Mumbai, the artist tells the viewer that the camaraderie
amongst the people in this city has helped them to recover faster.
The social hierarchies fall apart before the human aspirations,
she says. And she juxtaposes the different levels of the human
aspiration using adequate visual techniques.
Rachana’s works are done in grids creating a sense of disruption
in the possible narrative that a work of art offers. She paints
the portrait of a street girl in several canvases and places them
amongst back-lit boxes that show the images of bangles and fast
moving cars. On the one hand, the viewer is expected to read it as
the striving of the urban poor in the streets and on the other
hand, the viewer is given visual clues to disrupt that narrative
and see it in conjunction with the aspirations of the urban rich,
which are highlighted by the back-lit boxes. Interestingly,
Rachana would like to represent the images of children in general
and girls in particular. These visual narratives, though disrupted
by grid formations, give emphasis to the artist’s romantic notion
of survival and success. In a way, this is an interesting strategy
to portray ‘people’ whose lives are directed by ‘desires’ than by
the ‘actual’ living conditions.
In
one of the works, Rachana recreates the Mumbai city map using
letter-type blocks, each of which is painted over by a multitude
of portraits. These blocks, which obviously look like the
components of a jigsaw puzzle, impart a sense of interactivity to
this work. One would feel like rearranging the blocks so that a
new map could be created. Though the work has a static nature, as
it is a sculptural installation, which could be displayed
vertically (on a wall) and horizontally (on the floor), there is
an internal dynamics that makes this work as something going
through a constant churning. The ordered, yet with all chaotic
energies in place, portraits of the people in fact represent the
chaotic nature of the urban spaces.
As
I mentioned elsewhere in the article, there is a lingering doubt
on the artist’s part about the process of urbanization, though she
does not articulate it as a critique. She raises the issue of
hierarchy subtly by painting emotionally charged portraits of the
people. Where are these people coming from, where are they going
and where do they belong, are the question one would feel like
asking while confronting Rachana’s works. Rachana leaves both ends
open as she projects her personal doubts on urbanization both on
the urban rich and the urban poor alike. The fast pace of the
urban rich and the comparatively low pace of the urban poor are
cleverly placed in separate grids so that an internal critique
could be developed in the process of viewing. However, the artist
reiterates her faith in the belongingness of these people to their
respective cities and she believes that only this belongingness
helps them to recover from any kind of calamities.
Two large paintings in the present suite of works by Rachana have
two male figures as the predominant images. These slightly shaken
images are placed against a painted flat background that almost
resembles a computer screen with a multiple and ordered presence
of cursor arrows. These arrows that point left wards show some
kind of ‘rightness’ or ‘righteousness’ on the part of the human
being represented who are obviously coming from the working class
background. Certain areas of the canvas look as if they were taken
from the circuit board of computer hardware. The juxtaposition of
a thumb mark suggests how the artist attributes a unique identity
to the persona who is present in each of her works. This
attribution of identity to everyone is an interesting visual
strategy employed by the artist in order to underline her
philosophy of art making as a process to create democratic space
for everyone.
To
create this democratic space, Rachana Nagarkar uses Mumbai as a
metaphor. She touches upon the politics of representation by
giving face to the urban poor and by representing the urban rich
by surrogate images like speeding cars and other desirable
objects. Hence, representation for Rachana becomes a political
act. In this sense, her works are representationally critical and
critically representational.
JohnyML |
