Kitsch Comeback

Miniaturists, Madhubani and billboard painters come together to critique urban Indian life in this arts project.

As soon as one enters Gallery Romain Rolland at Alliance Francaise de Delhi, one is greeted by a wonderfully detailed miniature about an artist’s experience at the cinema. It is not something that you would expect from the brush of a traditional miniaturist, but then this is no ordinary exhibition. Desh Ki Awaaz, a collaborative arts project presented by architect Gautam Bhatia and designer-illustrator Orijit Sen in association with Ford Foundation, has many more such surprises in store. There are scores of art works that highlight elements and themes from contemporary urban Indian existence.

“Orijit and I came up with this project nearly four years ago. The idea was to bring popular traditional artists into the gallery. These are extraordinary people with extraordinary talent, whose work is never recognised. Be it hoarding artists, Patwa artists, miniaturists or Madhubani painters, their work is always marginalised in some way or the other,” says Bhatia.

The gallery is often presumed to be the sole repository of meaningful art, he says, thereby ensuring the separation of popular artists from such common spaces. Through this project, Bhatia and Sen wanted to bridge that gap.

Artists, graphic designers and theatre personalities were brought together to come up with ways and means of visualising a narrative. After two-and-a-half years of constant modification and ideation, artists established an understanding of the various verbal and visual expressions that were integral to the project. Bhatia explains that they felt it was important that artists felt stimulated by each other’s skills and talents in order to create something truly dynamic. “I had written the narrative long ago. It was finally whittled down to five themes that every artist could react to—politics, cricket, films, religion and family life,” he says.

The idea was to explore moral, cultural and social dilemmas that dominate Indian life, be it corruption, dowry, dysfunctional families, gender inequality, caste prejudice, communalism or other areas of conflict. A cast of real-life characters like Sachin Tendulkar, Amitabh Bachchan and Lalu Prasad were used to weave the story. “We wanted to use real people to take the narrative forward. The moment you make things abstract or use imaginary characters, people lose interest,” says Bhatia.

For a lot of artists, the project meant stepping out of their comfort zones and exploring newer territories. For instance, Kirori Mal, a wood and plexiglas model maker from Haryana, was required to construct two- and three-dimensional backdrops for the painted displays. Satinder Singh, a veteran hoarding and billboard painter, used his craft to reinterpret the iconography of popular educational charts that are used in primary schools.

“There were miniaturists who till then had been drawing scenes from the Ramayana and were suddenly confronted with something totally different. We asked them to go to the cinemas, walk up and down the theatre, watch a film and then draw their experience. These were artists who had never stepped out of their village in Rajasthan and suddenly they were enclosed in a dark, air-conditioned hall,” says Bhatia.

At the time of conceptualising the project, Bhatia and Sen had no idea how vast it would get. However, after sessions of ideation and brainstorming, they found themselves designing a graphic novel and shooting a film as well. LIE, the graphic novel, is a visual narrative drawn by miniaturists from Rajasthan.

It is an attempt to satirise the current state of affairs in the country, and offers an exaggerated look at people who have been driven to ultimate lows in life and are thus indulging in heinous crimes of barbarism. “It was a very different experience to work with Gautam. Initially, there were some communication problems, but then as we started to work together, all these issues got smoothened out,” says Shankar Lal Bhopa, who with his brother Birju, has been creating miniatures for 35-40 years. “The biggest problem lay in explaining the visuals—how to tell them that a man has to be shown crossing the street in 10 frames and not just in one visual. But slowly everything was running smoothly,” adds Bhatia.

The film, Carnama, has been created by Sen, Rajiv Gautam and Prakash Moorthy. It traces the journey of the white Ambassador, which acquires a personality of its own while traversing the socio-political landscape of India. “Local and national histories, biographies, social struggles, memories and misconceptions—all that result from the play between various characters—have become the subject for Desh Ki Awaaz,” says Bhatia.

About The Author

Avantika Bhuyan