Exploring the Iconography of "Retelling"

The works that one encounters in Retelling, the exhibition of the recent productions of Karishma D’Souza, should be seen as more than works of art. They are in fact icons from a contemporary mystic, and could be put to good use not only by other mystics but by a wider population. Contrary to popular understanding, icons are more than objects of ritual adoration and worship. They are in fact bridges that span the gap between a textual tradition and practice. One can look at Christian practice, for example. The image of a saint is linked not only to the hagiography of the saint but to the Biblical narrative. The use of iconography encodes a complex story into a single image for the viewer. Subsequent to contemplation of the image, the viewer can hope to imitate the life of the saint, who attempted to imitate the life of Christ. The iconographer is often familiar with this wider textual tradition, and through the use of charged symbols, communicates meaning to a practicant of a tradition. They offer crunched lessons for contemplation with the idea that these will then be put into practice.

In many ways, Karishma D’Souza is an iconographer for our times. Unlike conventional iconographers, however, Karishma does not stick within a single tradition. She is rather like the mystic, who is never conventional but always transcends boundaries to plumb unexpected depths and return with powerful insights for contemplation. Thus, Karishma draws inspiration from the mystical poems of such figures as Sant Kabirdas, and the Kashmiri poet Lal Dedh. Her references range from the Jataka tales and the lives of the Bodhisatvas and the Buddha, the brahmanical Puranas, to more contemporary issues of violence of the Indian state against the populations of Kashmir, Dalits and tribals.

Karishma also works in the tradition of the iconographers through the symbolic charge that she presses onto the colours on the canvas. Take, for example, the use of gold for the ears of the sleeping Buddha in the work titled “Burma Buddha”. Karishma would have the golden ears bear three meanings. The first refers to the most common understanding of gold, as precious; thus, the gold ears designate that to hear or listen is what is most important. The second offers a more anti-materialist, and perhaps iconoclastic, suggestion, that gold is an inert metal, and the golden ears are dead objects incapable of hearing the pleas and prayers of supplicants. The third reading that she offers is where the similarity of gold with yellow is played on to suggest that the city in the background painted in yellow appears golden only in the distance; closer inspection reveals that the yellow emerges from sand, not gold, and hence is liable to disintegrate at any moment.

Blue is another colour that runs through the works in Retelling. Once again, we could commence with the signification of blue through reference to its location in “Burma Buddha”. Blue is used in this canvas to represent what the artist calls “peaceful, expanding space”. Karishma is also aware, however, that blue is the colour associated with the Ambedkarite movement and hence with Dalit pride. Given the manner in which the caste-critical poet Kabir is taken up by some Ambedkarite groups, it is no wonder that “Sand Castles” is marked by a plethora of blue circles. Each of these circles is a reference to a couplet of Kabir

from the Bijak of Kabir (compiled and translated by Linda Hess and Sukhdev Singh).

Take, for instance, the circle on the top left of the canvas that refers to the following:

A raft of tied together snakes

In the world-ocean.

Let go, and you’ll drown.

Grasp, and they’ll bite your arm.

Or the second circle in the bottom row that features a tear within a millstone that illustrates the following:

seeing the mill turn

brings tears to the eyes.

No one who falls between the stones

Comes out unbroken.

If blue is symbolically charged in Karishma’s works, then so is water, once again signified, as is common, by blue. Water bodies, and especially rivers, are present in almost every image on display. Unsurprisingly inspired by the verses of Kabir, who seems to be critical in this phase of her work, the river is linked with the idea of overcoming:

Use the strength of your own arm,

Stop putting hope in others.

When the river flows through your own yard,

How can you die of thirst?

The river is present not only in “Wastelands: dead pasts”, but also in “Chembur”. The foreground of “Chembur”, alive with indoor plants, references the home of her grandparents in the suburb of Bombay that Karishma remembers as one of the first “very nurturing” spaces she encountered. Outside the home lies an empty and terrifying landscape snaked through by a river that represents the limits that must be overcome on the journey towards adulthood. Given the title of this canvas one can’t help but imagine that despite the emptiness the view outside her grandparent’s house is actually suggestive of an urban landscape. Urban landscapes in Karishma’s earlier works are often either empty of people suggesting the anomie and isolation that marks contemporary cities.

The water bodies in “Guarded city: unseeing” reference a poem from the Kashmiri poet Lal Ded, from the compilations in the book I Lalla (selected and translated by Ranjit Hoskote):

Three times I saw a lake overflowing a lake.

Once I saw a lake mirrored in the sky.

Once I saw a lake that bridged

north and south. Mount Haramukh and Lake Kausar.

Seven times I saw a lake shaping itself into emptiness.

Emptiness is also the theme of “Guarded city: unseeing”. While gated communities represent security from the population outside the grounds of expensive residential colonies, Karishma inquires whether this shutting off does not create an anomic sense of isolation. With curtains drawn over windows, represented here by the thick black lines in the centre of the canvas, no one looks in, and no one looks out either. The choice of exclusive surroundings ensures that the very environs become frightening. This image also makes reference to the political situation in Kashmir with the island in the top background represented by an island with chinar. Reading deeper into the canvas, the gated community could also refer to the Kashmiri people forced into house arrest. The chinar of Kashmir stand mute in testimony to the violence forced on these people, who are encircled by orange red-hued hills on all sides.

Similar hues are also present in “Himalayan landscape: unseeing”, where the orange tents represent Hindutva and the red on the horizon, blood. 

As if in response to the violence represented by walls is the image “Lal Ded”. In this case, the wall, a symbol of violence, is also marked by the hues of orange and red, but it is split apart by the ever present river and calls to mind the verses from Robert Frost’s poem, “Mending Wall”:

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

Perhaps this splitting of the metaphoric wall through persistence, in this case of aquatic force, is the resilience that is referred to in the poem from Lal Ded that has influenced many of the works in this collection:

 

Resilience: to stand in the path of lightening.

Resilience: to walk when darkness falls at noon.

Resilience: to grind yourself fine in the turning mill.

Resilience will come to you.

While many of these canvases make visible reference to places that Karishma has visited, the image that relates most to the Goan context is “Wastelands: dead pasts”. In this image, the blue neck of the figure emerging from the water is a reference to the Puranic myth of Shiva Neelakanta. In this myth, Shiva’s neck turned blue when he consumed the poison that emerged from the fabled churning of the ocean of milk. In this image, the neck is part of a larger feminine figure that could be construed as a reference to the idol of Gauri, worshipped in some traditions a day before her son Ganesh. The present day Gauri is, of course, the brahmanical usurpation of the vernacular mother goddess Santeri, who is worshipped by the marginalized communities of Goa in her self-embodied form of the anthill. In this case, Santeri emerges from a wasteland that has been created thanks to the effects of the mining industry.

The state of affairs that Karishma depicts in this canvas need not necessarily be read as an impotent lament for our future. Rather, there is a peculiar Christian imagery that can also be read into this image through a reference to the vision of the Prophet Ezekiel. The Old Testament records the Prophet Ezekiel as having a vision of a valley filled with very dry bones. In this vision, Ezekiel is commanded by God to prophesy and put flesh on the bones and subsequently restore the bones to life. The vision, therefore, is one that promises hope – that even in the darkest of hours, a return to values can in fact bring redemption. This, I believe, is one of the messages that one can take away from this icon. 

In The Death of the Author (1967), French literary critic and theorist Roland Barthes argued against the need to incorporate the biographical context of the author or the meanings intended into the reading of the text. Instead, he argued in favour of the independence of the artistic production of the author. The moment the work was produced and subject to the gaze of the audience, the author was dead, and the work had a life of its own, gaining multiple readings based on the gazes of infinite numbers of individual readers. A great liberation is made possible through such a position, allowing for the proverbial thousand flowers to bloom. Given that each person is now enabled to bring their own experiences to the reading of the text or image, this diversity allows for an expansion of formal political democracy into the realm of the social. 

To adopt Barthes’ method while viewing the works of Karishma D’Souza, however, would leave us that much poorer. For Karishma’s works have the potential to be more than just objects of art. Even though many of Karishma’s offerings in this exhibition focus on what could be seen as hopeless situations, I believe that these icons are in fact tools through which we can refocus our attention on issues of concern, issues that scream out for justice to be done, and work towards resolving them. They have the potential to shake off the illusion that we are captive and focus on what really matters.

To understand these icons, though, requires that we enter into the textual world that Karishma has created. The possible problem that we encounter, however, is that this textual world is rather dense, given that each canvas is often inspired by more than one text. While this makes for a particularly rich canvas, it also points to the flip side – to the liberation that Barthes inaugurated. That is, with the absolute liberty to bring one’s own reading to a text, there is often a cacophony of voices and little space for understanding. If everyone’s personal reading is valid, and there is no fundamental base, how does one make conversation and move forward towards building a space of consensus? Perhaps the answer lies in the manner in which we twine engagement with the images and the producer of the images. It is towards this end that I urge that the works be seen as icons to be appreciated alongside the many texts that inspired them.

(Essay for the exhibition of Karishma D'Souza's works in Retelling,  hosted by the Fundação Oriente, Goa from 13 Oct -9 Nov 2016)

Art, Gender, and Faith

So profoundly has social media changed the ways in which we communicate and form ourselves that to declare that the world of social media has changed the manner in which we interact would be to state the obvious. Social media has given many of us the option to define ourselves in new ways, granting each of us access to resources that perhaps were scarcely imaginable even a decade ago.

Like many others, I took to these new forms of moulding my self-image like a duck to water. I was particularly fascinated by the possibilities that Facebook’s cover picture options offered. For those not yet in the know, the cover picture is what one would perhaps call the banner of the web page; it is a block of space at the top of one’s personal page that can be customised to fit in an image of one’s choice.

The release of this option to Facebook users coincided with my discovery of one of the features of the internal space of the Church of Saint Roque in Lisbon. The central panel of the retable of the main altar in this church is changed according to the liturgical season. Thus, the seasons of Lent, Easter, Advent, Christmas, and Ordinary time have their own panels. The effect on the largely illiterate faithful prior to times such as ours, when we are bombarded with so much visual material, must have been dramatic, offering an icon that was appropriate to the reflections of the season. Inspired by this feature, I have constantly changed the cover picture on my Facebook wall to suit the moment, whether it be a festival, a moment in history, an art work that strikes my fancy, or suchlike.

The Catholic Church commemorated the feast of St. Mary Magdalene on the twenty-second of this month. Almost every Christian is aware that Mary Magdalene is an important figure in the story of Christ’s life. She is identified as the woman who anointed Christ with perfume, and wiped his feet with her hair—an occasion that, according to the Gospels, caused quite a stir and called for a rebuke from Christ. Subsequently, she is depicted as present at the crucifixion and the resurrection of Christ, and finally, there are representations of her as a penitent, living her life as a hermit.

The occasion of her feast day, of course, called for a commemoration of the event. I was unsure, however, as to how to capture Mary Magdalene. Should I exhibit her before the Resurrection, where she is depicted anointing the feet of Christ, or wailing at the foot of the cross, or post resurrection, where she is depicted as the penitent?

I was uncomfortable with the images of the anointing because of their patriarchal character. One image in particular, displaying a woman and her hair, and merely the feet of Christ, was quite horrifying. Focusing on a male foot, female hands and hair,  despite the best intentions of the author, so much of the context had been removed to make the image seem vaguely pornographic. This image was too far removed from the more mystical reading that Christ himself provided of the action. Rather, it seemed to suggest the servitude of women to men.

The images of Mary Magdalene as a penitent similarly displayed an often lascivious male appreciation of her figure. Further, these images seemed to stress not Mary the privileged disciple but the prostituted woman that she has been identified with. Indeed, in these images, there was too much of an obsession with the fallen woman, without any appreciation for her redemption through Christ.

Of these many representations of Mary Magdalene as the penitent, there was one image that kept suggesting itself insistently. This was a Baroque period statute of the penitent Mary carved by the seventeenth century Spanish artist Pedro de Mena. Belonging to the Spanish National Museum of Sculpture, currently housed in the Colegio de San Gregorio in Valladolid, I had the privilege of encountering the image when it was on loan to the National Museum of Antique Art in Lisbon between 2011 and 2012. There are no words that can quite capture the sublime beauty of this image, whether in the care given to the coarse garments of the penitent Mary, or the bliss of contemplation that animates her face. Unfortunately, however, none of the images on the internet were quite able to do justice to this image. In any case, as I will subsequently elaborate, this moment of penitence was not the moment I decided on. Also, there is good reason to believe that the penitent Mary is the result of the conflation of Mary Madgalene with that of St. Mary of Egypt. This image, therefore, just would not do.

I eventually settled on the moment when Mary encounters Christ after his resurrection. This choice was determined largely because of the immense importance of this moment, captured perfectly in the words of Sr. Sandra Schneiders:

“as three of the four Gospels record, she was indeed the first witness to the Resurrection, and so then for those fateful moments, hours immediately thereafter, there’s a deep sense in which Mary Magdala was the Church. She was the only person who knew the story and could proclaim it of the Resurrection.”

There are times when one is unable to understand the full import of the words one encounters. And yet one is aware that something monumental has taken place. An entire worldview has been shifted, and a new perspective has been born. In these few words, Schneiders managed to convey the central importance of this female figure in a world that predominantly focuses on male and patriarchal actors. She repositioned Mary Magdalene, not as a fallen figure of immorality, nor as a penitent (whose value I am not disputing, though penitence can be overemphasized so as to occlude grace), but as a person who, as a result of Christ’s certain choice, was privileged to be the first to be made aware of the key moment of the Christian message and, in conveying the message of new life to the rest of the disciples, she embodied the Church in those initial moments. 

(A version of this post was first published in the O Heraldo on 24 July 2015)

The Itinerant: The coconut shell and the patron

The last couple of columns of the Itinerant have explored the meaning of the Indo-Portuguese and the significance of what is held under this term. These columns challenged the conception that Indo-Portuguese art should be seen as something from the past with nothing to offer us in the present or the future. On the contrary, a public collection of the art of the Indo-Portuguese stands to deepen the aesthetic vocabulary of both artists as well as lay individuals living in the state. It is this argument that this column will concern itself with.

If one walks into the shops and spaces that offer tourists souvenirs from Goa one realises that by and large these products fall into the category of what one would call folk art. Products made from shells, terracotta, coir, simple crochet, they are marked by a certain simplicity, not particularly nuanced in their artistic rendition, nor do they draw from a particularly deep cultural pool. One may be tempted to suggest that this is all one can produce with these materials, such as the coconut, but this is where I would like to differ and offer contrary examples.

In the course of my time in Lisbon, I had the opportunity to come across a couple of works of art made from the coconut shell. Both of these works are particularly vivid in my mind. One of these objects was a ciborium; that is the container that holds the consecrated communion wafers, while the other was a chalice. Both these objects often have a similar structure, consisting of a central bowl that is fitted to a footed stem. A ciborium normally contains a cover that fits tightly over the rim of the bowl. In both these cases the central bowl was made of the finely finished shell of the coconut. Both these bowls were fitted on the silver stands, and the ciborium had a smart silver cover. Additionally, the ciborium had four silver medallions spaced evenly along the outer diameter of the bowl.

When I first saw these works, I was completely awed by the manner in which the ‘humble’ coconut shell had been converted into a work of the high baroque and elevated into an object for the use of the Catholic cult. Given that I was able to encounter one of these pieces rather often, it soon became so commonplace for me to assume that combining a precious metal with coconut shell was a fairly obvious design possibility. Were one of the many museums in the state to decide to prosecute a project that would amass Indo-Portuguese art in all its variety, there would be without doubt a host of other such objects that would offer local artists, artisans patrons of art, a plethora of ideas in which to work with materials that are still commonly available. 

It is not merely artists and artisans who can benefit from such a deepening of their references, but indeed patrons of art as well. The success of most of the great movements of art benefitted substantially from the demands of a cultured network of patrons. Indeed, in the case of the Indo-Portuguese these patrons ranged not only from European nobility and men of wealth, but notables from all across the Indian ocean world. It was this patronage that made for the particularly interesting production of Indo-Portuguese art. In addition to the educational aspect that such a collection would have, it would also allow us to also host curators that would be able to encourage conversations between contemporary works with works from our past.

It seems obvious enough that a reclamation of the Indo-Portuguese should begin post-haste.

(A version of this post was first published in The Goan dated  6 Sept 2014)