Reconnecting with nature

Art review

This Bangalore artist has consistently addressed environmental issues centred around water in her often outdoor installations and, more recently, performances.

"The Great Unmaking, Living Vessel" became quite a culmination of her effort here, having merged complex aspects of the theme as well as an evocative simplicity, its conceptual foundation declared, on the one hand, and on the other, manifested in immediate recognitions and poetic moods, the need to unmask and demonstrate harmful incongruities of our reality combining with the compulsion to engage not only the audience but also normal life.

A critical, distanced approach coincided with an active, integrative one, while open-eyed irony did not exclude loving involvement.

The contrasting and kinking of the whole relied on the performative role of the artist who simultaneously presented her ideas metaphorically and intimately embodied them transferring them also literally to others in order to stimulate their reflection as well as emotions.

Even though not devoid of inconsistencies or unclear moments, the event was ambitious, largely spectacular and sometimes moving. Inside the pool with water, a low ramp was built on which one could see a massive rectangle wrapped in a black, shiny sheet of synthetic fabric tied by a red ribbon.

The artist stood in front of it wearing a heavy, classical make-up that transformed her into a grand, alluring goddess with a third eye, whereas her black costume with a cape mediated the dramatic element of sacred statuary and that of contemporary theatre and popular performances, all this enhanced by the artificial illumination at night.

She undid and removed the wrapping to reveal a white shelf stacked with Ganga water bottles whose plastic bodies were shaped into waves and topped by endearingly kitschy images of Shiva whose matted locks ended in yellow caps.

If one read the presence of gift consignment initially, it turned into a sarcastic disclosure of the denatured behaviour of our handling of both the elements and the sacred. Pristine and holy, assumedly cleansing, curative and self-regenerating water, now packaged as commercial products serving thirst and ritual, brought to mind its current political manipulations together with international business appropriating organic resources that rightfully used to belong to everyone.

The oppressive, contradictory binary of nature and civilizational progress asks for an antidote, and Shamala as a woman-deity-river leaned over the mirror-like calm surface of the pool to face and identify with her clear reflection.

This moment of re-entering the pure element being the strongest here, was completed by the gesture of sharing as well as questioning, when Shamala distributed among the spectators water bottles "manufactured by Mother Earth' and 'marketed' by the artist.

It was a wonderful desire to extend this sharing of intellect and feelings to random people on the road, even if they responded only on the religious plane. Most of those watching the performance, however, did not notice what was happening then. Also, except for the lyrical quotations from Ujjwala Samarth, the verbal explanation through a microphone was perhaps unnecessary, since it translated the sufficiently suggestive atmosphere into literal terms.