Sea of sighs

Different strokes

What she said
Friend, his seas swell and roar making conch shells whirl on the sands.
But fishermen ply their little wooden boatsunafraid of the cold lash of the waves.

Look, my bangles
slip loose as he leaves,
grow tight as he returns,
and they give me away.

What he said
My love whose bangles
glitter, jingle,
as she chases crabs,

suddenly stands shy,
head lowered,
hair hiding her face:

but only till the misery of evening
passes, when she’ll give me
the full pleasure
of her breasts.

(Two classical Tamil poems composed by Ammuvanar; translated by A K Ramanujan)

In his latest exhibition, Else, all will be still, Ravi Agarwal presents a suite of photographic images, installations and videos, as a poetic response to his encounters with the sea and life surrounding it. While doing so, as an artist and activist engaged with urban ecology, he also grapples with several social, political and ecological issues concerning the sea.

For Ravi, photography is not about snapping nice pictures; but about engaging with the people, communities, objects and environment at an intimate level. While documenting people in his own carefully calibrated practice, he also probes into aspects such as work, labour, wages and livelihood.

One of Ravi’s recurrent interests in the past has been the examination of the river as an ecological entity which supported livelihoods and biodiversity. As a proponent of the idea of a ‘Free River Zone’, he had advocated an inquiry about the preconceptions and usage of rivers; about overcoming antiquated definitions; and developing new perceptions of landscape.

The Yamuna Manifesto, which he co-edited with Till Krause (co-founder of the Museum ferner Gegenden and Galerie für Landschaftskunst in Hamburg), was an attempt to further widen ideas around ecology, to recognise the river as a living entity, and to assert that a river could be revived but not through techno-fixes.

Ravi’s close encounter with the sea happened just two years ago when he happened to inhabit a house on the beach in a small fishing village in Tamil Nadu. As his enquiring mind confronted several intriguing facets of the landscape, he realised that unlike a river which had a course, visible edges and a defined ecosystem, a sea was uncontained; its flow was relational to a celestial body; its inhabitants boundless; its currents wild and its history unconscionable.

“How do I understand the sea,” he wondered, “this which has many shores, a surface, hidden depths, an unseen floor and an unmarked history?” The ‘ground-changing experiences’ led him to further his on-going explorations about the man-nature relationship and the very basic but essential question: “What is nature?”

Inside-outside

Ravi’s expression of his joys and concerns about the sea comes through a unique process of image making as evidenced by the several series of pictures in the ongoing show. It reveals a keen sense of observation as much as innovative ways of imagining.

The origin of the series titled Sangam Engines is interesting. It is inspired by Akam, one of the genres of Classical Tamil poetry, dealing primarily with the subject of love and separation. When he came across his poems for the first time, Ravi says he was wonderstruck at the astonishingly short, direct, rich and meaningful verse, in which poets alluded to five landscapes: kurinji (mountains), mullai (forests), marutam (agricultural lands), neithal (sea), and palai (desert) as internal terrain of feelings — sexual union, yearning, sulking, pining, and separation.

In his interpretation, Ravi dissembled a disused boat engine and photographed its inner parts, each part referring to one of the five landscapes as referred to by the poets. The short series of five pictures, Sangam Engines, offers a refreshing and contemporary counterpoint to the themes of the Akam poems. Even the dusted, rusted and distorted parts of the engine come through as intimate and emotional references to the nuanced and vivid Akam poems in which: “The outside became inside as object and subject co-formed each other.”

‘Rhizome’

On first viewing, the photo-installation Rhizome gives the impression of an alien landscape. It came out of Ravi’s interaction with fishermen whose life was closely, constantly and sometimes hopelessly entrenched with the sea. “When we see the sea, we are normally taken in by the playful waves, distant horizon, the beautiful sunrises and sunsets, and such other views. But when I spoke to fishermen about the sea, they did not use idealistic terms, but very simple, practical and rooted words to describe it. For them, the sea was no more than an ordinary but essential everyday reality. Their expressions referred only to the practical side of living by the sea, and lacked any other romantic notions. This exercise drove me to question my own ideas about beauty, language and aesthetics.”

In Rhizome, Ravi presents a series of individual words literally ‘collected’ from the lips of fishermen as their references to the sea. The words placed on placards set on the sands of a sea shore help form a silent yet evocative installation.

Another haunting series in the show comes through as Shoreline I,II,III; the videos document the life of Selvam, a long-time fisherman who ekes out a living from the sea but does not want his son to follow his profession. So disenchanted is the poor man that he has not even taught his son how to swim.

In yet another series, Lunar Tide, the moods of the sea are revealed in almost pitch darkness of the night. In the Engines series the use and reuse of boat engines by fishermen — mostly out of economic necessity — stands highlighted. Ravi’s photo-book, Ambient Sea, is another deeply felt and informing visual diary.

“All these works are an outcome of my struggle to comprehend the times we inhabit,” says the Delhi-based artist. “Fishermen friends helped me navigate new waters. The ever-changing sea led me to these explorations. Urgency is in the air. Else, all will be still.”

Ravi Agarwal’s exhibition is on till December 2, 2015, at The Guild, Alibaug.