Improvisation and Kalashnikovs
Edith takes a picture of the list of participants. A rich company of 35 artists and super international. There are many artists from Southeast Asia like Mithu Khalid Mahmud from Bangladesh, artist and filmmaker. He is very enterprising, a good organizer and has ideas. The Prince Claus Fund supports him for his social work with children in remote villages. An hour or so before the official opening in the museum of modern art of the Srimanta Kalashetra Society with the Prime Minister, the Minister of Culture, the Mayor of Guwahati and the sponsors, Utpal Barua took me aside.
I get the honor of speaking on behalf of the artists and he needs support to make this big international event financially viable.
Coming up with a few nice sentences, careful of political statements during the upcoming election time in India, do engage the society and mention the importance of art and culture and the international origin of the artists.
Addressing the dignitaries, the richness of Indian culture, the overwhelming reception, not forgetting to thank anyone - from my notes: engagement in art and the power of artists, bridge between people, cultures and countries, mutual respect & collaboration, example of peace & harmony, etc. - it makes enough of an impression. My speech to a full house is broadcast nation wide live with replays every hour.
Utpal hands over to the Prime Minister the beautiful catalog of work we had sent earlier. The PM looks pleased.In the museum my work hangs perfectly. Fortunately, after weeks and weeks of delay, it arrived in one piece and was well framed. Surrounded by four heavily armed soldiers, Kalashnikovs at the ready, I explain to the PM my intentions for my drawing Spinoza meets Buddha.
I see similarities in how emotions are thought about in the East and West and how they affect people's daily actions. The Dutch philosopher described 48 different states of mind in his book Ethica. In many Eastern religions, the number 108 is sacred. Among other things, it is linked to man's emotions. In India, one distinguishes six senses (sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, thought) x three aspects of time (past, present, future) x two conditions (pure or impure) x three views (positive, negative, indifferent) = 108. On balls I have represented the senses in Hindi. The balls lie on a moving leaf of the bodhi tree. The tree under which Buddha found enlightenment. Television and radio reporters are working overtime.
Working in public space
Breakfast around 8:30 is different every day: rice with vegetables, cookies, yogurt, coffee and some sweetness, sometimes a fried egg with toast. The latter always turns out well. There is internet, when more than seven people log in the connection breaks. We have breakfast earlier and earlier and are then online for a while. Then we leave for Kalakshetra, the national cultural center, in a special bus sponsored by the public transport company of Guwahati. In a large open tent, open to the public, everyone will be painting. There are canvases in two sizes and a limited range of colors. That's going to be a lot of mixing. The edges of the forms I have painted require a lot of finishing. After an intensive day the basis is set. To make it really spatial, I want to cut the canvas.
Edith conducts brief interviews with all the artists and takes photographs. Many people combine a visit to the exhibition with an introduction to the artists, who are at work. For the public program Edith and I have prepared three presentations. One power-point about my work and position as an artist and two others about the Dutch cultural identity. The latter was a wish of the organizers and is an ongoing theme. In the travel bag are Janklaassen dolls and we have put together a short slideshow about Koningsdag - nice everything extravagantly orange, innovative business at a free market, music, a firm wink at the establishment, the royal family.
Painting, watched by hundreds of interested people, is not going well for me, it has to be done in a hurry. Design sketches and drawings work better for me. On canvas it remains rigid. You have to be able to handle the canvas. The effect of a dark background works wonders. In white there is no frame and the composition quickly falls apart. The dark surface I continue to find a trick, but it works. There is layering, but it quickly threatens to become too literally green. I am still searching, will it work as a sculptor surrounded by talented painters?
A visit to a nature park is followed by a session of simultaneous painting, so that the residents of Pobitora can also see artists at work. I get the hang of it and, in a quiet corner, paint very characteristically the elephants I just saw. They were standing next to each other. They became four tails with, below them, 108 steps symbolizing the path they had to take every day. The mythical number 108 with many different meanings.
A boy shows off his drawing pad. He is studious, smart, 11 years old and speaks excellent English and a little German. Bizarre Hieronymus Bosch-like motorcycle monsters, his classmates, and school teacher are tangentially on the paper. He is curious about my comments and asks or actually demands that I use his drawings as examples and repaint them. A very different approach from most interested parties.
One day we met an NGO with a group of orphans whose parents had died during conflicts. They were sitting under the gallery of the museum drawing. How do you process grief? How do you imagine a happy future? Some were completely in their own world, with a few Edith and I got into a conversation about the often moving drawings and could encourage them to go further into a subject.
Holy water
On the last day our guides succeeded in persuading us to visit the Kamakhya temple on a mountain top near Guwahati. The place would not be safe enough for us, the group of international artists who were frequently seen on TV in the past few days. We would be an easy target. The temple complex holds one of the seven wonders of India and you want to see it. According to an Indian legend, Sita (also called Kamakya) committed suicide because her father did not recognize her husband. Shiva took his dead lover on his shoulder and danced the tandav, the dance of destruction. The god Vishnu did not want the cosmos to be disrupted by this dance. He cut Sita's body into 108 pieces and scattered them around the earth. Her uterus and vagina fell on the hill Kamakhya. We are told that in the month of June the Brahmaputra, India's largest river, turns red for three days or is it just the spring in the temple complex? Thousands of pilgrims come to seek happiness and strength here.
A covered barred corridor for the queue of people waiting for the temple runs like a roller coaster across the complex. It takes at least 4 to 6 hours to get inside. Mohammed Elmasry says he came especially from Egypt. We get preferential treatment and are led to a parallel corridor. Behind us the gate locks. Like thieves, we stand in a cage. After twenty minutes, the stable door opens briefly. Surrounded by high fences, we shuffle forward foot by foot. It is hot, oppressive and oppressive. You become one with the crowd. Another choice is panic, because of the crowd it is impossible to return and all entrances are closed. Fans run at full speed and some dim fluorescent light falls on the walls. There is only one direction, further into the temple and via a circular route deeper and deeper into the sparsely lit well.
Once outside again, it turns out that the program for the visit to the city has been turned around. One of the teachers at the National Public School finds our paintings and presence an important source of inspiration for the students. We are invited for lunch and proceed directly to the school. Hundreds of students sit with their teachers ready to listen to our spontaneous speeches about the importance of art & culture and about our meeting in Assam. Then they ask well prepared raunchy questions. When is a drawing art? What is the best work of art? How do you make a good painting? Why are you an artist? Mon Thet from Myanmar gives an imaginative answer for the adolescents. He was in love with a girl. How was he supposed to handle that? What would she think of him? He asked if he could draw her portrait and they became many, many drawings. They got to know each other better and he noticed how much he actually liked to draw. That's how he became an artist.
Development
In Guwahati, we had an overcrowded, almost somewhat rigged, program. Lots of promises and a full day's schedule that nevertheless went differently each time. Intensive work, many interactions with colleagues, presentations of your work and that of others in the auditorium, plusminus 5000 visitors, artists, schoolchildren, teachers, radio, TV & press and prominent people. Always requests for spontaneous speeches in front of full halls. Meanwhile I have made many sketches and designs for spatial paintings. They are more like wall objects. I have been working very differently than during the painting sessions. The work is systematic, mathematical with a rhythm of repetition. At the same time it is open and free. It seems to me a nice combination of Indian basic patterns that can be found in temple construction and Western conceptual thinking. I am going to make these wall objects in the Netherlands.
My feeling that I am on the right track with this work is reinforced by a special room, which I discovered in the Virupasksha temple in Hampi. It is dark in there and after pushing away a stone in front of an opening in the wall I discover a spot of light with, in the middle, a dark plane of which the point is pointing downwards. The black surface has a stepped contour, similar to the main entrance of the complex. A priest explains and points to the opening in the wall through which the light enters. I see it, the room functions as a camera obscura.
The positive and negative image, cutout and residual form, seamlessly fit the concept I sketched out for my paintings.
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