Campaign to save elephant brings together artists

One thing I love about us Dilliwallas is our snootiness about art – and why not: after all we are the cultural capital of the region. We are fortunate to have the best of international art come to the city and our indigenous talent too is so formidable that it is a matter of immense pride for a culture crusader and Delhi rooter like me. And this being the art season, we are almost spoilt for choice.

This came across very clearly at the recent show Art for Elephants. Envisaged as a fund raiser to focus attention on the graceful giants – elephants, it brought together a glittering galaxy of some of our most creative artists who painted in their quintessential styles on miniature fiberglass stylized replicas to come up with a show that did the art fraternity proud.

What Delhi is certainly not is star struck. This too came across very clearly at this show. Perhaps as an attempt to include the popular might of Bollywood icons, top members of the film fraternity too were invited to be part of the show and were given similar replicas to paint. This list included Amitabh Bachchan, Aamir Khan, Akshay Kumar, Salman Khan, Shah Rukh Khan. And what a poor showing it was! Except Salman Khan, whose work at least qualified to be in the show, none of them took it seriously enough to even attempt it with any modicum of earnestness.

Even if they had worked with their own children, they would have come up with better results — I suspect Mr Bachchan allowed his four-year-old granddaughter to have a field day with no adult supervision. Otherwise how can anyone whose aesthetics are firmly in place allow such a thing to go into the public arena. If not the cause, they should have at least thought about their own reputations.

I feel that given the importance of the cause, they should have taken it with more gravitas: There are only 22,000 pachyderms left in India and nearly 6,000 are in human captivity. Many of them are underfed, beaten, abused. Almost 600 are deliberately killed every year. Wildlife SOS has started India’s first elephant shelter and rescued 11 tortured animals. People for Animals is raising money to help them for the rescue centre in Mathura. Loved the fact that Maneka Gandhi personally stood there to pitch for the works — that is real commitment to the cause.

And I am very happy to share that except the most cursory glance at these abysmal works by Bollywood stars, priced at nine lakhs each while the real artists works were priced at three lakhs and below, the Dilliwallas went for the real thing. And price had nothing to do with it. The last laugh as far as prices were concerned must have been had by Paresh Maity who painted two larger than human sized elephants in his signature style and priced them 98 lakhs! Why get into nine lakhs and three lakhs and two lakh wala debate Just as well, for I was fuming about the disparity shown to artists in pricing them less than half the Bollywood actors – after all when artists from other disciplines go to Bollywood, do they get more than the actors themselves So why the disparity in other mediums, but Dilliwallas being Dilliwallas, turned away from those works in sheer disdain! I loved it!

Price apart, I for one simply loved the works. Not only because I love the graceful animals but the beautifully shaped replicas (trying hard not to use the word cute to describe them!) lent themselves to provide ample space for the artists to showcase their styles. Some of the works that I loved included Chottu Lal’s part woman, part tigress, part cow complete with ting hand imprints and delicate lotuses was so charming that I wanted to take the elephant home! Naresh Kapuria’s elephant had 10, five, three and two paise painstakingly stuck on it as a mark of the commercialisation of the elephant.

The other elephants that were simply, simply beautiful were by Bhajju Shyam, who brought the tribal responsiveness of the Gonds into play with his motifs derived from nature, Ravinder Reddy with stylized two dimensional jewels with a southern sentiments and visual associations of temple elephants like Guruvayur, senior artist Amit Ambalal’s imagery spoke about his concern, Seema Kohli’s elephants were in her lyrical style, Sanjay Bhattacharya’s lines were bold and playful, A Ramachandran’s dreamy idiom was in full form, as were Jayasri Burman, Shipra Bhattacharya, and Madhvi Parekhs’ feminine sensibilities.

The one thing I understand from the point of view of an organiser is the need to hold events outside the white cube to take it to people, but as an art curator I am pained to see what happens when we do it. Here too, the works were wrongly lit and displayed, but even that could alter the intrinsic beauty of the works.

Another serious show that took place this week was senior artist Kanchan Chander and Dominique Gribot-Carroz’s Not my life, that used film and artwork to raise awareness about global human trafficking, particularly of children. Held as part of Alliance Francaise’s impactful art festival on human trafficking and donate the proceeds to support the initiative. Filmed in five continents, in a dozen countries, the film Not My Life takes viewers into a world where millions of children are exploited, through an astonishing array of practices including forced labour, domestic servitude, begging, sex tourism, sexual violence, and child soldiering. “Human traffickers are earning billions of dollars on the backs and in the beds of our children,” says the film’s director, Oscar nominee Robert Bilheimer, “and yet not nearly enough people know this is happening. We have a huge responsibility, right now, to tell the truth and share the truth until the public discourse on this issue is ongoing and universal.”

Kanchan made stark black and white images of despair and desolation, reflecting a deep sensitivity and empathy to human suffering. She brought some of her early work as a connection to the suffering of trafficked people. Dominique is a French citizen working in India in the financial services. Her first series of paintings is made of recycled waste and materials – an echo to the harsh life of ragpickers, and also a dream and hopefully a vision of what our society could achieve. It is possible to turn waste into colourful and meaning full artwork to turn that tragic predicament into a collective victory. Her perspective is intentionally candid and full of hope, for them, and for ourselves. A series of abstract works complements the emotional messaging, in a thought-provoking way.

Dr Alka Raghuvanshi is an art writer, curator and artist and can be contacted on alkaraghuvanshi@yahoo.com