Poetic mysteries of earth

If you happen to visit Outset India, don’t get mistaken that the gallery is under renovation. Those drillings, brick walls and boulders are a part of the site-specific project by Israeli-artist Achia Anzi. The exhibition titled “A Silent Call of the Earth”, delves on the subject of detachment while finding the true meaning of art.

Using ordinary and everyday objects, Achia’s project demonstrates that art lies in every corner. He has drilled holes into the floors and walls resembling secret routes of transit. In another piece of work, tiles have been crushed to create a crackling sound when one steps on them in the dark evoking fear, surprise and astonishment. Achia shares, “This site-specific project explores the notion of earth in contemporary culture. The show is inspired by German philosopher Martin Heidegger’s critique of positive science and foregrounds earth in its opaque singularity. There are many things happening in earth that are beyond the explanation of technology and science, that thought inspired me. In this show, I am trying to find the true meaning of art by using everyday materials in my artistic practice as these objects possesses their own aura and mystery. ”

The exhibition can be described as a laboratory of sorts where Achia has experimented with various materials like the kiln, the discarded parking meter, an excavated gas marker and a large rectangular structure that hangs in the centre of one of the rooms. Made of gobar and mitti, it is an unlikely chandelier of sorts. Through this art installation, he wants to create a dialogue around the changing significance of the earth in relation to mankind, as an investigation into ‘what is art and how we can re-discover its wonderment.’ According to him, “My attention was drawn into materials that we come across in the process of moving and living and the significant role it plays in our lives. These installations try to present earth without any definition or boundation, just the way it is — a mystery to the human eyes. So, my job in this exhibition is to recreate that mystery.”

One of the installations which is a large structure of wall in the shape of a chimney, installed in the centre of the room symbolises how the industrialisation has depleted the fertility of the soil. According to Achia, he is influenced by the labourers who work in the industries for this installation. “Labourers use the land to create bricks and therefore the soil loses its fertility, and then they cannot use the land for agriculture. So this is coming from their critical prospective,” he shares and adds, “The chimney ends just short of the ceiling shooting out of a void around the stairwell. It creates an air of claustrophobia and brings to mind the brick industry that leaches the agricultural land of its fertility.”

In another piece titled Experiments with Truth, he uses metal and black cotton to represent two things — the earth as an individual entity, and the way people deal with it today. “We’re are getting detached from earth, to say the least. I try to showcase how unknowingly we have been exploiting it in numerous ways,” he says.

In his works, Achia addresses the tug between the developed cities and the rural life. He says, “For me, art is not only away of expressing the element of truth in a culture, but also a means of creating it.”

Earth has played his muse since his first exhibition in the capital. He has explored its significance in many forms and meanings in each of his exhibitions. Concluding about this show, Achia states, “Everything on the earth has its own quality which we usually ignore or overlook, but through my installations, I try to bring out the hidden meaning in them.”