No, your eyes do not lie: This is Gandhi at a call center. This is from the exhibit Experiments in Truth, at the Aicon Gallery here in New York.
I saw this work at the pre-convention reception for SAJA’s 15th anniversary, and immediately wanted to know more about how it was made, and who was behind the large, striking exhibits. That’s a life-sized Gandhi; I could have sat down next to him and put on a headset, taken a call. (I sort of wanted to.)
Here we have Gandhi sharing music with another person. This, too, is life-sized. As though I could have leaned over to the two of them, plucked out an earbud, and said hello. (Do you think they are listening to the Kominas, Taz? What do you think would be on Gandhi’s iPod?)
The pieces are striking not only because of their size, but also because of their precision and, of course, their colors: candy red and metallic silver. (Roy also had some prints and acrylics on display—all prominently featuring Gandhi. There were also other Gandhi sculptures, including a smaller Gandhi wearing cargo pants, talking on a cell phone, and walking a dog.)
The Aicon gallery provided the pictures above, and was also kind enough to set up a chat with Roy, who told me a little bit about the exhibition.
To make the sculptures, first, Roy draws what he envisions the final piece will look like. Then he makes steel skeletons for clay models that are the basis for the sculptures. He uses these to make molds; then he uses the molds to make the sculptures, which are fiberglass.
One of the big sculptures takes about a month and a half to make. The smaller ones—Gandhi’s head, for example, which you can see in the Aicon link—might take a couple of weeks.
Roy also told me how Gandhi came to play such a big role in the exhibit.
“If I think of India as a house, in Indian context,” Roy said, “the father is the main person of the house and he is representing all the good and bad things.”
Roy sees Gandhi as the father of India, and his death as the real beginning of Indian-on-Indian violence. Before this, others were responsible for violence: The British and the Moghuls, for example. But Gandhi himself was killed by an Indian. Today, Indians hurt Indians, and India faces many problems. In a certain way, every day, Gandhi is murdered—and so some of the sculptures are red.
So why are some of the others silver? I asked. The silver points to modernity, technology, industrial metal. It’s “smart,” and “shiny,” and “fresh-looking,” Roy said. The material’s commercial look and the Gandhi figure speak to the interconnectedness of technology and Indian politics. Indeed, the exhibit features computers, call centers, cell phones, Bluetooth, iPods…
All this said, in the end, the exhibit grabbed me not because of the size of the sculptures, or their bright colors, but because of the art’s interaction with the concept of time. I was walking around the exhibit with a friend who observed that Gandhi was a bit of an anachronism in his own time; so what if he was an anachronism in our modern era? When I repeated this to Debanjan, he shared with me his idea of Gandhi as the continually hurt, continually exploring Indian. As I moved around the exhibit, I saw his calendars, and his split images of Gandhi as he had changed over time. And of course, this means something different if you decide that Gandhi as India doesn’t stop changing at the moment of his death. He keeps going. And in almost every image that Roy presents, Gandhi is open-faced, sweet—full, still, of possibility.
Get thee to the Aicon Gallery. Roy’s art will be there through August 1.
Debanjan Roy images on Aicon Gallery website: Set 1 and Set 2
AICON GALLERY, NEW YORK 35 Great Jones Street New York, NY 10012 – View Map 212-725-6092
Why is this stereotype inducing exhibit endorsed by SM? Whereas Lakshmi’s buns are verboten. As is a working mother who is armed and looking dangerous? As was Hillary Clinton’s gag about Gandhi at a gas station.
Umm, do you understand the irony of Gandhi working at a call center?
Gandhi looks so human in all of the pieces—this incredible, deeply human expression rendered in ultramodern materials is really amazing.
i am sorry. i am clearly not as sophisticated as you folks about this art-shmart thing. please unravel the layers of the onion for me, or deconstruct this visual experience for me. maybe the guide to offensiveness can also include what kinds of irony are and are not prohibited.
Love it!
When it comes to interpreting art, I’m about as “unsophisticated” (if you like) as they come.
But the Gandhi who wrote Hind Swaraj would probably not be happy with the sort of society which India has become, yet he’s constantly appropriated in so many ways by so many people to legitimate India’s technological and economic transformations.
So to actually see Gandhi doing all of these things (listening to an iPod, working at a call center – in life size no less) makes me think about how ridiculous it is to think that he might still be flattered to be considered Father of the Nation.
so listening to ipod and working at a call center are somehow absurd/ridiculous/illegitimate parts of modern india?
think he would be listening to woody guthrie or monk, or even wu tang (most likely he would have an 80 gig memory). the red is a nice red, reminds me of kraftwork. in the call center he looks quite jolly, think the red may also be a reminder to many who underestimated him.
gandhi-ji becomes an idea. his ideas. i remember the last scene in “Lage Raho Munna Bhai” when he is making his speech about how his ideas live on even after his death all those years ago. of course these are his ideas, and to many these seem very weird now. if the man was alive now, think his quote would be, “you all are just bloody crazy”
need guide to offensiveness, I think you need a guide that will help you make substantive comments without the unnecessary sarcasm. Thanks
i sincerely appreciate the helpful suggestion. i eagerly anticipate this alternate guide too.
Wow! Very nice.
Great art but the inspiration seems to be a little stereotypical (esp. the first one).
Thanks for the article!
To be honest, it’s creeps me out a little bit… especially the facial deconstruction/reconstruction drawings. And the life size figures remind me of the Bodies exhibit, which was also slightly creepy…. but, then again, I like weird and creepy things…. 🙂
Me too, DDD. and yes, Gandhi WOULD have Monk on his iPod.
I liked some of them, especially the bust with bird. Though I wonder if it was necessary to milk the idea a la Blue Dog. Of the drawings, the blood splattered Godse/Gandhi was the weakest.
Some perspective please. The man witnessed the subcontinental holocaust. The things that followed, terrible as they were/are, pale in comparison.
i dunno. the ipod is pretty vile. i mean.. periwinkle blue?
seriously, the art is cool. my point with the previous comments was that maybe fewer posts that reflexively find appropriation by non-indians offensive while often accepting the same from indians would make sm better.
Is this what Think Different means?
Gandhi as a classical bust puts me in mind of Prometheus. He brought fire and knowledge to mankind and was punished by the gods by being chained to a rock (or turned into an iconic image in the form of bust) and then the bird plucks out his organs, everyday they grow back and the bird goes at it again. Punishment for enlightening mankind. The gods are cruel. Mankind is unworthy. But wouldn’t that bust look lovely on your piano?
Interesting stuff. Anyone who has lived in India in recent times (coming to think of it, anytime since Gandhi died and probably even in the last decade or so of his life) should, I think, instinctively get this. His picture is put up in every government office and police station – and sitting right below it the bureaucrat or the policeman asks you for bribe. And nobody finds it weird. He has become just another picture, an icon in the already vast collection of icons/deities we have – used to represent the ‘good’ that we put up on the pedestal and then conveniently forget about!
Wow, thanks, 19. I’ve spent all of five days in India, so that’s really interesting.
To offensiveness (can I call you that?), just a point of fact. I guess I can understand why you’d read SM as a whole, but the fact of the matter is, here in the bunker we don’t have any sort of collective understanding of what is and isn’t offensive. We blog to our individual wonts. I think this exhibit was awesome. Hence I posted.
Mr. X #15:
Perspective is good. How about a timeline: He’d lived for 70+ years before Partition, and died a few months later. So I don’t think it had much influence on his stance against industrialization, which he articulated pretty clearly in Hind Swaraj in 1908. That’s what I’m trying to address here. It’s that anti-industrialization, pro-cottage industry stand that I find most at odds with the idea of him sitting in a call center, since it’s globalization that’s enabled and even necessitated the Indian call center.
need guide to offensiveness #16:
Can you please explain in some detail what appropriation you see in this exhibit, and maybe we can go from there?
bess #18:
You made my morning!
I don’t see an explicit endorsement, but your point is still interesting as to what kinds of use of cultural symbols are appropriate and what forms are not. I think this would largely depend on your values and more broadly on what social trends have existed. For example, I’m more likely to be annoyed by Microsoft appropriating an image of Gandhi for commercial reasons that have nothing to do wtih anything, than I am with an artist using an image of Gandhi to explore some of the ideas that my cohort at PTR described above. The mildly homoerotic one with the ipod is also interesting.
Additionally and beyond one’s politics and identities beyond race, I think that knowledge of and some degree of sophistication in the use of cultural symbols makes things much more palatable. You can see this in comedy frequently – some things which are cringeworthy in poor works are accepted in other contexts – a lot of people who would object to a racist portrayal of Obama by the National Review were up in arms in defense of the poorly executed parody cover of the New Yorker. Similarly, when law and order used a hindu statue to identify that a family was south asian, even though the family was muslim (or something along those lines – it was the first post on ptr) -t hatw as so clumsily done that it wasn’t possible to see it as anything other than crap. But do I object to the crappiness of it or the sentiments expressed?
So in short I think the guide that you are requesting is highly personal and not straightforward, that there are some things that we could probably identify as offensive to many, others to some, others to very few – that the reasons that things are offensive are not necessarily the ones that are stated in the way they are stated (if I object to Gandhi being appropriated by Microsoft is that because I don’t like Microsoft or because I don’t like my cultural identity being appropriated? Why is the use of Gandhi even relevasnt to my cultural identity? And do I not like Microsoft just because it’s faddish not to or do I have real reasons for doing that? – usually the statement of objection will not analyse these issues in depth – at least from me).
With all that said, I think it would be dangerous to adopt a posture that all uses of stereotypes and commone cultural ideas and symbols, regardless of what is attempting to be done with them, should be rejected or accepted. The ‘everything is wrong’ view is just as bad as the ‘just get over it’ if not more so.
By what measure? On what grounds? Widespread discrimination and violence against women over 60 years pale in comparison? Mass killings in Bangladesh and in other places in different degrees in Gujarat, Bombay, West Bengal, Telengana, and others over 60 years pale in comparison? Forced sterilisation and female foeticide pale in comparison? A country where 77% of the people live on the margins and people still die of starvation or kill themselves because of their debt or have little choice to secure a response from the government than to take up arms pales in comparison?
I think Gandhi, for all his flaws, would probably disagree with you that it is only one episode of violence that we should pay attention to, rather than the lump sum payment and what results it has and continues to wreak. If there is a hierarchy of tragedies and abominations, I don’t think you’ve identified it well.
I see what Roy/you are saying, and I don’t want to open up a horrible can of worms with this comment, but ya gotta realize that that’s a huge generalization that I’m sure historians would have a problem with. I can safely assume it’s not your intent (who knows about Roy, though I’d be willing to give him the benefit of the doubt too I suppose), but it at least appears to hint at the whole Hindu nationalist argument that everything was fine until outsiders – Muslims and Europeans, and others before them – came, they treated everyone and themselves fine and so on. Which isn’t true. Although he was a flawed person, perhaps it would be better to think of him this way – Gandhi and his murder by a fellow countryman signify a very real blow to intra-country/culture reconciliation (though, again, he certainly wasn’t the first) as well as desi-on-desi violence of a whole ‘nother beast than was seen before.
P.S. Unrelated but this is the first time I’ve been to the site itself (usually just access it through my Reader) with the new artwork above, and the couple pieces/styles I’ve seen so far are awesome.
india’s been modernizing for a long time now, beginning with 5-yr plans and socialist based policies producing the fabled hindu rate of growth and child malnutrition stas rivaled only by subsahran africa. so now india gets a little taste of success and the artists suddenly pop in to inform us via irony that this process is anti-gandhian?
sounds like concern trolling to me
The anti-globalization crowd is just as narrow-minded as their India Shining counterpart. I hope the bah humbugists see the irony here.
Dr Amonymous, What you dismissively refer to as only one episode of violence, was a slaughter of a million people in a couple of months. One doesn’t need to start atrocity olympics to grasp the significance of that “episode.†It makes you question the “If Gandhi were alive today†line some posters/viewers have taken. It’s also worth questioning the notion that Indian-on-Indian violence began after Gandhi’s death.
ptr_vivek, Roy says his art is trying to initiate discussion about technology, new India, violence etc. To frame it in simplistic anti-technology terms doesn’t help the it. I am not saying you are doing it, but “Man if only Gandhi were alive today†has some Neo-Luddite undertones. Gandhi’s strange ideas were fortunately balanced out by Nehru, a man of science.
Manju #26:
I hope you and Mr. X (#27) aren’t reading Debanjan Roy’s intention based on what I wrote above, because I don’t know that he and I would agree on this.
It’s very clever of you to try and manipulate the usual argument about how it’s India’s turn to develop, and it’s hypocritical of The West to try and impede that progress in the name of environmentalism, etc. because they did the same thing long ago. But it doesn’t work here because Gandhi was scathing in his critique of English & Western European society, and didn’t want India to follow that same path. So yes, the process is anti-Gandhian.
Mr. X #27:
To clarify, I’m not a member of the anti-globalization crowd, I’m a member of the Gandhi-was-anti-globalization crowd (to put it crudely). Nor am I a Gandhian, nor am I a Gandhianist. In fact, though I profoundly respect and admire the way he lived according to his principles, I also profoundly disagree with many of them.
Manju, just admit it. It’s the irony that’s burnt your biscuits and not the actual message. And what do the Natives think? Would they find the artwork interesting?
Here, Vivek, the quote: “God forbid that India should ever take to industrialisation after the manner of the west. The economic imperialism of a single tiny island kingdom [UK] is today keeping the world in chains. If an entire nation of 300 million took to similar economic exploitation, it would strip the world bare like locusts.” ~ Gandhi
Thanks!
Actually, I was. Now if Deb’s appropriating Gandhi’s image in order to subversively associate his liberation movement with the new one, despite the fact that the G-man would be opposed to this revolution, then more power to him.
I only care to consult polls if we’re making an argument about offensiveness toward an identity group, in which case it helps to have a majority offended among that group, no? Even then I allow for the possibility of vanguard intellectuals seeing things the plebeians, socially constructed with false consciousness, can’t.
But other than that you should know by now my default stand is the people be damned.
Hey, 24:
“I see what Roy/you are saying, and I don’t want to open up a horrible can of worms with this comment, but ya gotta realize that that’s a huge generalization that I’m sure historians would have a problem with.”
Yeah, it’s not me—and English is not Roy’s first language either, for what that’s worth, so he may have been finding it hard to articulate… and the art itself is conveying a complicated message… many things at once. Frankly, art’s really hard to write about—one of the reasons I try to do it. It’s a good challenge for me. Your way of articulating it is certainly helpful—I really like this:
“Gandhi and his murder by a fellow countryman signify a very real blow to intra-country/culture reconciliation (though, again, he certainly wasn’t the first) as well as desi-on-desi violence of a whole ‘nother beast than was seen before.”
I said “violence,” and not “all violence,” for just the reasons you allude to above, and was concerned for precisely the reasons you raise—so thanks for your suggestion. It’s got a bit more nuance.
Polls be damned. Manju, I am sincerely curious about what your mom & co would think of this artwork.
well, she’s no bjp outrage machine, but i’m pretty sure she wouldn’t like it. i think regular people have no problem with appropriation as long as its done with respect or at least neutrality. gwen stefani in a bindhi, no prob. crucifix in urine, outrage. that’s common sense.
this is mildly disrespectful to gandhi b/c it puts him in a context much lower than his status of saint. so people don’t like it. not me, mind you, i’m of the intellectual vanguard, albeit neocon version.
the point of my comments really had nothing to do with this but since you bought it up i’d say a certain irony has been revealed. the people get offended b/c their images are appropriated in a disrespecful way and the intellectual vanguard stays silent, or warns us of cultural jingoism. but when the vanguard does get outraged ever a disrespect of icons the regular people barely give a rats ass.
that’s quite a disconnect,no?
Yeah! good for the regular people.
Yes, but a disconnect between what appropriation means in art and your being of the intellectual vanguard. You kill me, Manju. Let’s hear more from the natives.
art should be pretty pictures that make walls look beautiful and poems should rhyme.
“I can safely assume it’s not your intent (who knows about Roy, though I’d be willing to give him the benefit of the doubt too I suppose), but it at least appears to hint at the whole Hindu nationalist argument that everything was fine until outsiders – Muslims and Europeans, and others before them – came, they treated everyone and themselves fine and so on.”
Just to add on to this, I think the argument also says that somehow Indian’s aren’t responsible for any of their own history, and it’s just others that came in and dominated them unilaterally, and didn’t eventually become part of their culture. Also, as others have mentioned, the idea that Gandhi’s death is the first time when Indian-on-Indian violence begins also wipes out the horror of partition, and maybe implies that with partition, non-Indians (i.e. Pakistanis) were fighting against Indians (i.e. Hindus/Indians), and that they were somehow excised. Or at least, you could easily take that generalization to those places.
It also implies that if we had only kept the Gandhian ideals, somehow things would have ended up alright. I think this is romanticization at its best, and shows a yearning for something that now acts more as a weight on Indians consciousness rather than an actual positive guiding force.
I’m not dismissing it – I’m contextualising it so that your argument that everything else ought to be dismissed in deference to what was admittedly a horrific tragedy can be refuted. I’m very acutely aware of the political consequences of partition as well – and the continuing effects of the trend that it, as an incident, reflects – including a communalist/nationailst understanding of politics in former British India, a turn away from more genuinely democratic left politics as a result of said violence, and other things. I’m just saying that people who suffered in Godhra or Telengana or in Kolkata during the Indira government crackdown in the 1970s or Bangladeshis who were killed during the War for Independence or persecuted Ahmadis in Pakistan or all the women who have been subjected to violence in South Asia or the farmers who committed suicide ebcause of their level of debt, or many, many other people, might object to focusing on ONE incident of massive massive violence, compared to a continuous stream of violence brougth on by a variety of British imperial tactics and failures as well as the subsequent politics in South Asia.
If Gandhi were alive today, I would guess he would be dead, since he would be quite old.
good thing
that is a cool picture i think it is fake