While visiting some of the past and upcoming art shows and their themes, it’s easy to suspect that artists were responding to some kind of premonition regarding terror’s widening reach. A case in point is Sunil Padwal’s solo show Myopia—scheduled to open at the Jehangir Art Gallery, Kala Ghoda, on December 3. This show is rife with images of terror and war. One work which chillingly stands out is that of a missile-like shadow hanging over a Google Earth image of Mumbai.
However, Padwal is not an oracle. It is just the ability of artists like him to uncover the truths and those images that are already there but are never talked about in times of calm and peace. “The image of terror looming over Mumbai has been in my mind for over a year now. But I was horrified to see an almost identical image of Mumbai seen from Google Earth on the television, showing the areas hit by the terror attack. I feel very disturbed by this. It’s a sensitive issue that needs to be handled gently. It cannot be sensationalised,” says the artist. He was at Krsna Mehta’s Bombay Masti exhibition at The Bombay Store on Wednesday evening minutes before the attack on Cafeacute; Leopold. “My wife Tanuja and I wanted to go to Trident for dinner but it was through the grace of God that we changed our mind,” informs the artist.
Images of war and violence have been an integral part of artist T V Santosh’s canvases and sculptures since 2000. The artist has taken it forward by sourcing his recent images from media photographs of terror and bloodshed. In the past, Santosh often used images of violence in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Kashmir. But with the terror baring its fangs in his backyard now, the Mumbai-based artist feels the heat of violence is impossible to ignore.
“My endeavour while creating these images on the canvas is to make them generic. However, the fact that the violence is so close and tangible is disturbing,” says Santosh. The artist’s haunting image of Your Terrorist our Freedom Fighter finely depicts his thoughts. The fact that the reasons behind such attacks have been ignored, surfaces here.
New media artist Shilpa Gupta feels it’s just a matter of time before the violence reached our city. “We constantly say that terrorism does not have a religion. But it is this very attitude that has led to the eruption of violence. Our politicians have to address the reason why people are doing this, you can’t turn the other way and not listen to the actual problem,” says Gupta, whose works have recently been based out of Jammu and Kashmir.
Ironically, while on the Dal Lake in Kashmir, Gupta had noticed that many of the house boats were named after places like New York City, Sydney and Mumbai, which were meant to be peaceful. “It is so ironic that these places were considered to be peaceful,” says Gupta.
She reiterates that art may exist in a “Utopia”—a gallery space hidden from the public eye—but it doesn’t neglect its task of “seeing and showing such turbulent incidents”.
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