By Shilpa Raina,
Kochi : You might have come across names of Indian artists like Tyeb Mehta, Ram Kumar, Jehangir Sabavala and Mithu Sen, among several others and identify their trademark style of painting. But how many of us recognise them by face?
This is what artist Manisha Gera Baswani’s project “Artist Through the Lens” – a collateral event at the ongoing Kochi-Muziris Biennale – aims to attempt.
The project intimately captures over 230 prominent Indian artists, curators and gallery owners and documents their relationship with art through photographic images taken by Baswani for over 12 years.
Baswani took to the camera 17 years go when she decided to document the life of her reticent and recluse teacher – A. Ramachandran – and started photographing him while he was at work or meeting people.
“I wanted to find a way to get sir (Ramachandran) out of his cocoon. So I decided to photograph him,” Baswani told IANS.
“After this I just got hooked to camera and decided to click pictures of artists. And soon I started clicking pictures of curators and gallery owners because they are an intrinsic part of the art world,” she added.
This is how this organic, self-sustained and ongoing project took shape with its many layers of hidden nuances about their personal and professional lives.
The Delhi-based artists first started taking pictures of friends. Gallery owners then started calling her and telling her about artists who were coming to India.
Hence she was able to capture artists within the structure of either their studios, or their exhibition spaces.
So we have a poignant picture of Padma Bhushan-recipient artist Gulam Mohammed Sheikh with his grandson, a shadowy image of prominent Indian sculpture Valsan Koorma Kolleri against his work, artist Bharti Kher at work and K.G. Subramanian walking away from his massive painting.
The project can better be described as an invaluable archive of the Indian art scene, meticulously recording silent conversations between the artists and their works.
(Shilpa Raina can be contacted at [email protected])