WHAT MAKES
CONTEMPORARY? : Lina Vincent Sunish

The term ‘contemporary art’ should not be the sole domain of urban
fine artists, but to be shared with, and extended to all the artists who are
producing thoughtful art in the current times. The article would like to
reflect briefly on the work of a few young artists, and the joined concerns
of contemporary experience that bind them together, disregarding their
‘lineage’, schooling, medium or aesthetic; whether they live in Mumbai
or Madhubani. We have parallel contemporaries in India; a wide variety
of visual languages and expression coming out of artists from across the
country, whether from the cosmopolitan urban centres or the peripheral
towns. Every young artist is dealing in different ways with the
experience of the contemporary. It is a period of immense transition,
and the artists who are able to continually find modes of articulating
this through their work are the ones who touch a larger audience. We
must acknowledge the existence of a more heterogeneous artistic culture
and provide place for contemplation of the differences, and recognition
of simultaneities in art making. Artists come from varied aesthetic
lineages embedded in mainstream fine art or regional histories. Many
of them make attempts to step outside the established framework of that
history, either technically, aesthetically, formally and/or conceptually.
Art theory often judges the ‘contemporariness’ quotient of an art work
or an artist by its medium and the cultural, political, and historical
underpinnings of the art form, and not by its merit alone. So one asks
the question, what makes contemporary?
Preeti Agrawal, Shalinee Kumari, Malavika Rajnarayan and Amrita
Jha are young women artists; they live in different parts of India and
their art practices reflect pertinent issues concerning their selves
and their environments. Prominent among the themes that each
of them depicts is the exploration of gender; in terms of personal
identity, collective feminine histories, the body and its perception,
and reactions to gender violence and other violations of female
rights. Agrawal, moved by repeated news pieces on female infanticide
makes a clear statement about revering the
gender, through the symbolic representation
of famous women in one of her works. Her
printmaking largely features confrontations
with her private experiences, and random
situations that she finds herself caught up in.
Shalinee’s works are vivid outpourings of the
turmoil she feels as a woman in a patriarchal
set up, questioning the constant suppression
that (her) society condones, and trying to
erase it through a process of externalising it
within her drawings. She often compares the
possibility of boldness with the necessity of
subservience, contemplating the darkness of
a future without freedom. Regardless of rural
or urban locations, the negative circumstances
that frequently surround women in India,
and the world, vary only in the degree of
intensity. Malavika Rajnarayan explores the
various layers of the self, documenting her
personal journey and weaving into it her
commentaries and philosophies. In her work,
she has begun to examine the ways in which to
perceive the human body, sometimes peeling
off its external layers to arrive at an essence
that is not defined by attire and outer form.
She often revisits historical and mythological
stories with a view of reinterpreting them.