Embracing- As an act of resistance
Sandhya Annaiah
The imagination of a land, where women live at peace with themselves and with nature is a recurrent theme of feminist utopias. This is the want of a land where there is no hierarchy, where people care for one another and for nature, where the earth and the forest retain their mystery, power and integrity and the longing for a situation where the power of technology and economic force does not rule the earth. This is seen as an antagonizing state, surviving against the hostile intent of men, who control a world of power and inequality, where power is the game and power means domination of both nature and people. Feminist version often draws the contrasts starkly—it is life versus death, mysterious forest versus technological desert, women versus men.
The recent work titled ‘To Embrace’ by Bangalore artist Surekha draws its inspiration from a movement that caused the economically powerful to retract from destroying thousands of trees from a forest land bordering a village. She uses an episode of this historically noted, ecological movement – the Chipko Movement, which occurred on 25th March, 1974 in a footling village situated in the mountainous region of the Himalayas; and which subsequently has turned into a model of protest that has been adopted by people of various nationalities across the world. Chipko Movement had its origin previously in Chamoli district in 1973 but the effectiveness of this gesture was seen a year later when demonstrated by women in the Reni forest in Garhwal region. The women protested against the commercial logging which they found as a form of oppression on their livelihood.
Surekha uses the essence of this incident with the native women protecting the trees from being cut by surrounding them. She extracts the gist of the act which was demonstrated- that the feminine sensibilities and ethics are closer to nature than man’s and juxtaposes it to a visual which is closer to her home; to create a folkish tale belonging to the present times. She involves women of various age groups to recreate a series of photographs where they are all seen embracing the branched roots of the famed Big Banyan tree which has stood strong against factors of time and humans for over 400 years.
The tree that spans an area of about 3 acres appears as a large, divine entity by itself comprising of the several creatures that have collectively formed an ecosystem around it. The women are seen affectionately embracing the tree while sharing the frame space with other beings like monkeys which are retained as a part of the photographs. Their hands are seen placed next to the several scars that are remains of the acts of vandalism. The trees appears to have silently withstood all of these violent acts and is in a process of self healing that makes the scars appear blurred and undefined. Women of different generations being part of the narrative, suggests the time factor attached to this tree complex as well as the emphasis on relations between mother and daughter etc that is compulsorily part the folk myth and narratives. The special emphasis on hands in the photographs symbolically remind us of hands as a crucial tool, that has been involved in ‘creating’ and that which aided the evolution of human race. The extended arms of the tree held with the arms of the women appear to create a circle involving nature and women as inseparable entities and the hug as an assurance of protection.
