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The research work deals with the case study on the contemporary visual art practices in Odisha on gender violence, atrocity, and caste discrimination. Rajat Kumar Dhal and Naresh Suna are activists cum artists of contemporary visual art practice in Odisha, who are practicing on various types of social issues. Rajat Kumar Dhal is from B.K. College of Art and Crafts, whereas Naresh Suna is from the Government College of Art and Crafts, Khallikote. Both had an opportunity to participate in art camps across India; it helped them to explore many new things that were beyond their imagination and the art curriculum existing from 1960 to 1990. Rajat Kumar Dhal deals with the discrimination of women in Odisha, expressed through his performance art. Naresh Suna explored in his visual art practice through different kinds of atrocities on Dalit community in Odisha and expressed it through various pictorial means.

1. The study of contemporary art practices on various social issues in Odisha from various perspectives.

2. How it looks into the development of the 1990s.

3. How the artists of the post-1990s began from a distinctly different set of concerns, especially motivated towards the articulation of relevant issues from the social context of the state.

4. How they break the language of the medium of pre-1990s practices and explore new mediums.

The journal of the ‘Odisha Lalit Kala Akademi’ titled ‘Rangarekha’ (1977-90), has publishedthe regional language, biographical sketches of some of the artists, andreported the annual activities of the Akademi. In some of these publications, they discuss the aesthetic qualities of Patta paintings, but never caries any information on the situation of modern art in Odisha.

A monograph on Sarat Chandra Deboby Dinanath Pathywas published in the year 1992. Here heargues on Sarat Chandra Debo’s distinctiveness of works and briefly discussed his life sketch. Durga Prasad Pattnaik’s book on Bimbadhara Varma is a biographical text and this work hardly describes the history of visual art practice in Odisha.

The history of pre-90s gallery art practices in Odisha has received the attention of very few scholars and writers. It was Dinanath Pathy, who for the first time mentioned, a few modern art and artists of Odisha in his edited book titled ‘Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom’ (2001) from 1950 to 2000. Therefore, one may say that he did not focus deeply to analyze the emergence of modern art in Odisha, as a chronological development and did not even provide a proper documentary history of the then-art practices. Therefore, Dinanath Pathy’s writing is a systematic detailed analysis, and only an overview lacking any analytical information.

According to Gayatri Sinha, modern art started in Odisha due to the powerful influence of Kolkata by amalgamations of the ongoing traditional pictorial norms. Moreover, she talks about the ‘Odisha Lalit Kala Akademi’, which has failed to promote the development of the modern art movement. She made a good attempt to map out the history of modern art in Odisha in her analysis.

‘Aesthetics of Pictorial Language’ was written by Soubhagya Pathy in the year 2006. In this book, there is a chapter on “Easel Paintings, Installations and Happenings: Language Alien”, that focuses on the easel paintings borrowed from Western academics, an introduction of new art language aesthetics. This book showshow the native art languages have changed with the impact of the modern art movement of the West. It includes a few artworks (one work from each of the few artists, between 1990 to 2000). It makes no serious attempt to trace the trajectory of development as the modern art of Odisha. 

From the beginning of 1990 to now, a significant number of artists are produced in Odisha. Many of them settled in market-oriented cities like New Delhi, Mumbai, and Baroda, etc. Very few artists preferred to work in Odisha, especially in a city like Bhubaneswar and other minor cities like Cuttack, Balasore, Bhadrak, Sambalpur and Berhampur, etc. It may be observed that very few artists are aware of social issues and depicted in their mainstream visual art practices. All the renowned artists from Odisha were not conscious of the social issue in visual art practices or any activism between 1960 and 1990. They were involved in what they received as art education in their respective institutions and as many artists are followers of mythology and ritual, they could not explore and engage themselves with any social issues or attempted to depict through their art practices.

Rajat Kumar Dhal and Naresh Suna are activists-cum-contemporary visual art practitioners in Odisha, who are creating works of art on various type of social issues. Rajat Kumar Dhal is from B.K. College of Art and Craft, whereas Naresh Suna is from the Government College of Art and Craft, Khallikote. Both had the  opportunity to participate in art camps, workshops, demonstrations, research grants, exhibitions, and artist-in-residency programmes across India; it helped them to explore many new things that were beyond their imagination and the art curriculum which was existing from 1960 to 1990. Rajat Kumar Dhal deals with the violence on women, expressed through his performance art in various places in Bhubaneswar as well as other parts of Odisha. Naresh Suna explored in his visual art creations, different kinds of atrocities on the Dalit community in the western part of Odisha, and expressed it through various pictorial means.

Art on Women’s Violence

In the context of contemporary art practices in India, everybody talks about feminism. But there are few artists, who talk about feminism in Western contexts, not in Indian contexts. Nowadays, violence affects the lives of a lot of women and girls in all socio-economic classes in every place in India as well as Odisha. It cuts across cultural and religious barriers and takes a variety of forms such as domestic abuse to child marriages, and female circumcision. Violence against women in India is unreported.

The practice of demanding dowry has spread so much in Indian society and more specifically in rural areas. Death by burning is often used as punishment for the innocent young girl who is unable to satisfy the greed of her in-laws. Most of the women are burnt by their in-laws or take suicide for dowry-related tortures. Subordination of women has led to violence under this head rise. The incidence of domestic violence crosses all the barriers of class, caste, income, culture, and religion and has become a highly underreported crime. Domestic violence is one of the greatest obstacles to gender equality. It obstructs women to secure their fundamental rights to equal protection under the law and the right to life and liberty. The basic reason for violence against women is their inferior status in a male-dominated society as educationally, economically, politically, and socially. Besides, there are so many other reasons.

Raj Kumar Dhal is one of the young contemporary artists in Odisha who trained as a painter from B.K. College of Art. But he engaged with art in different media like performance art, multimedia art, etc. The basic concept behind all his work is violence and atrocity against women in Odisha.

The performance-based art titled Justice (fig. 01), Hang the Rapist (fig.02) and Ghost Wait for Justice (fig.03) show rape and murder happened in Odisha.

 

In the performance work titled Justice (fig.01), Rajat Kumar himself performed, dressed up as a bear. He tried to spread the message in public places across the city of Bhubaneswar through his public performances. At the same time, he tried to explain, how the animal is more human than real human. Through this performance, an inscribed surface is pasted on front and back side of his body “We are more human than the rapists, even the beasts don’t rape.”[1] He tried to convey his idea that the rapists are more violent than animals. They have no human sense and responsibility in their life. Rajat Kumar tried to convey his idea through performance-based art. The ideas of this work are based on the gang rape incidents that happened in the Puri district of Odisha.

In the performance work of art, titled Hang the Rapist (fig.02), Rajat Kumar Dhal and his friend Arun Kumar Behera raised their voice and protested against the government. After the rape incident happened in Odisha, the rapist didn’t get any punishment. This is a public performance by Dhal and Behera. So, here Dhal and Behera wrote on their body Hang the Rapist and walk around the city of Bhubaneswar to awarding strong punishment to the rapists in Odisha. The performance work titled Ghost Wait for Justice (fig.03), also performance-based artwork, which deals with the rape victim, who does not get the proper justice in her life.

Work of Art on Atrocity and Caste Discrimination in Odisha

 “Most of us have been educated to think of Dalits as the ancient Brahmanical system intended: as the problematic people-until the last generation referred to as ‘untouchables’- stigmatized and discriminated against, at the bottom of the Indian social system, not to be talked about, or even seen for that matter, thus rendering them invisible as well as untouchable in much of contemporary discourse and visual imagery.”[2]

In the contemporary situations, everybody talks about human rights and Dalit issues for publicity, but how many people go through the root of these problems and implemented properly constitutional rights practically? We often criticise the upper-caste for the agony of the Dalits but caste-Hindus are equally responsible for such a situation as for the fact that caste-Hindus is the main custodian of the Hindu religious practices. 

In Indian contemporary art contexts, many of the artists are involved in celebrating mythologies and their cultural manifestation through technology and nudes of narratives. It’s an outright upper-class dominance. From a specifically Indian perspective, though, there are social problems, but the problem of caste is a hierarchical system that not only depends on differing levels of power but also has divisions within levels. From a Dalit artist’s perspective, the main requirement is necessary to overcome the upper caste dominance, and it is a greater need to abolish discrimination against Dalits from the caste Hindus. Recent examples include a Dalit in Balangir district in Odisha in 2012 that was burned by upper caste people, and another is in Kandhamala district where a lot of Dalit people were killed by the upper caste people in 2008. Such violence and discrimination are very rampant in this state, and marginally very few consider it to be serious but neither the state administration nor the political managers ever take them seriously as they belong to caste-Hindus who have always been immune to social realities.

In contemporary art, some artists addressing a social issues, but very few artists pay attention to Dalit issues. Where are the depictions of Dalits in the fine arts of contemporary India?[3] For example, Savi Sawarkar is one of the handfuls of Dalit artists whose work deals with the Dalit issues. He takes references from the Ambedkarite perspective and represents caste issues and community problems. He is the first Indian contemporary artist, who brought the Dalit issues to the public sphere. In India, there are many artists engaged in individual art practices. But they did not consider their community as a problem and represented them through art practices. According to Tartakov, “In the modern and postmodern context, with everybody criticising Colonialism from Postcolonial perspectives, how many thinkers are criticising Brahmanical traditions, still rooted in the minds of higher caste society? Indeed, there was not even much agreement about what work the category of Dalit art in painting, prints, or sculpture would include. The belief among the artists, I have talked with, who call themselves Dalits, is that one has to be a Dalit to do Dalit art. There may be others using Dalit themes and creating art that addresses the issues of deep and particular interest to Dalits, but that does not make them Dalits. But what about the art of those who would be considered Dalits, whose work is devoted to conventional themes that have little or nothing in particular of the Dalit exercise about them?”[4]  

Nowadays, we do not find any exhibitions addressing Dalit issues by contemporary artists in the private gallery exhibition in India. Because all the private gallery persons are market-oriented and they did not consider the work which depicts religion and caste. So, they always focus on that category of work that is selling in the market. It’s a huge problem in the parameter of contemporary art practice in India. Also, there is another fact, our visual artists, the mostly elite-educated and elite-patronized visual artists, we find in the art galleries of our large cities; have the most part been trained to avoid comment on public, social issues. The writers in India are encouraged by different types and levels of publications to write anything and all subjects of personal and social interest whereas visual artists in India are trained to remain personal and believe in their social and religion practices. In India, I have seen a few artists, who are interested to discuss social issues. But, nobody try to discuss on Dalit issues. Caste consciousness is always rooted in the mindset of the people, it doesn’t matter whether he is higher caste or lower caste. If someone is coming from Dalit background, his Dalitness is always in his mind. That’s why only Dalit background artists dare to bring into the public, the caste system in Indian society through their work. This caste consciousness finds in Naresh Suna, who is always discriminated against by a higher caste from his childhood. So the memory of suffering is seen through his work. But some Dalit artists are not that conscious about Dalit issues because they have not suffered as the way suffered other fellow Dalits.

Out of many works of Naresh Suna, this work has selected six works that makes appropriate context on Dalit issues. As a young artist, Naresh Suna put his best efforts to make his work of art. The painting titled Untitled (fig.04) and Looking at Each Other (fig.05), depicts untouchable men and it has to be simply explained as how Dalits are treated by the upper caste people. Naresh Suna makes a modest beginning through these works. According to Naresh Suna, “After completion of these two works, displayed at them at degree college gallery Govt. College of Art & Craft, Khallikote, for the class assessment. The faculty gave me a strange warning and they said to me that you should not display these issues. Nobody provided me any support or encouragement to work on such issues and display at the college gallery.”[5]  It shows how teachers in art schools behaved as caste-Hindus.

 

The work titled Honour of Being Hindu-I (fig.06), Honour of Being Hindu-II (fig.07) and Enemy (fig.08) deals with the discrimination and atrocity by upper caste on Dalit people in Odisha. Every month, mostly in the western part of Odisha, a lot of Dalit people became homeless due to caste-Hindus show of muscle power. The district administration did not take any strong action against this issue. Now it is rapidly spreading to other parts of Odisha as well. Some NGOs are much more active in that area, but that has hardly yielded any results. This work has made out of ash and charcoal, which is related to the burning of Dalit people. Burning Dalit people became the order of the day. That’s why Naresh Suna has made the form of a medal. According to Suna, “Medal in that sense, we are Dalit people, one day we will be burned alive by upper caste people.”[6]

 

The work titled Honour of Being Hindu-II (fig.08) represents the portrait of Dalit people, who were killed by upper caste people in an incidents in the western part of Odisha. Whereas, the work titled Inequality (fig.09), deals with the issues of inequality in food among the people in our society.

 

“One way to understand art activism is to track moments in the history of modern Indian art where it actively sought the provenance of the political. In the indicative account that follows, a key moment can be located in the Swadeshi movement, where questions of art, art-making practice, art content, and even the persona of the artist were subsumed under the sign of the national.”[7] 

The art and activism in Odisha is very uncommon. The first thing is that the mindset of contemporary artists is very complicated to understand. Most of contemporary artists are belonging to the upper-caste mindset and they don’t want to raise their voice on Dalit issues through their art practice. They are the followers of the hegemonic mindset of the Brahminical system and attitude. The contemporary art scenario in Odisha, the maximum number of artists belong to the upper caste community, because as regards to ascending order of the caste system from the ancient period, upper caste people were always nourished economically, educationally, and socially for this reason privilege can be dominantly seen in art institution.

English Books: 1. Biswas, Goutam., Art as Dialouge: Essays in Phenomenology of Aesthetics Experience, New Delhi, Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts and D.K. Printworld (P) Ltd, 1995.
2. Dalmia, Yashodhara., The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2001.
3. Heywood, Ian., Social Theories of Art: A critique, Macmillan, London, 1997.
4. Kapur, Geeta., When Was Modernism-Essays on Contemporary Cultural Practice in India, Tulika Books, New Delhi, 2000.
5. Mohanty, Janaki Ballav., Gopal Kanungo, Odisha Lalit Kala Akademi, Bhubaneswar, 1996. 6. Mukhopadhayay, Amit., Modern Regional Art 2007: Regional Centre, Bhubaneswar, 2007.
7. Parimoo, Ratan., Studies in Modern Indian Art, Kanak Publications, New Delhi, 1975.
8. Panikkar, Shivaji K. (ed)., Achar, Deeptha (ed)., Articulating Resistance: Art and Activism, Tulika Books, New Delhi, 2012.
9. Panikkar, Shivaji K. (ed)., Mukherji, Parul.D (ed)., Achar, Deeptha (ed)., Towards in New Art History: Studies in Indian Art, D.K.Print (P) Ltd. New Delhi, 2003.
10. Pathy, Dinanath (ed)., Let a Thousand Flower Bloom: Contemporary Art of Orissa, Aryan Books International, New Delhi, 2001.
11. Pathy, Soubhagya., Aesthetics of Pictorial Language, Harman Publishing House, New Delhi, 2006.
12. Shinha, Gayatri., Indian Art: An Overview, Rupa & Co. New Delhi, 2003.
13. Thakurta, Tapati Guha., The Making of New ‘Indian’ Art: Artists, Aesthetics and Nationalism in Bengal, C. 1850-1920. Cambridge University Press, UK, 1992.
14. Tartakov, G.M., Dalit Art and Visual Imagery, Oxford University Press, UK, 2012.
15. Wollheim, Richard., Art and its Objects, Harmondsworth, Middlesex-Ringroad, Victoria: Penguin Books, 1970.
16. Art Magazines, Articles, Journals and Exhibition Catalogues: Art & Deal, Issue 37/Vol.7/May 15, 2011.
17. Artists’ Directory, Odisha Lalit Kala Akademi, Bhubaneswar, 1977.
18. Artists’ Directory, Odisha Lalit Kala Akademi, Bhubaneswar, 2007.
19. Bawa, Seema., “Re-Vivifying Tradition of Odisha and Re-enchanting the present”, New Delhi, year-unknown.
20. Burns, Ceccil, “The Function of Art Schools in India”, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, May 1909.
21. “Canons of Architecture, Sculpture and Painting: A new Perspective for Textual studies in Orissa”, Perspective on Orissa: Cultural- Intellectual Contributions, National Seminar, Utkal University, Bhubaneswar, May 9-11, 2002.
22. Chakra, Shyamhari., “Artists’ Canvas”, The Hindu, Bhubaneswar, 2014.
23. Chakra, Shyamhari., “Gifted artist back in action”, The Hindu, Bhubaneswar, 2007.
24. Chakra, Shyamhari., “Controversial Art”, The Hindu, Bhubaneswar, 2014.
25. Pathy, Dinanath., “Beyond the Shores- Exhibition of Odishan Contemporary Art”, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, 1995. 26. Ray, Kasturi., “Colour of Orissa: A modern art spectrum”, Indian Express, Bhubaneswar, 2010.
27. “Renewed Intensity, Public Art Site-Specific Art Workshop”, Alumni BKCAC, Bhubaneswar, 2010.
28. Sinha, Gayatri., (ed) The Modern Art Movement, Odisha Revisited., Marg Publications, Mumbai, 2001.
29. “The Human Condition and Soft Subversion”, Red Earth Gallery Presents, Vadodara, 2012.

1. This sentence wrote by artists Rajat Kumar Dhal during his time of performance in public place in Bhubaneswar, Odisha in 2010. This is pasted in front and back side on his body.
2, Tartakov, Gary Michael., (ed) Dalit Art and Visual Imagery, P.1, Oxford University Press, India, 2012.
3. Ibid, P.2.
4. Ibid, P.253-236.
5. Interview with Naresh Suna, Bhubaneswar, 01.07.2014.
6. Ibid.
7. Achar, Deeptha., Panikar, Shivaji K., (ed) Articulating Resistence: Art and Activism, P.xx, Tulika Books, New Delhi, 2012.