Kalakaar - Visual artists in contemporary India

Avijit Mukul Kishore's documentary film in two volumes, "To let the world in", provides an intimate and rare glimpse of some of the better known visual artists from contemporary India.

The world of visual artists is a hidden world and a largely ignored world, except by the people who deal with art. The only exceptions are when suddenly some artist gets in the limelight because of some scandal, like M. F. Hussein. In the recent years, economic magazines and investment bankers have also started talking about some Indian artists whose works command big money. However, both these kinds of spotlights on the artists, have little to do with them as artists and with their art.

This article is about the first volume of the documentary film "To let the world in". The film presents brief interviews with some important visual artists of contemporary India, and shows some of their works. The interviews deal with issues like early influences, finding one's own specific path of artistic expression, and interactions between artists. The visual arts touched in the film vary from paintings, sculptures, installations, photography and performances. A key area of discussion on which many of the women artists talk about is gender and art.

The film starts with artists born in the 1930s and proceeds towards younger persons.

UNDERSTANDING ART

Whatever be the area of a creative expression - writing  or painting or acting - people are always interested in understanding what made the artist reach that specific artistic expression. "What did you and why did you want to express that?", they ask.

Arpita, one of the artists in the film illustrates this when she says, "If I have made a fish, you should also see a fish. But people ask you 'what is it?' so you have to write down everything that this is a fish, this a flower ..."

I think that there is some confusion among artists and among general public in differentiating between the "artistic expression" from "understanding art". At one level, art is about experiencing it, feeling it emotionally and instinctively rather than trying to understand it logically. At another level, somehow people are also interested in whys and hows of the art.

I feel that not all persons who are good at "artistic expression" are equally good at "explaining and understanding their art", and that these are two specific and separate skills. Good artists may be skilled at expressing their feelings and emotions in their art-form, but they may not be good at explaining the subconscious processes and ideas that prompted that artistic expression.

To understand this difference, I like to use the example of persons with obsessive dreams. A person can be a wonderful dreamer and may have strong obsessions about some dreams, but that person can not always understand the significance of those dreams and may need the help of a psychologist or a psychiatrist to understand that. However, most of the time we are happy with our dreams as they are, we do not go to psychologists or psychiatrists to understand them.

Thus, in my opinion, when people say that art-experts and art-critics are "frustrated artists" (or even book critics and film critics), I think that they are confusing between two different skills.

Coming back to the film, seeing different artists tell about their creative processes and their lives, was a wonderful opportunity to look at their art through their eyes. It adds new dimensions to their work. For example, I felt moved by the explanation of Sudhir Patwardhan about the changing relationships between the city and the nature, and his conclusions about painting tiny bits of the city seen through windows.

Just seeing the artists as persons can also add to our understanding about their work, though I am not sure if there are ways to define that understanding as "correct" or "wrong" - it becomes your specific interpretation of their work. For example, after listening to Arpita, the images of nude women in the foreground and military men in the background in her paintings, were no longer generic expressions of violence against women during wars but for me they became a depiction of the situation in the north-east of India.

FINDING ONE'S OWN SPECIFIC PATH

Artists explaining how they slowly discovered their own specific way of being an artist was an area that fascinated me in the film. Thus, Arpita's process of making, cancelling and re-making, Nalini's need for an immersive experience of her art, and Nilima's decision to put her children in her paintings, were interesting in understanding their works and also the kind of forces that gave directions to their artistic expressions.

The artists come out of their art schools with knowledge about techniques, norms and the examples of famous masters. Then, they need to find their own distinctive artistic voices that can move away from the recommended techniques and norms, and become something new. In this process, the artists in the film illustrate the importance of inter-action, dialogue and conflict with their peers. They talk about coming together to hold exhibitions or living together in the same area where they can interact regularly.

The name of late Bhupen Khakhar came up frequently in these discussions in the film, as one of the important artistic influences on different artists in contemporary India.The film pays a special homage to him by showing some of his works - thus, he is the only non-living artist featured in the film.

 AGAINST THE CONVENTIONS

Artists are expected to follow their own social rules and flout the conventions. Different artists in the film express it by depicting subjects that are usually ignored in mainstream medias - violence, exploitation, nude bodies, vaginas and even homo-erotic imagery.

I know that "flouting conventions" is a kind of stereotype, yet it was comforting to see that in spite of the rise of the conservatives of different religions in public spaces in India, Indian contemporary artists are willing to raise questions about those issues that are usually hidden behind the walls of morality and hypocrisy.

THE DICHOTOMIES

There are different dichotomies of meanings given to words and concepts such as - visual versus spoken cultures and popular versus elitist art, that were seen as static but have revealed to be more dynamic. The film touches on some of them and raises questions about them.

What is the role of visual arts today? With social media, TV and films, and digital art, are visual arts going to change and disappear? If photography is a visual art form, how is it affected when millions of persons start taking billions of photographs with their cell phones and putting their personal exhibitions up on Facebook, Twitter and Flickr? Is it democratisation of art or the loss of this art-form because it is now a common skill and not a special skill?

In the film Pushpamala talks about the changing meanings of elitist art meaning some higher quality of art form that is accessible to a few, while popular art is that is practiced by simple persons in their communities and homes and should be accessible more easily to the people. She underlines the contradiction by pointing out that today the "elitist art" of Rabindranath Tagore is far better known and accessible to public compared to the more "popular" art of Kalighat paintings.

Before human beings learned to speak, read and write, we were visual beings and we expressed ourselves mainly through visual mediums. For long part of our history, reading and writing were elitist skills reserved for a few and thus, we continued to be mainly oral and visual societies. Then over the past centuries, gradually reading and writing became more accessible to people and slowly we had started to become words-based societies. Finally, now slowly the pendulum has started to move in a different direction, where people can click pictures with their mobile phones and share them or share short-hand messages that use visual icons. So in future will we go back to being visual societies? What would that mean for the visual arts?

I am still wondering about such questions stimulated by watching the film.

ART AND MARKETING

How do we compare and who compares artistic merits, deciding who is a better artist? The film is about certain artists who are considered important in contemporary India. How was their importance decided?

I can imagine that defining someone as "good" or "great" artist is a result of interplay between the skills of the art-making along with a range of other factors including luck, mentorship, influence and the ability to market oneself. Were it not so, we would not have so frequently persons who become famous many years or decades after their death, while during their life-times no one recognizes their artistic worth.

I was wondering about it while watching Pushpmala in the film as she prepared herself for a performance. How is the performance of a visual "artist" different from that of a person like Lady Gaga or Poonam Pandey, who are able marketers of their skills? Is the difference only in their aesthetics, attitudes and motivations?

And now with the increase in the aggressive marketing of some persons on the social media and their ability to create news, will the criteria for defining good artists change in the future? I can imagine that already some artists with better social marketing skills get more attention from media and their art sells for more - will they be the important artists of our future?

ABOUT THE FILM

I loved watching the first volume of "To let the world in" for stimulating all these different ideas in my mind. I am planning to watch it again soon. At one and a half hours, it is almost as long as a feature film, yet it rushed past so quickly. There were so many moments in the film, especially while it showed the artists' works, that I wished that I could freeze it and look more carefully at those art works.

In the film, often the screen goes dark, as if the camera-eye is blinking.I felt that as a metaphor of how we can have the world in front of us and yet not see it. The human mind is a master illusionist. Each of our two eyes sees a different aspect of the world, but our mind learns to bring those two views together and we forget that our two eyes can see two different worlds. Our eyes also keep on blinking, adding intervals of darkness in front of our eyes, but our mind makes sure that we do not notice that darkness. The film reminds you about those intervals of darkness.

Film is visually very rich, full of colourful images of different art styles. The interviews with the artists are very unhurried and gentle, leaving them to choose the kind of things they wish to talk about, making it richer also at the level of emotions.

CONCLUSIONS

As a child, I was very much aware of contemporary Indian artists of 1960s including J. Swaminathan, Hebbar, B. Prabha, Jatin Das, Ram Kumar, M. F. Hussein ... I had even met some of them. However, over the past 3-4 decades, I had lost contact with the world of Indian artists. Thus, the artists featured in the film are my reintroduction to that world. Except for Anita Dube, who had been part of an exhibition in Bologna in 2012, I was not even aware of their names.

Hearing different persons in the film talk about Bhupen Khakhar and thinking that I had no idea who he was, made me feel bad, and was a reminder of what I had lost while I had been away from India. Searching for and admiring his works on internet, made me feel better.

I am looking forward to watching the second volume of the film, as well as go back to the first volume, for a more in depth viewing.

***

Delhi or Mumbai, the rape capital?

Since December 2012, after the infamous and cruel rape of Nirbhaya in the moving bus in Delhi, reports of other rapes in the Indian capital and other metros continue to appear in the news, including the recent news about the rape of a photo-journalist in Mumbai. Recently, I was reading a paper from a social psychology research about the messages used for changing public behaviour, that raised some questions and doubts in my mind about the common communications in the Indian media about rape. This article explains the research and those doubts.

Social psychology

Social psychology is an area of study that looks at how persons relate to and influence each other. At present, I am involved in an online course on social psychology from Coursera. These online courses are run by prestigious American and a few British universities. They are free and open to everyone. If you have never looked at the Coursera website, and you are interested in continuing your learning through online courses, my recommendation is that you should take a look at it!

Cialdini's research

The research that struck me and prompted this article was done by Prof. R. B. Cialdini from Arizona university and was published in 2003 ("Crafting normative messages to protect the environment" in journal of American Psychological society). This article is one of the learning materials in the course on social psychology.

In this research Cialdini looked at undesirable behaviours and the effectiveness of different public messages that were used in USA to limit those behaviours. Cialdini's paper is not about rapes - it is about damage to the environment. He suggests that people's behaviour can be influenced by 2 kinds of norms in our communications -

(1) Descriptive norms: these norms are about behaviours that are popular and are carried out by a large number of persons. If a behaviour is seen as common, other people feel like copying it. Thus, we should use these norms in our messages when we wish people to do something.

(2) Injunctive norms: these norms tell us which behaviour is forbidden or wrong in our society and should not be done. These norms should be used in messages when we wish people to stop doing something.

Cialdini's research showed that often messages given to public for stopping some bad behaviour used both kinds of norms in an inappropriate way so that they become contradictory, and thus may not be effective. Cialdini's research showed that such contradictory messages can be counter-productive - that is, they promote the behaviour, they wish to stop.

Let me explain myself a little better.

When we talk about an issue, usually we feel that it is important to underline the gravity and the severity of the problem, because we think that if people understand how bad it is they will try to stop it. However, it may not work in that way.

Thus, when we prepare messages, we give information that this problem is very widespread. This may give the unconscious message to public that the undesirable behaviour is very common, and that it is carried out by a large number of persons in the society. Some people listening to or watching that message start thinking that "it is something common and popular, so we can also do it". Due to this reason, such messages may have the opposite effect.

Cialdini gives different examples of his studies to support these ideas. For example, in a protected natural park containing important fossils, visiters were taking away small pieces of fossils and it was a big problem. The authorities used a message informing the visiters that every year 40 tonnes of fossils are stolen from the park and asking the visiters not to steal the fossils. However, this message-campaign did not have any effect, rather the stealing increased after this campaign. Thus, Cialdini explained that this message told people that taking away fossils was common and popular, and people felt that if they also take away a small piece it will not make much difference.

Delhi as the rape capital of India

Let me start with some of my own ideas about the issue of rapes in India. Delhi was not a safe city even 40 years ago. From those years, I remember, my sister's worries about the behaviour of guys in Delhi buses going to the university.

I am sorry to confess that at that time even I used to believe that it was because of "provocative clothes" that girls wear, and if they can look like "behen ji" they will be spared. Only much later did I realize that saying that the fault is because of girls' dress or behaviour shifts the responsibility from the guys who behave wrongly onto the girls, and in a way, approves that guys can behave the way they wish and then put the blame on the girl.

I believe that Indian society's emphasis on girls' izzat and how it is equated with "family honour" worsens this situation.

Today the things seem to have worsened. Social phenomenon are almost always complex and have different causes. I think that partly, the number of rapes may have "increased" because now more girls and more families have the courage to report it. In this sense, increase in reporting of rape should be seen as a positive sign.

Asking that police and laws should stop or reduce the rapes can be a superficial solution, because it allows us to ignore the harsh social realities of India where class and caste inequalities are closely interlinked with the way women are treated. It makes us feel that we can continue to be a chauvenistic and unequal society, and that only police or stronger punishments can resolve this problem.

Just listening to the declarations of police officers, politicians, religious leaders and sometimes, even magistrates and judges (including many women), shows how entrenched such ways of thinking are in our society's psyche.

I think that it is the same societal attitudes that are also responsible for dowry killings, female infanticide and violence against women, that are responsible for rapes and the inceased feelings of insecurity perceived by girls and women in India. Unfortunately these are so common among outside the big cities and among more marginalized groups that these are taken as the norm and do not even make it to any kind of news.

However, after reading Cialdini's paper, I was wondering, if in our desire to bring a change in our society, we are not emphasising too much on how frequent and common rapes have become and if this is fueling the perception at least in some men that it is common and even they can do it?

Can talking about "Delhi as the rape capital of India" or "Mumbai as the new rape capital of India" is the wrong message to give to country's men, because it tells them that rape is common or even "normal"?

What do you think?

***

My dog’s Contribution to My Photography

In 2004, when I bought my first digital camera, I discovered that I loved clicking pictures. I had had other non-digital cameras before that and while I had always liked clicking pictures, it was just a hobby. After I started using the digital cameras, I discovered the passion for photography. This article is about the way our dog Brando influenced my relationship with photography.

Brando, our dog for 18 years, died last month. I still miss him. Looking at the corner where he used to sit and sleep, brings a lump to my throat. His pictures make me feel like crying. I have talked to other persons who had dogs and who tell me that after so many years, how much they still miss their pets.

If you live in an apartment, like we do, and if you have a dog, you need to take him/her out every day, at least two times, but sometimes even more. Taking out Brando for a walk in the mornings and evenings, was my responsibility. That is where he taught me things that were so important for photography.

If you like taking long walks, when you start going out with your dog, you learn that your dog has his/her own ideas about the walk and often they do not coincide with your ideas of taking walks.

While walking, we humans usually want to walk and at the same time, talk to friends or talk on telephone or listen to music on walkman or Ipod or even day dream. Dogs are not interested in only walking, they want to stop, follow the smells, bark or say hello to other dogs, run after cats, pigeons and rabbits, and mark their territories by leaving small amounts of their pee on the plants and trees. Some times, if they like the smells, especially when the bitches are in heat, the male dogs become difficult to control and they can stay in the same place for a long time with their nose buried in some place where they can smell some chemicals.

BRANDO'S LESSON 1: STOP AND SEE

When Brando stopped somewhere for any reason, if I tried to pull him, it usually provoked an indignant reaction. He usually gave me an annoyed look and pointed his feet at that place. Though he was a small dog, in such moments, it was impossible for me to pull him and make him move even an inch. It made me think about that episode from Ramayan where Angad, the monkey cousin of Hanuman, goes to the demon king’s court and challenges him to try to move his foot.

So whenever Brando did his Angad ji act, I learned that it was better to relax and look around rather than trying to pull him and getting agitated for nothing.

Have you ever just stood in a place in a park or on the roadside, relaxed, doing nothing and just looking around? Right from the time when electricity was invented and people started remaining awake during the night, we humans have continued to invent new things to make ourselves run faster through our lives.

Doing nothing and relaxing is almost a deadly sin or at least, an anxiety laden pleasure, to be hidden behind words like “Actually I was thinking about a complex problem!” And while you stand near your dog, waiting for him/her to finish doing whatever dogs do, joggers and walkers, go past you looking at you with pity.

It was while I was standing around and doing nothing in the park, that I realized that there was the miracle of life all around us. I knew of course that there were different kinds of trees, different colours of flowers and different kinds of bugs in nature, but it had been a long time since I had really looked at them.

So while I waited, I observed the patterns in the barks of the trees, the way their branches divided, the way their leaves moved in the wind. I looked at the flowers, bees, grass and birds. Profound thoughts came to me like the realization that our language is a rough approximation of the reality. For example, I could see so many different varieties of pink coloured flowers, and each had a different shade of pink. In this case “pink” was an approximation to speak of all those different shades of colours that we call pink and that our language can not specify.

All this had happened before I had a digital camera. So I had started buying books about plants, trees and birds. I looked at trees and plants in the park and learned to identify them. I also started to stop and really look at things, at times wonder-struck at the infinite variety of life all around us. Thus, there came a time, when Brando wanted to walk, while I wanted to stand and look at things, so now he pulled me while I tried unsuccessfully, to be Angad ji.

This lesson of not taking the world for granted and to actually look at everything around us, was the most important lesson for my photography. Afterwards, when I got my digital camera, I discovered my passion while passing hours peering at wild flowers, the changing shades of colours of the grass, and the patterns made by the wind in the fields.

BRANDO'S LESSON 2: DIFFICULT SEASONS ARE ALSO BEAUTIFUL 

Normally we go out for a walk or a tourist visit when the weather is good. Rain, hot winds, freezing cold and snow storms are not meant for going out but for staying at home, possibly with air-conditioning. However, it does not matter which season is it and how terrible it is to be outside, your dog needs to be taken out at his usual time everyday.

There were mornings after snowfalls, when the paths in the park were covered with a sheet of frozen ice, and walking on it was like a drunk trying to cross a narrow bridge, constantly afraid of tipping down in the river below. Brando went on unconcerned, some times pulling me suddenly when he saw something interesting and making me crash down. The good thing about it was that mostly I was alone or at the most there were other dog-owners like me, who did not laugh at me, while they tried to hold me to their dogs.

There were other days with terrible heat and a sensation of oppression, when it was difficult to breathe. Some days had gales and monsoon like rain. Others had cold wind that knifed across my fur jacket and stabbed straight at my heart. I went out with Brando on all those days because there was no alternative.

And I discovered that the world changed with seasons. I could see the tiny changes everyday as the first leaves and first buds came out and slowly grew, till one day the leafless trees standing like dark skeletons, were suddenly covered with green leaves and bending down with flowers or the flowers falling down covered the ground like a carpet.

Looking at the world in the early morning light of a foggy winter day or in the evening of a windless hot summer day, created an intimacy with nature that is impossible if you only go out for leisurely walks in good weather. Looking around those familiar and yet strange worlds was another important lesson for my photography. You do not need to go out to far away places to take pictures, you can discover the strange worlds all around you.

CONCLUSIONS

There are so many other things that Brando had influenced, like the possibility of saying hello to unknown persons. Saying hello to other dog owners, persons with small children who wanted to touch Brando and know his name, and even strangers, was so much easier. Now, without him, I will be back to my usual reserved self, finding it more difficult to talk to people I do not know. But the lessons he gave me about the nature and the way I look at the world, they will continue to be with me, as long as I will take pictures with my digital camera!

The pictures I have used with this post are from the park where I used to go for walks with Brando and show the wood horses in the children's playground during different seasons.

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Angels, snake-women and queens - Female forms in Viennese sculptures

Europe provides a lot of opportunities for admiring sculptures and art in public spaces. They can be memorial statues of famous persons such as kings, leaders, artists and scientists. They can be commemorative statues to remember specific events from countries' or cities' histories. They can be expressions of symbolic ideas or an expression of peoples' wealth and linked to specific buildings. They can also be artworks and cultural expressions used for beautification.

In this post I want to share 16 of my favourite images of sculptures of female forms from Vienna in Austria.

Starting from medieval period, Vienna gradually became a rich city - it was the capital of Austrian-Hungarian empire and a trade hub for commerce between western and eastern Europe. As it lacked the ruins, history and culture of  ancient Greek and Roman civilisations, over the past couple of centuries, the city asked artists to create works that represent those ancient civilisations. Late Gothic and Baroque styles are thus most prominently visible in Vienna. Most of the images presented in this post show sculptures in these two styles.

The first four images present sculptures of women from different groups of statues remembering or celebrating famous  men - persons like Ferdinand Raimund, Johann Andreas von Liebenberg and Johannes Brahms. The first one has an angel with butterfly wings and a star on her forehead. I like the playful expression on her face.

The next one is also an angel, but with more classic angelic wings and a serious face. She holds in her hand a victory wreath.

I especially like the next image from the famous music composer Johannes Brahms' memorial. The woman in this sculpture has one hand on a broken lyre. However, for me the beauty of this sculpture is in the cracks that seem to symbolise death and decay.

Finally this last statue in bronze of a sitting woman, has nice green-effects due to oxidation, and seems to be holding a branch of olive, probably to symbolise peace.

The next image shows the only statue commemorating a powerful woman - Maria Theresia from 18th century (her titles were: Archduchess of Austria, King of Hungary and Queen of Bohemia) and thus, it is also the only statue of a woman in this group of images, who is not young and beautiful.

The world is controlled by men and it is men who take decisions about the statues in public spaces. Thus statues commemorating persons are usually of men, where women are supporting figures and are selected for the male gaze. In fact, if you look at the women in the sculptures shown in all the other images of this post, you will see that they are all young and beautiful looking.

The next five images have women used as a symbol to express a concept such as victory or justice. The first two are from the parliament building. The first one is a little kitsch with lot of gold-plating including an angel holding a victory wreath. Though Austrians call their country "fatherland", I feel that this statue probably denotes Austria (or may be, it is democracy? or law and order?)

The next image has a half-woman and half feline mythological figure with wings, that brings to mind the sphinx from Egypt.

The next two images of sculptures are from the opera house, where Mozart used to work and perform. The sculptures are in renaissance style and probably depict virtues such as shyness, purity and destiny.

The next image is from Schonberg residence of the king and is in classical Greek style with a Greek mythological figure (may be a forest godess or a hunting godess, with a dead deer at her feet).

The next two images are also symbolic and both have women with a snake. When I saw them, my first thought was that these were figures inspired by the Adam and Eve story of the Bible, where the snake represents the temptation, while the discovery of sexuality is represented by the apple. These representations often show Adam as the personification of innocence, while Eve is shown as the temptress holding the snake or the apple in her hand and thus causing Adam's fall from the heaven. This identification of woman as the negative influence on men and thus, whose body must be covered and hidden, and who should be controlled by the men, is common in conservative groups of different religions.

This next sculpture also reminded me of stories of nag-panchami in India, when you are supposed to offer milk to snakes.

Women and snakes were together part of many other mythologies - like Echidna, the half-snake and half human figure from the Greek mythology and Ichchadhari nagin (woman who turns into a snake at night) in the Indian mythology. These statues also reminded me of the Cleopatra story, who had committed suicide by getting herself bitten by a poisonous snake.

Stories of snake-woman can be seen as old superstitions. In psychological terms they can also be seen as expression of suppressed emotions linked to jealousy or sexuality. (If you can read Hindi, I suggest you to read Archana Verma's analysis of Indian writer Premchand's story "Nagpuja" on the theme of snake-woman.)

The next two images are about the female figures in art. The first figure is the often represented ideal of "woman as a mother".

The second figure is that of the baby girl Maggie Simpson with her milk bottle from the well known animated films of the Simpson family.

Finally, the last two images of this collection are about women used as columns to support doors or windows. Using female figures as columns is an ancient practice and such figures are called Caryatids. Perhaps the most famous example of caryatids is from a temple in ancient acropolis in Athens (Greece).

I love these two images very much. Though they are also made in the Greek style, they represent working class women in their daily lives. At the same time, they show women who are friends, and who share an easy intimacy. Normally caryatids show young women striking poses to show off their bodies, like most other public sculptures of women. These two images instead have everyday women who seem to be together in their own worlds and who are not on display for others.

So which of these images do you like most?

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Homelands of my heart

The angst for the far away homelands that emigrants carry in their hearts has been a constant theme for films, fiction and memorials, especially over the past couple of decades as globalization has spread. "Immaginary Homelands" by Salman Rushdie (1992) was part of expressing this angst.  Pico Iyer's talk "Where is home" on TED is another articulation of the feelings of rootlessness. Pico explains that rootlessness is not just angst, it can also be a pleasure, freeing you to decide and choose your homelands.

If you have not yet watched Pico's talk, I strongly recommend it. He is a wonderful speaker with an evocative style.

Pico's talk has two main threads that he uses to weave a word-web of memories, experiences and emotions. First thread is a question asked by others, "where are you from?", and the second is about our own feelings of what defines a home for us. In his talk, Pico often moves between these two threads, implying that both are inter-related.

After watching his talk, I kept on thinking about it. My feeling is that the two threads are not really inter-related in the way Pico seems to suggest. If I ask myself Pico's question, "where is home?", I would not think of the question, "where are you from?", I would ask other questions.

WHERE ARE YOU FROM?

It is the question asked by the new "others", often when we meet them for the first time.It is probably as old as the times when humanity started its journey from Africa and spread to different parts of the world.

In most parts of the world, before the industrial revolution and urbanization, only a tiny percentage of persons ever left the places where they were born. In their life times, at the most they could have hoped to make a few trips to the nearest town. Almost invariably, people married persons from the same region, if not the same village. They spoke the same languages, ate the same food, prayed to the same gods and celebrated the same festivals.

This belonging to the the "birth-place" found common expressions. For example, if Indian traditions forbade crossing of the seas, Italians had sayings like "Moglie e buoi dei paesi tuoi" (Wife and buffaloes should be from your same village). I am sure that different other cultures had similar ideas.

Thus, in those times, when you met new persons, it made sense to ask "where are you from?", because you knew everyone there was to know and you rarely met new persons. With this one question, you were asking many different questions - to which place do you belong? where were your mother and father born? which city/village is linked to your family?

Today the world is profoundly different. Often you do not have the time to listen to the complicated answers to the question "where are you from" and it does not make any difference to you.

Today, even if you never leave your home country, internal migrations are a constant part of urban lives and increasingly, even the rural lives. More than ever before in the history of humankind, people from different cities can get married, have children in different cities, send those children to schools and colleges in different cities, and find work and move to different cities in their life times. Thus, emigrants or natives, it has become harder to answer this question "where are you from?".

You no longer have the name of one place to answer this question. You may need to give long and complicated answers describing your shifting home-cities. I think that most of Pico's talk is about this question. The question of "belonging".

But is this question really about the place identified by your heart as your home, as Pico suggests in the second thread of his TED talk? Not for me.

HOMES OF THE HEART

In his talk, Pico mentions different places, buildings and countries where he has lived at different times in his life. He talks of his schooling in Britain and university in the USA. He also talks of his love for Japan and the burning of the family house in California that had "set him free".

However, people seem to be missing from Pico's world. While he talks of his grandparents' house, he never talks of his grandparents themselves. He never mentions his mother or father or siblings or cousins. He does not talk of his wife, his children. There are no friends of his heart in his speech.

And while reflecting over his talk, I asked myself, how can we talk of our home, without talking about the people we love?

When I had left India, my home was mainly in Delhi, in the rented house where my mother had lived. But parts of my home were also with other family members and close friends. In the past three decades, as our family has spread to different parts of India and some persons have emigrated to other countries, parts of my home have also spread with them. My feelings of "home" are linked to my family.

Over the years, the memories of the intense friendships of adolescence have dimmed and none of those childhood friends is active on the social media or even emails so our contacts are rare - thus today I am not so sure how strong are the links between them and my "home" feelings.

As long as my mother was alive, my strongest feelings of home continued to be linked to her. Today, while I sit in Bologna (Italy) and talk to my sisters on telephone, one in USA and the other in India, I feel at home in that moment. Their voices, and our shared memories are my home.

The voices of some of my cousins are also indelible part of my "home" feelings. Even just to think of them, makes me feel at home.

And, I have my new home, linked to my wife and my son. Strangely, though I have lived for more than two decades in Bologna and we own a house here, in Italy my feelings of "my home" are stronger towards Schio, the town of my wife's family - again, I think that this feeling has something to do with close family members and not so much with the cities themselves.

So, for me, the place that I feel in my heart as my home, has to do with my emotions - feelings of family, love, affection, friendship - and little to do with geography or other things.

And for you, where is the homeland of your heart?

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The Wonderful World of Wall Paintings

Wall painting is an ancient art that goes back to thousands of years, when prehistoric humans started living in caves. The colours and techniques used by prehistoric humans were very different from the way contemporary humans use wall paintings. Yet across these thousands of years, in many ways, wall paintings show a continuity of ideas and functions. This is true across cultures, countries and continents.

This photo-essay on different kinds of wall paintings presents images from my travels in different continents.

WALL DECORATIONS

Wall paintings, that is using colours to make designs and illustrations on the walls, is one way of decorating our private and public places.

Some other ways of decorating the walls include -

Murals: Mural is a generic term, indicating wall decorations including wall paintings, but also designs made by applying stone or other materials. In the contemporary world, increasingly designs and art works are printed on canvas, plastic sheets or even paper and then fixed to the walls.

Mosaics are designs made by putting together small pieces of glass or ceramics, similar to the way pixels of different colours compose images on the computer screens.

ANCIENT WALL PAINTINGS

Prehistoric humans used wall paintings for different reasons such as to record events, as part of religious rites and as part of rites linked to hunting.

The image of a prehistoric wall painting shown below is from Chinhampere in Manica region in Mozambique, not far from the border from Zimbabwe. Ms. Mbuye Aghonda is a widow and is the guardian of the sacred paintings of Chinhampere. The paintings are made on an enormous and relatively smooth rock surface that overlooks a valley from the top of a hill.

To visit these wall paintings, you have to be accompanied by the sacred guardian. As you climb up the hill, first the sacred guardian will go to the paintings to pray and ask for their permission, before you can see them.

The paintings were made over different periods of time and show different wild animals and the hunters. Thus, probably they were part of the ancient hunting rituals. Now there is little wild life in Chinhampere. According to Mbuye, the paintings tell the story of persons who had come from some where across the border of the present-day Zimbabwe, and they had some discussions, after which part of the persons had returned back to their original village, while remaining had decided to settle near Chinhampere.

The ancient wall paintings of Chinhampere are part of a living tradition - every year, there is a village procession and festival, when people walk to the wall to pray and to celebrate.

WALL PAINTINGS IN TRADITIONAL SOCIETIES

In rural areas, and especially among tribal population groups, wall paintings continue to be part of people's lives. Here are two examples of traditional art.

The first image is from Koraput in Odisha (India) from the museum of tribal population groups. It shows the kind of figures used in traditional wall paintings in this area. These wall paintings have social and religious uses, as well as they are people's artistic expression. Even in cities in India, similar paintings can be made during festivals and marriages.

The second image is from Alua in Nampula region in the north of Mozambique, close to the Indian ocean. The village house-wall shows a contemporary scene with a truck bringing liquor or beer bottles, a bar or hotel, where people drink alcohol and the man with the knife illustrates the impact of alcohol drinking. Thus this wall painting is for public awareness, while the hut may belong to some public building or to a village leader or a pastor.

FRESCOES IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE

Frescoes are a special kind of wall painting made on fresh lime plaster, so that the painting becomes part of the building. This art of making frescoes developed especially in medieval Europe. Below you will find an example of frescoes from medieval houses from the city centre of Trento in north-east of Italy.

ACCEPTED CONTEMPORARY WALL PAINTINGS

Contemporary wall paintings can be broadly divided into those that are acceptable to the society and those that different societies usually criminalise. First let us look at different ways in which societies use wall-paintings as a device to attract attention and to tell people about the functions of a building.

The first image is from Guwahati (Assam) in the north-eastern part of India. It shows images painted on a Hindu temple wall. Such use of temple walls is very common in Asia and especially in India. It tells people that the building is a temple. It is also a time-saving device so that if you do not have enough time to go inside the temple to do proper prayers, you can do a hurried prayer, while passing in front of the sacred images.

The image below is from Kunming in Yunnan (China). I am not sure if it is a wall painting or if it is a painted canvas or plastic sheets fixed to the wall. It shows tribal dresses and costumes. As the contemporary world moves away from traditional societies to cities where people are more homogenised with western clothes and apartment houses, often cities create museums and images in public spaces to remind them about tribal dresses, songs, rites and customs. Usually this means simplifying the earlier complex societies into something that can be marketed for selling souvenirs and attracting tourists.

 

The next image is from the university area in Bologna (Italy), showing the shutters of a restaurant that have been painted to make publicity for the restaurant and to tell the passers-by about the kind of food available there.

 

The next image is once again from a rural area in Yunnan province of China and shows a nursery school. Often schools and children's wards in hospitals have bright and colourful images of happy and playing children, to increase their attractiveness and to make the small children forget the pain or the separation from their families!

The image below is from Amsterdam (Netherlands) showing an art shop for tourists. Here wall paintings are useful to attract customers.

 

The next two images are from the tiny medieval town of Dozza, near Bologna, in Italy. Every two years, Dozza invites some painters to come and use its houses as a canvas for making paintings. Over the decades, this has turned Dozza into an open air art gallery, where most houses have paintings on their walls. In a country full of quaint medieval towns with cobbled streets and castles with moats, the wall-paintings of Dozza help to give it a distinct image for attracting tourists.

The image below is one of my favourite paintings in Dozza, because it uses the windows of the house as the ears of the two gossipping neighbours.

Similar to Dozza, the seaside holiday town of Caorle near Venice (Italy) uses colours in two ways - for wall-paintings as shown in the image below, and also to paint the different houses in bright colours so that together they give a bright colourful look to the city. Once again, colours are used here to attract tourists.

Some time back, on TED video talks, I remember watching a video in which Mr. Edi Rama, the mayor of Tirana in Albania, tells of how he used colours to give optimism and self-confidence to his city. Do watch this video if you have not seen it.

The next image is from Vienna in Austria, showing a hotel that uses colour on its walls to give itself a distinct image and to attract people. As you walk in front of such a colourful building, it is natural to feel curious about it and to remember it.

All the above are different examples of how societies use colours and wall paintings as part of their information-providing, awareness raising and marketing.

GRAFFITI ART

Some times persons, especially young people, use wall paintings in street art to express their anger, to provoke and to protest. Often, such wall-paintings are done at night and in most countries, making such paintings is considered as a crime. However, sometimes, cities provide space to their young people where they can express themselves freely, without criminalising it.

Here are some examples of this rebellious art, also known as graffiti. The first two examples are from the university area in Goiania in Brazil (South America). Note the person with a cape on his/her head and the face covered by a handkerchief in the second image, an almost universal sign of protesting youth all over the world.

The next two examples are from Bologna (Italy) and are the works of a young artist called Ericailcané, who makes graffiti on abandoned buildings. Giant sized animals are a characteristic of his works. He expresses the alienation of youth in the contemporary society, usually seen as controlling (like the robotic hand turning the key in elephant's ass in the second image).

The next two images are also from Bologna, from the university area and these show expression of protest. The first one is about economic crisis and it has a message targeted at banks and governments, it says "We won't pay the bill for Your crisis".

The second image was made during Libyan war, probably by Libyan students (it is signed as "autonomous collective of students"), and shows Qaddafi with a no-entry sign and expresses solidarity with Arabs (it also has the student's website address, so even while protesting, students use it as a tool to get interested young people to their website).

The last image of this photo-essay is from the downtown in Nairobi (Kenya) and was clicked during last year (2012). It is a scathing satire, protesting against the political corruption and abuse of democracy.

CONCLUSIONS

Today as we move towards the digital world, perhaps our blog-walls can also be considered as wall-paintings - they are certainly used in different ways like the wall-paintings - to inform, to protest, to pray, to market or may be, just to express our sense of beauty. What ever be our goal, the wall paintings continue to be a potent and contemporary medium to share our message.

I hope that you liked this quick world-tour to the wall-paintings in different continents.

Personally, I feel that the graffiti made by the protesting youth, is also an art form. It is an important way to let people express themselves. I agree that if someone uses the wall of my house to give a protest message through graffiti, probably I would not be so happy about it. Still, I think that the cities can provide official spaces to graffiti makers. Apart from the protests, it also brings some vibrant colours and a human touch to our cities. What do you say?

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Advertisements in Rome

I love to take pictures of ads. While looking at my folder of pictures from Rome, I suddenly realised I have a nice collection of some ad-pics. So here is a selection for you.

It seems that the old monuments in the centre of Rome, are wonderful places for advertising. Since tickets don't seem to generate enough income, rennovation gives the opportunity to cover up the monument, and use it for placing ads and earning money. Rome municipality is discussing what to do about these never-ending rennovations around old monuments.

The image below shows the advertisement placed around the Egyptian obelisk in Piazza del Popolo in Rome. This is one of the most beautiful squares of Rome.

The next image is also from the same Piazza del Popolo square, showing ads on one of the churches, closed for rennovation.

The Spanish Steps near Piazza del Popolo is another favourite tourist stop with thousands of persons passing hours sitting here and admiring this beautiful square with the sunken boat fountain. Thus, big brand names put their ads in the areas surroudning it.

Rome also hosts one of the U.N. organisations - the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). Usually the FAO building presents socially useful ads, as shown in the image below.

Termini railway station, the main railway station of Rome, is a popular site for ads because so many persons pass from here every day. Often the advertisements placed here are huge, since the railway station has very high roofs. Here is a sample of ads from the Termini Railway station.

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