Remembering Fear

Veteran Delhi artist Anjolie Ela Menon salutes the heroism displayed by the NSG commandos. “I’ve gifted them a canvas that depicts an NSG soldier in the foreground with helicopters in the background. At the bottom of the canvas I have scribbled a note which reads,‘Honouring the brave hearts of 26/11.’ Ideally,I would love to install a bronze statue of a commando near the Gateway,” says Menon,known for her vibrant canvases that eulogise the downtrodden.

Award winning photographer Ritam Banerjee recalls,“On November 26,I was roaming the city streets. I saw the dome light up. I heard the endless rounds of gun shots and saw the living corpses in the hospitals.” Banerjee was on a 60-hour shift clicking photographs for Getty Images,many of which were published in The New York Times and The Washington Post. A year later,he spotlights the resurrected beauty of Mumbai in his exhibition titled The City That Talks to Me at Gallery Art and Soul in Mumbai,from November 19 to December 2. The show comprises photographs,ranging from a BEST bus to the Asiatic Society of Mumbai; it captures the city’s throbbing pulse. Banerjee will be awarded the Karambeer Puraskar,a National Award for Social Justice and Citizen Action this year.

Delhi-based Ravikumar Kashi’s video work is a critique of media. In a video titled ‘Six Degrees of Separation’,the artist photographed images of Kasab from the Internet and screened it on TV. He then re-photographed the image,where in each stage the image gradually distorts. “I wanted to demonstrate how news gets distorted by the media,” says Kashi,whose work will be showcased at an exhibition of 13 artists at Hirji Gallery in Mumbai,till November 16.

Up coming Delhi artist Kishore Chakraborty approaches terror from a different angle,“I try to address the terror within,that we live with day in and out,although our daily lives appear to be running smoothly,” says the artist,currently showing at Threshold Art Gallery till November 22. Besides a series of deceptively calm hand-tinted photographs,Chakraborty has a series of crabs,varying in all shapes and sizes,festooning the gallery. “Terror is like a cancer that eats into society and spreads to everything. So in this series,the crab acts as a metaphor,” says the artist. The piece that spooks the viewer the most has a large black crab crawling out of an ornate trunk. “Here I hold politicians as responsible for terror,as people like Kasab. The ornate box is their glamorous home,but inside the terror eats away,” he says.