A visual odyssey

Chances are that the lingering aftertaste of many of the videos might remain with you. Chinese artist Xu Bing’s video,for example,contains two pigs mating,which has been banned by animal activists in Germany. English conceptual artists Jake and Dinos Chapman’s Bring Me The Head Of… depicts decapitated mannequins with phallic noses. Angus Fairhurst’s (who was Damien Hirst’s classmate) A Cheap And Ill-fitting Gorilla Suit shows the artist in a gorilla suit jumping manically up and down and stripping until he’s stark naked. (We do hope Crowley’s heard of the Shiv Sena)

The show,which had its genesis in November 2009,has travelled to Chongqing,Hong Kong,Guangzhou,Beijing,Singapore and Kuala Lumpur,picking up new video works along the way. (It was originally called 18 Reasons We Still Need Superman but the reasons became bulkier with each new video added to the repertoire)

“It has acquired a different context in each of the places it has toured. In Hong Kong and Beijing,it was shown in cinematic spaces; in Mumbai,it will be shown in a gallery and in Delhi in the form of a seminar in Delhi,” says Crowley who has filmed the whole process from conception to completion to get a better sense of the metamorphosis of the exhibition from place to place.

The 24th reason why we need Superman is Indian artist Tejal Shah’s eight minute video Chingari Chumma—the latest addition to the exhibition. It deals with latent sexual desires that are unaddressed in Bollywood.

So what’s with the quixotic title? “I was thinking of how most of the artists are men and kind of neurotic men at that.

So the idea of Superman came to me as a sort of joke about the male super ego,” says Crowley.

Considering Crowley’s first ever exhibition in 1994 involved creating a ‘village fair’ in the heart of London,featuring Damien Hirst as a clown (which might not be very far from the truth),we’re not surprised his videos are peopled with mating pigs and stripping males. After all,he derives inspiration from Hirst—an artist most renowned for pickling a whole shark in formaldehyde.

At Galerie Mirchandani,Colaba,on February 6 and 7