‘Ride the AI wave, don’t fight it’: Multimedia artist Raghava KK

His work was one of a series of exhibitions that explored the intersection of technology and art. NFTs, projections on canvas, AI-created artwork and augmented reality, all found their place in this pavilion that broke away from the confines and dictates of traditional still art. Lakshmi Madhavan’s work, for example, straddled these distinctions. At her exhibition, one could hear a repetitive click and thrum, the sound of a loom spinning away at a fabric. If you turned right in the dark room, you saw a stop motion-animated film depicting a weaver made in pencil sketches, projected on a piece of fabric. He’s seen working on the loom you’re hearing, stitching yarns of gold and silver onto cloth, the famous Kasavu from Kerela. On the left you saw four big pieces of the expensive fabric suspended in the air, embroidered with the words: ANY BODY, EVERY BODY, SOME BODY, NO BODY.

Last day of India art Fair on Sunday in NSIC ground in Okhla (Express Photo by Gajendra Yadav)

Madhavan was inspired to create Hanging by a Thread on a trip to her home state of Kerala. She was perturbed by the laborious exchange of energy between the weavers of Balaramapuram and their looms, as they stitched Kasavu fabrics. “This close interaction between the bodies of the weaver and loom was almost like a mythical creature, half-human, half-wood,” says Madhavan. “At the same time, Kasavu has been a potent marker of belonging, caste, community and gender… the body is a powerful symbol on which a cloth can demarcate hierarchies,” she adds.

Some of the weavers she documented had spent decades working at the craft but could never buy or wear the exorbitant clothes they produced. “I wanted to depict the distance between the bodies of those who wove it and wore it… [such handicrafts] carry an entire baggage of oppression and non-inclusion.” She was driven by how Indian craftspersons rarely receive credit and recognition for their work, “erased out of the narrative of what they make.” She adds, “We’ve had international recognition of Indian handicrafts but not honoured and preserved their legacy.”

Last day of india art fair on sunday in nsic ground in Okhla (Express Photo by Gajendra Yadav)

Close to Madhavan’s installation was another hub of stop-motion animation but of a much brighter demeanour. On entering Shrimanti Saha’s sunny yellow exhibit space, Alternate Evolutions, you saw little paper creatures dotting the walls. Looking closer, it revealed itself as a colourful collage of cut-outs: a three-dimensional protrusion of sea creatures, celestial objects, abstract shapes and body parts, all floating freely into and out of each other’s realms. Figuring a link is difficult because Saha’s influences are eclectic, everything from science fiction and mythology to gender and ecology. But one answer could be found at the centre of the chaos, in a stop motion-animated film propped on the wall, featuring many of the things hovering around you.

These cut-outs are a work-in-progress, and an evolving project that began two years ago. Saha draws many of the images from her paintings so she can extend those ideas into an open space a viewer can walk into. Their animation is a painstaking process. “I make a set for the background and make a storyboard using the cut-outs,” says Saha. “Once I have an idea, I place them in that set and shoot them frame by frame. Everything is a combination of hand-drawn and digitally-edited images,” she adds.

Away from the main exhibition grounds in Jor Bagh, multimedia artist Raghava KK held his own meditation on AI art that was an official collateral event of the IAF, a series called The Impossible Bouquet. Composed entirely by AI using codes and prompts and inspiration from the artist’s previous works, it is a range of acrylic paint images with bouquets of flowers that would never coexist in the same season. Partly guided by the Dutch art tradition of still life that “collects flowers from multiple seasons into one”, Raghava says he wanted to offer a “global aesthetic of wholeness”. He was motivated by the conception of India, an unprecedented experiment of democracy in 1947, a country that harbours a “very diverse pool of people” in one land.

Raghava says that AI is a revolutionary remixing of aesthetics and is being opposed by society because of a fear of change. He believes the fear to emerge from a feeling of loss and liberation, as well as the possibility of the mysteries this new technology poses for art and life. Fears around plagiarism and intellectual property in AI art are secondary, he says, adding that the only way forward is to “ride the wave, not fight it.”

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