Hue & Call

It was in 2003 that art critic Ina Puri first watched Uttara, Buddhadev Dasgupta’s reel version of author Samaresh Bose’s tale of violence and lawlessness in an ostensibly peaceful setting.

Inspired by a film, an art show presents the various shades of sociopolitical turmoil

It was in 2003 that art critic Ina Puri first watched Uttara, Buddhadev Dasgupta’s reel version of author Samaresh Bose’s tale of violence and lawlessness in an ostensibly peaceful setting. She remembers being spellbound through the movie set in Purulia district in Bengal and realising back then that every frame in the screenplay was a work of art. Five years later the film has stayed with her, and now as her tribute to the classic narrative, she has got five artists — Manu Parekh, Valsan Kolleri, Jagannath Panda, Riyas Komu and Golak Khandual — to transform it from the 70mm screen to their artwork. The result is on display in an exhibition titled Urgent Conversations currently on at Art Alive Gallery. “The show has been on my mind for two years now. It is an outcome of the discussions I had with the artists. The focus is on the need for an urgent conversation required to discuss several sociopolitical issues,” says Puri.

So CDs of the film were sent to each artist and Puri arranged for some of them to interact with the filmmaker. “This helped them to discuss the subject and understand his perspective better,” smiles the curator as she points out how each artist has interpreted the film in his own manner and made it an integral part of his artwork.

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While Komu has made use of some scenes from one movie in his installation titled The Other Village, Panda has zeroed in on violence-plagued society in The Urban Hooligan series that includes watercolour on paper and a video.

Dasgupta’s film is being screened in one corner of the gallery and a wall close-by has Manu Parekh’s canvases depicting associated concerns through hard-hitting imagery painted in bright shades. Artist Golak Khandual may not be directly inspired by Uttara but his work is closely associated with another Dasgupta film Bagh Bahadur. His photographs of the Bagh dancers from Orissa, dressed in opulent costumes, calls attention to the need to support the neglected art and the urgency to conserve tigers and forests. “The exhibition will only initiate the discussion, which hopefully will continue beyond it,” notes Khandual.

The exhibition is on till September 20

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