Out of the Jar

Think of consumerism, popularly associated with a loss of the local and traditional, which cannot cope with global, large scale demands. This idea is examined through the works of many contemporary artists. For example, ceramist Vineet Kackar creates works tingling with the tension of holding in a single frame diametrically opposite values. His thick ceramic wall tablets recall supermarket labels, sending out advisories on the freshness of eatables, produced and packaged far away. They quote the dream of farmhouse fresh, which can only be local. But they refer to the reconstruction of the eat-fresh dream through the market economy. In a blink, Kackar reconstructs the world of both ideals and actualities. His brilliant stupas, imprinted with the marks of kitschy objects found along the wayside, blend this dichotomy with ease as well, breaking down hierarchies of high and low taste, of purity and pollution, with ceramics, the easily accessible non-exclusive material, as the via media. Kackar thus uses ceramics not only to mould shapes and suggest ideas, but to provoke critical thought.

There is much to observe from another, completely different tradition—the Japanese. A travelling exhibition by the Japan Foundation in India propels us to acknowledge Japan’s rich contemporary clay tradition. Like in India, clay works and ceramics have had a traditional role in everyday Japanese life. Yet, about three decades ago, a whole new contemporariety began to spring up there. One of the most brilliant artists, also represented here, is Fukami Sueharu, the international genius who has almost abstracted form to extend the possibilities of the medium. So also Takiguchi Kazuo, whose works explore surface and form, and whose art lies in actually creating the possibility of this exploration. If these artists have been interrogating the medium, other Japanese have been much more political about the sense of the medium and its exploitation.

Araki Takako’s series on Bibles risk being stunted by the mere admiration of the skill he deploys to create disintegrating, weathered Bibles. They are much more: A poignant, Millenarian comment on global angst, craving repentantly for a reprieve. It is as if the new consumptive society aches undiagnosed. In this, then, Araki Takako and Vineet Kackar could find common ground.

As these broader themes emerge, how would audiences relate to them? Although we are all trained from childhood to see ceramics as functional, one can’t help wondering if this intimacy actually enables a more confident interaction with new ceramics. Or does this new avatar scare us? I would vote for the former, because ceramics lacks the inhibitory aspects of framed works and on the surface of it, demands less decoding. Maybe then, clay actually democratises art viewership by being less imposing. Whether art ought to be that easy at all is the subject of another debate.