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Journalism of Courage
An ongoing exhibit makes interesting parallels between theatre and the canvas
Looking at a photograph of artist Tejal Shah suspended between two chairs dressed in Victorian garb and trussed up with rope, one can never imagine the kind of production that went into shooting this single frame-setting the stage
for it was nothing short of a theatrical production.
8220;We had gone to several flea markets in Paris looking for the right kind of chairs, eventually we got some on hire. The authentic shoes I got were two sizes small for me and I could barely walk in them. The two skirts I had put on did not help the matter and when the plank I was supported on broke, I feared the shoot would never take off,8221; says the photographer and video artist whose black-and-white self portrait, titled Lethargy, is part of a larger group exhibition, Anxious, hosted at Galerie Mirchandani Steinruecke.
According to art critic Gitanjali Dang, who has ghost-curated the show: 8220;To create a parallel between Anxious and Peter Handke8217;s
Offending the Audience 1966 is not hyperbolic. The show aspires to undercut the pristine gallery space and make viewers anxious and uncomfortable.8221; With the permission of artists, the show creates 8216;shenanigans8217; to challenge a complacent art-viewing audience.
Works have been hung on the ceiling; the lighting is not luminous, making the ambience surreal. In addition, there is music to confuse and complicate. 8220;Since installations are by nature interactive, paintings lend themselves better to creating a distance,8221; explains Dang.
The parallels between art and theatre are constantly drawn by artists and theatre persons themselves8212;it is delightful when one as a viewer can spot those similarities with the naked eye or derive it from the work through an indirect route.
With performance-based art, the connection to theatre is almost direct. The artist or a chosen protagonist plays out a 8216;role8217;. The next level to the performance is where a photograph or the video art installation is used to document it.
8220;Theatre, especially experimental theatre in India, hardly has any support. It survives by the skin of its teeth,8221; verifies Malani, whose videos Medeamaterial and City of Desires, is a perfect example of the marriage between performance and theatre.
Painter and performance artist Neha Choksi, who has often done collaborative works with theatre person Rehaan Engineer, is another example of an artist collapsing the boundaries between the two disciplines. Having shown twice at Project 88 the artist set up a series of intervention and participation in Who8217;s in Town Anyway. Choksi8217;s videos of migrants arriving in the city, is spliced with performances and actions by trained theatre persons and audience members.
The delightful short stories by Bhupen Khakhar, like Phoren Soap, may not have had audiences or even a staging but his art works are rife with the elements of theatre. The use of light is often dramatic, the personal narratives are played out with large helpings of humour and the protagonists were always addressing an 8216;audience8217; real or imagined.
In the case of itinerant painter Raja Ravi Varma he derived much inspiration from Parsi
theatre and some of his compositions, mostly frontal and with
dramatic light, have been dubbed theatrical by scholars like Gulammohammed Sheikh.
In fact if M F Husain were to be believed, 8220;there is a bit of theatre in every painting8221;.
