Fashion designer Prashant Verma on Marsyas,a gigantic sculpture by Anish KapoorI remember when I witnessed Marsyas,back in 2003 at the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern in London. I was 18 then and training under fashion designer Alexander McQueen. Marsyas was a sculpture designed by Britains Anish Kapoor. One hundred and fifty-five metres long,35 metres high and made from red PVC stretched taut over three steel hoops,the piece filled the entrance hall of the gallery. I use the word witnessed because it wasnt that I saw the work or remember what I saw. It wasnt just the mind-numbing buzzing sound that the stretched membranes of the PVC pipes were generating in the hall either. It was the experience of this sculpture and what it does to you. In scale,it was so large,you couldnt see the whole thing from any angle,you couldnt conquer it in one gaze. In colour,it was the deep red of blood,its name derived from the Greek mythological figure Marsyas,who was flayed alive by Apollo. In form,it was like a giant piece of stretched meat at a butcher house. Thats the thing about Anish Kapoor-he disrupts your physical and psychological space. I remember Marsyas because it made me feel that exercising your mind to less than its fullest potential would be as bad as not exercising it at all. And every time till date,when Im stuck with work,or a creative process,I remind myself of Marsyas-of how when I came face-to-face with it,it transported me to a universe where my work,career,ambition,life didnt matter and I had to confront my being in a manner I would not have been able to otherwise. It left me alone with myself to ask and answer my lifes questions. I aspire to that purity as I work on the next body of my work.
