Report by Santanu Ganguly; New Delhi: Video Wednesdays II reverts to the art of narrative or storytelling to reinvoke questions of cultural memory. The five artists on view revert to one of the early uses of film making – animation – to raise philosophic and existential concepts around the individual and her location. Working through drawing painting and photography, animation is one of the fastest growing branches of media art in India currently. Since the success of Doordarshan’s Ek Anek aur Ekta, animation (1974) it has become an instrument of pedagogy and public instruction as much as entertainment.

What is of particular interest in this edition is the coincidence of concepts between the Indian and the Chinese artists. Zhou Yi, one of China’s leading video artists, and director of the 2011 Tudou Video Festival, Beijing and participant in the Venice biennale (2011) uses graphic animation with surreal effect on an epic scale. In The Greatness (2010), she uses Dante’s idea of the Inferno, drawing from her upbringing in Rome since the age of 9. “I decided to use video because it doesn’t have much history – animation has even less precedence, its virgin territory” says Zhou. The video traverses ancient worlds and those of aliens marking the stages of hell articulated by Dante. The constant liet motif is that of the art work, traversing different cultures, and its extreme vulnerability to violent change. Zhou works with extraordinary rhythms, syncopated through her attention to the musical score, a distinct aspect of her video practice.

The found image and the artist’s intervention have moved from gallery practice to animation. Sheba Chhachhi’s work The Water Diviner (2008) works with photographic images of elephants bathing in the waters of the Indian Ocean, off the coast of the Andamans, evoking associations of a once pure state.As with much of her work, several domains of reality and metaphoric association touch and inform each other. The Lakshmi myth describes the emergence of Airavata the first elephant from the Amrit Manthan, or the pure life giving waters, that sustain the gods, and thereafter human existence. The iconography of Gajalakshmi of the fertility goddess being lustrated by the elephant marks this intimate gesture of divine nurture. The elephant traverses the Hindu, Buddhist and Jain traditions as an auspicious symbol. In Sheba, the combusting image directly challenges mythic promise and prophecy, with a fear of absolute dissolution.

Animation with its quick silver ability to combine any number of elements, and create visual associations functions simultaneously through different art styles. The work of Hu Jieming From Architectural Immanence (2002) uses music and architecture in intimate conjunction. There is a constant movement between western style architecture and Chinese structures – many of which have been levelled to make way for Chinese ultra modernity. The overlay of the global model as rapacious and inevitable is poignantly expressed as it tempers the lives of the ordinary Chinese.

On another register, there is the complex interplay between the imprint of globalism and cultural migration. Aditi Chitre’s remarkable work Journey to Nagaland (2010) integrates extremely well rendered drawing board into a slow and meditative rhythm. The inner and outer migrations within India from village to district to town to metropolis evoke different time cycles, and circular journeys. In Chitre’s award winning work, space as alienation and unbelonging gain a fine painterly dimension.

Sharmila Samant’s work A Story (2002) takes the animated drawing closer to familiar territory: the child’s narrative. Nevertheless the work bristles with political reference and symbolism, rendering it in the vein of the parable, a familiar device in the art of storytelling. Samant made this work in 2002 in the aftermath of the Godhra carnage. As a founding member of Open Circle and given her highly defined position on globalism, Samant brings to her work a persistent political consciousness. There is here a stubborn purity of practice that she extends to every aspect of her life, including acts of nurture. In the present work, the child’s socialization into India’s fraught political fabric is gently teased out through the very basics of art – colour, form and concept.

Participating Artist:

Sheba Chhachhi

The Water Diviner, 2008

Duration: 3mins, looped

Zhou Yi

The Greatness, 2010

Duration: 6.33 min, 3D animation

Aditi Chitre

Journey to Nagaland, 2010/ PSBT

Duration: 26 min/Dir. Animation

Hu Jieming

From Architectural Immanence, 2002

Duration: 6.25 min, single channel video

Sharmila Samant

A Story, 2002

Duration: 5.30 min, single channel video animation

Venue : Gallery Espace, 16, Community Center,

New Friends Colony, New Delhi-110025

Dates : February 29, 2012

Time : 11 am – 7 pm