These B&W drawings are my work during the years 1996 to 1999. Simple, bold lines but enigmatic, raw but smooth, that’s how I see these works. An individual who is near to nature and its elements, very calm in his appearance. He is shown at peace with his inner self. More like a monk or saint. But he is lonely. A loner from heart, he needs no company but his own pure self.
All the works have playful poses. It’s very poetic and an aura of romanticism is there. Mainly done in pen and ink on paper. One of the work is done in charcoal and conte on paper. The flowers and birds are enormous, the foliage is highlited with lots of boldness. At that moment I wanted to take a lot of risk and experimented with the forms. Without knowing the outcome of these series, I went on a journey of self exploration.
Testing my strength and weaknesses as an artist. Its one of my important series of works and these body of drawings laid the foundation for my future creations. ‘LONER’, is a an epic told through lines.
* Artist Statement - Soumen Bhowmick.
After 25 years of waiting nothing, absolutely nothing for the BHOPAL GAS TRAGEDY victims. Verdict was given in a concocted manner, making it more tragic and painful for the victims of this human error. 1984, I was a school student at that time. I still remember Raghu Rai’s B&W photograph of the buried dead child’s face on the cover of India Today magazine.
Very haunting and horrific picture of modern India. Unborn fetuses were killed and chemically destroyed inside the womb, kept as evidence in laboratory jars. So horrible were their state of deformation that even god will cry for them. Hundreds of people died, deformed in the most horrific way, blinded, their bodies were marked with the most painful memories of a careless and criminal company; UNION CARBIDE. It was a scene from a chemical warfare, played in our own motherland. Cruel joke played by a multinational company on the face of India.
Children, women, some of them pregnant, old people, men and cattle’s were sacrificed at the alter of development. Indians, mostly poor and helpless group of people were punished for no fault of theirs. People screaming for help at the dead hour of night, running, pushing each other, crying. Holocaust revisited!
So much noise was made after this tragic incident, but except for some peanuts in the form of monetary relief, no concrete help was given to the victims.
My responsibility as a creative soul raises few questions through this series of drawings titled ‘GASSED’. Like the Nazis did to the Jews during the World War II, a foreign firm did this to the people of India and the Govt. of India just kept quiet and even helped the main accused, Warren Anderson of UNION CARBIDE escape from India. But my drawings will speak the rawest language of pain and despair on behalf of millions of Indians. Injustice was done and still continued on the victims of the gas tragedy. Any rational and humane soul will raise his voice against this barbaric act. I sought the way through lines on paper, drawings of the macabre is what you going to observe now.
And let your heart feel and your mind think about this chemically altered face of human beings.
Solo Art Exhibition at Lalit kala Akademi, Delhi, 2010.
This is a series of drawings and paintings based on my experiences and the man kind in general. Here I tried to explore the strange relation between the inner soul (pure and divine) and our own dilemmas, influenced by circumstantial forces. Sometimes this feelings of despair overwhelms on us and sometimes our inner strength and truth wins over them. These elements of lust, anger, fear and envy has taken physical forms in various walks of our life and exist amidst us. In this series of works, there is a clown or group of clowns performing various acts in a circus, along with four tigers. This tigers personify, lust, anger, fear and jealousy.
The clown (clowns) and the tigers are in continuous clash with each other. The clowns have a divine soul and truth to save them. Sometimes they kill the tigers during the show and sometimes the tigers kill them. Its an ongoing show at the “Circus of the Absurd”, happening with a tinge of reality and satire, commenting at our present social setup.
The tigers are heartless, selfish and materialistic, although they have a royal presence. A duality of character is visible in this case. They deceive the society and the circus shows there various characteristics at various times. Whereas the clown uses his sword made of gold to kill the tigers during the show. We presume the tigers are divine, but they are there to deceive us.
Shown cities being destroyed, faith being plundered by the tigers. Its also a part of the show. They play with our innocence at every step of life. Sometimes impersonating the clown, to deceive us of reality. The imposter is shameless to play the role of a pure soul. But it didn’t last long and the clown takes back his reign of goodness after much struggle, with the help of the golden sword. The golden sword shows purity, truth and divineness. You need a pure golden heart and faith to kill the tigers amidst us. During this ongoing contradictions and power play, the circus in itself becomes enriched with various emotions. I tried my best to capture all that here in this series of works. It’s a panorama of human existence.
Characters of Skeleton (death), Sadhus, beggars, girl child, dogs, horses and snake will appear with the clowns during the show. Gradually the performance overwhelms the reality and in itself becomes reality. The skeleton and other characters have a certain role to play here. The skeleton personifies death and also the beginning. The clown wrestles with skeleton. Trying to overcome death and solitude, like we all do in our life time.
Skeleton also clashes with the tigers, showing an end to dilemmas of mankind. There is a boat, to show homeland and our place in this world. It is made of wood, showing vulnerability. Also have wheels, shows its unstable. I have shown flying daggers or daggers on trapeze, always hanging on our head. The uncertainty of life and the impending end to all life is shown that way.
At the end of the show, the clown overcomes the tigers and kills them with his golden sword. Although the entire city and his homeland is destroyed by the tigers, the clown overcomes his sorrow and faith wins at the end. Its victory of faith and innocence over our own various weaknesses. Goodness wins! *Artist Statement : Soumen Bhowmick 2010.
Coverage of my solo art exhibition "CIRCUS OF THE ABSURD" on Doordarshan
TAMASHA, Triptych, acrylic on paper
TTAMPLING BEAST, PROWL, DANCING ON THE BALL
OVERWHELMING EVIL, THRONE OF THE VICTOR, DAGGER SHOW
FACING THE DAGGER, DANCING ON THE BEAST and FLOATING HEAD
ON THE MOVE, Triptych, conte on paper
NO WHERE TO GO!, Mixed media on paper
Bed of Roses, Charcoal on brown paper
BINDAAS and DUEL
FOR THE SHOW, ON THE BOAT, SHOW IS ON and TIGER IN HAT
HIDING IN MY HAT and THE BIG FIGHT
JOURNEY, Polyptich, pen and ink on paper
Dagger ShowPen and ink on board
On the Trapeze, Pen and ink on board
While I was staying in India for the past few months, I had to watch the performance once in every two or three days. I am afraid to say that it was not funny at all. The more I watch it, the more I hurt and I had to turn my eyes away from it for the moment that I need to applause. Not because it was street performance different from the one in great theater. It is never because they are not good at it either. In the street where there are cars are stuck, it looks like girls younger than 10 year old do handspring and begging it is definitely street circus from anyone’s eyes.
Who can call it is a great performance when a little child reaches her hand to get the money from people in the car? It would rather be called survival performance. The reason why I can remind of this weird scene when I look at the Soumen is, it seems like reiterate to the subject of exhibit as Circus of the absurd. It has a similarity between them when it comes to visible real life and makes the audiences embarrassed. Of course, Work of Soumen is very different from that real Circus in India since it has hidden reality.
And the hidden reality of Soumen includes complicated psychology inside of human being, or parodies dilemma as a circus. The clown and tiger in that work appear as avatar contrast to structure of conflict, a golden knife of clown which symbols purity, sincere and divine uses for defeating the tiger who worships of devil for prosperity. The skeleton describes as for personifies death.
The scene of the clown and skeleton do wresting reflects our lives that try to get over death and loneliness. All the things in work can be personified or avatar. In the long run, a writer uses circus as allegory of life that is complicated and delicate. The painting of Soumen has a structure to show the heavy story of life. Therefore, text can be emphasized than visual language. Except for inner space that is called circus, it is hard to understand that work. It is possible to comprehend the illustration technique or simply used of cartoon technique. The size of work is tiny out of expectation. His work uses paradoxical approach to touch lightly for heavy materials.
It is good enough to get attention or interests from anybody. However, if we too focused on only for meaning of that work, text can be read before seeing the picture since it is possible to neglect formative conduct.
Contemporary art is required to remind that visual imagination of human is on bottom line. I hope it can be progressed as circus lies in it.
*Written by : Insang Song, Independent Curator and Art Critic, curator of Seoul Arts Center.
