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| Sitting at the open green space at Triveni Kala Sangam, New Delhi |
For quite some time now I have been troubled by the idea of breaking away from the obvious and the obnoxious pattern of contemporary way of art that we are following and propagating in India, especially. I wanted to face some kind of visual challenge to address this dilemma. I dreamed of creating something of an epic proportion and it should cut across all the human boundaries. The works should merge mankind from all across the shores. My lines should be the lines for all humanity. It should speak the language of a unified perspective of art. Frankly speaking I had only one thing in mind and that was a really troublesome, tiny fickle idea. An idea to talk about humanity in general through what I can do best, that is to draw on any damn surface. Some how, wanted to address my hunger for creation using the most primitive method, drawing. To simply draw on paper is the most satisfying and adventurous voyage for an Artist. You have no chance to make mistakes, no second take or to manipulate short-comings with layering of colours. Drawing is so bloody naked. It’s the most raw and nude form of art. No hidden truths or ambiguities allowed. I trusted upon the lines only, to take on this journey through the land of thousands of emotions and intriguing visuals.
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| Doing what I do best sitting inside the book store at Triveni Kala Sangam |
That was the year 2012, while entering the beautiful and the most engaging creative space in Delhi, Triveni Kala Sangam I realised that, this is the perfect space to hunt for my subjects. Well the subjects were all walking around and spread across the spectrum of Triveni’s wonderful space. They were all humans, engaged in their own world and continuously transmitting visual ideas to my soul and mind. I was just standing there amazed, thinking what beautiful things I can create with all these visual catalysts. “Manus” or “humans” as we say in Bengali (my mother tongue) is the most vital and visible element of any civilization. Humans are the best visual platform of interaction with the rest of the world. Why not create a series of drawings on Manus (humans) itself? First I thought to make large format paintings, at least 50 of them. Then I narrowed down my choice to pen and ink drawings to answer my inner call. I started drawing endlessly, sitting around Triveni Kala Sangam and sometimes at nook and corners of Mandi House area.
Primarily it was Triveni Kala Sangam that made it possible for my lines to take their final shape through this series and book, Manus. Since 2012 to early 2018 I had drawn innumerous number of small format drawings for this series, may be more than 750 of them. Finally in April 2018, I decided to compile the drawings from this series in a compact pocket book. Launched the crowd funding campaign to publish the book MANUS. Support poured in from across India and abroad. But the MANUS still requires some amount of funds and I appeal for your support and solidarity towards achieving the goal of making this book of drawings a success story.
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| Sitting at the open green space at Triveni Kala Sangam, New Delhi |
The pages of MANUS are full of characters that I observed and analysed while sitting around Triveni Kala Sangam. Some are vibrant, others comical or absolutely mundane and some really tragic, but primarily they are all humans. No fantasy sketches or dream talkers. At Triveni, I observed lawyers, corporate honchos, political clowns, love-birds, college students, job seekers, actors, beautiful women with less beautiful mind, heartbroken Romeos, foreign tourists, narcissists with inflated egos, fraudsters, artists and art buyers, teachers with no knowledge of what they are preaching, aspiring models chasing their agents, beautiful secretaries who act more like dumb bombshells rather than what they are actually hired for, rich old men with young sex dolls, bad jokes cracked by some upstart bourgeois, poor and helpless migrants who seemed to be all lost in the city buzz, confused young lover chasing the rich damsel, fashion gurus spreading their pomp and glitz, the all season struggler in life, the highly glossed and primed banias’, big mouth but ravishingly beautiful Punjabi girls and ladies, the JNU-type-intellectuals, the pseudo nationalists, failed film director with his bundles of no-good scripts, socialites performing their only known occupation; killing-time, scores of foodies chomping through highly priced savouries at the terrace garden restaurant of Triveni, ego maniacs foul mouthing on non-issues, political debate by crony political chamchas, religious guru fooling people for donations while enjoying his aloo tikki, the suave marketing guy trying to convince his client for a hard-to-get deal, the young journo with a sharp tongue for everything, the union leader who felt tempted towards the right side of the path, the all too recognizable escapist, the rich man’s brat showing off his filthiness, the amusing acts by the cats and birds of Triveni (they have plenty of them), the classical dancers performing there, the know-it-all art curators and critics, the rich snob and his beautiful entourage looking-down-upon a family of poor Indian farmer begging for food outside the gates of Triveni and many more instances and characters were etched by me on paper using black lines. The global scenario of despair, war, migration and hatred also acted upon my consciousness. Ideas kept bombarding upon the creative landscape of my soul. The naked lines searched for their meaning in this milieu of social, economic and political maze, known to us as humanity/society.
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| One of the small format drawings from the MANUS series |
Manus the book of drawings is a crucial and honest observation of mankind. I believe my years of creation in solitude will achieve some iota of respect and acceptance in the contemporary parlance of art.
* All photographs by Rajeev Ahuja, New Delhi
