It's a tragedy unfolding with time. The pain inflicted by our own self is immense. Now forced to kiss the barrel of a smoking gun in the valley of people with beating hearts and flesh to claim. They are scared to look at the gun of dictatorship. They are scared of the tyrant. They are our own.
Please don't throw them into the dungeons of distrust and self-doubt.
COURAGE LASTS FOREVER By Soumen Bhowmick When the evil tyrant sends his hired warmongers to vanquish the commons, it's the collective and individual courage of the masses which make them face those brutal fascist forces till the end of the battle. Stand together to take on the monster of hatred and jingoism. Always stand together to claim your victory against the obnoxious soothsayer of hatred and negativity. It's our time to resist these forces of annihilation and subjugation collectively. #Mosha #MoshaSeries #MoshaBook #ArtistBook #AntiFa #Drawings #Lines #Contemporary #ArtForChange #ArtistUnited #ArtActivism #ArtNow #Black #Humanity #Democracy #Protest #India #HullaBol * From my new series of drawings in a book format, on our socio-political realities
Tuesday, 12 June 2012
CLOWN HEADS
A series of pen & ink on paper. This series is an extension of my previous series 'CIRCUS OF THE ABSURD'.
I started working on this series of drawings on paper based on my
personal experiences in various forms. Street urchins forced to perform
acts of jugglery in front of the public just to earn a piece of bread
(roti). Even doing terribly difficult and fantastic acts of acrobatics.
Small kids with an innocent smile on their face doing the impossible.
Farmers committing suicide, with debt to follow up by the helpless
family. Homeless on the streets of our cities. Migrants with punctured
dreams. All unsung souls who die, trying to achieve that minimum
sanctity of humanness. They are my inspiration, my ‘CLOWNS’. The golden
sword or dagger has its own role to play. It gives judgement. It takes
the test of purity. The golden sword is alive, does its own tricks. The
clowns are tragic, funny, nauseating, cruel, sad, happy and above all
humane. I want to put some questions of important issues through my art.
In this series of ‘CLOWN HEADS’, the
question of minimum humane existence is dissected in different forms.
The clowns are faces among us, seen everyday in different forms and
situations.
The series of ‘CLOWN
HEADS’ stands on an understanding of daily exploration of our soulless
journey towards attaining nothingness. “It’s a small world”, its an old
joke, but you wouldn’t want to paint it. Or rather want to paint some
crucial moments from its vastness. The ‘CLOWN HEADS’ are visual traces
of imperfect frameworks for negotiating the complexity (and perhaps
meaninglessness) of existence – a symbolic vastness within the greater
vastness of this physical world. It’s a galactic pile-ups of reality –
meditating prisms to which someone, somewhere, is still clinging. The
elements facilitate engagement at all levels of consciousness, being
provocative in nature.
‘CLOWN
HEADS’ series is based on our inner turmoil’s and its struggle with
various elements, influenced my forces of society, norms of survival,
rules of coordinated etiquette’s, economic pitfalls, political lies,
back stabbing idiots, race to success…what not may be the right
question.
One might ask why only
heads…well, the head including the face is the real mirror of our soul.
We read hundreds of faces in our daily life. Still we remember few,
sometimes none. The head or face strikes you first and has its own story
to tell. ‘CLOWN HEADS’ is an assemblage of strange contradictions of
contemporary life. Some faces will remind you of the friend you just met
on the streets or may be the stranger who just made you laugh with his
uncommon acts. Among millions of faces, some are truly memorable, for
reasons unknown to us. Just too hard to erase from ones memory. Why we
treasure them is truly mysterious. That unknown connection maybe known
as human bonding, so prehistoric yet surviving the troubles of our time.
This element of mystery make our life naturally liveable. That slight
twist of eyebrows, that cunning smile, the pale look, happy faces hiding
everything beneath them, the anger blowing hot faces, old and tampered
faces and some many of them. Scratched, curved, chiseled, moistured,
painted, pampered, injured, glorified and drowned in pain, faces
unlimited.
These ‘CLOWN HEADS’ are common faces with uncommon stories carved on them.
Raw
in appearance and bold to the core. The colourful apppearance is
deceiving to our eyes. Painted to hide something…mysterious. Clown
paints his face to appear funny or appropriate for the show. The show is
supreme for him, an every day challenge. Here some accessories are part
of the show, the golden swords, the trapeze, the umbrella, the bicycle,
the arrows, the ball, the ladder, the golden daggers and the golden
guns. They keep popping up here and there to test the clown’s faith and
to make the show more thrilling. ‘CLOWN HEADS’,
simply put are just spontaneous images of raw experiences. Hope and
failure, life and death, are spread across the lines and colours of this
series of work on paper. The material used is least important. The
cause becomes supreme, transforming your routine space and time to a new
level.
The
clown heads have another aspect to them. The Buddha eyes with dream
like aura make you think why peace suddenly. Well the clown is
meditating, one with the self. He is vulnerable but determined. He is on
the path of self exploration to explore the world in a more divine way.
The void in him is taking a form of solace. The monk of his soul is
questioning the meaning of worldly encounters. Ready to take on pain
with very little effort. Finding the Shangri-La within oneself is the endless journey of all humans.
My
clown heads will make you travel through many aspects and feelings of a
clown’s (nayak) life during and after the show. It’s for the viewer to
explore. Let it be mystified for time to reveal its true meaning.
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.
