Photographers Abroad: Exhibition Catalogue (original) (raw)
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The broadsheet advertisement on the front page of the world's most widely circulated English daily, The Times of India, and its sister publication, The Economic Times, on February 1, 2013, promoting the exhibition, The Naked and the Nude, was perhaps the reason it drew so much attention – chiefly of right wing elements banded together as a fhjjfghj affiliation, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, and its fjjffjg wing, the Durga Vahini. On that day and the next, city papers carried curtain raisers and reviews on the show, subtitled The body in Indian art. By February 3, the discourse and coverage had changed as the two gjgjkk organisations reached out to the media to 'protest' what, by then, was a familiar bogey – the desecration of Indian culture. First, suggestions, then intimidations, were phoned in by what appeared to be lumpen elements against the continuity of the exhibition with the violence being threatened against both works and those associated with the exhibition. On February 4, the 'protestors' gathered outside the gallery but were not let in by a large posse of policemen and policewomen who had been rushed over on the gallery's request for security. The organisers had also reached out to the art and intellectual community who turned up in a number that equalled that of the protestors inside. The media too was let in and had free access to the hjjhjh who put up an informed defense that ranged from India's liberal past to the trope about freedom of expression and its guarantee under the constitution. The press was largely supportive and cheered the gallery's decision not to withdraw either the exhibition or specific works included in the exhibition, as demanded by some of the protestors. Though they had not been inside the gallery – a precautionary measure to ensure the safety of the exhibited works – visual references for the entire exhibition were available on the gallery's website. Television chat shows were supportive too, and put together panels where such intolerance was berated by most guests and the anchors. The reason I bring this up in some detail is to establish the context of this exhibition. The protestors – mostly women – had been brought to the venue in a bus. It would be safe to assume that none of them had been in an art gallery before, or had any views on art. The more intrepid among the media who talked to them found that though they shouted slogans against the commodification of women, had no idea what they were really protesting about. While photographer and gjgjghjk of cultural organization Sahmat, Ram Rahman, was talking to newspersons inside about explicit sculptures from the gjgj, and others were making references to the erotic nature of temple sculptures in Khajuraho and Konark, the women outside appeared restless and keen to return to their homes. They had been hired to grab headline attention, but now that the electronic media's interest was diverted, their own enthusiasm seemed to be flagging. In a short while they would be herded back into their bus and sent home. The policemen and barriers would remain, in scarcer numbers, for a few more days, before being withdrawn entirely, letting the exhibition continue. The manufactured protest and its gjgjj reveals some of the chinks in Indian society in general and the gjjg of the art world in particular. The discomfort it has with art seems to be a fjjg of modernism, something that is new and alien and foisted on a traditional sensibility which leaves it open to interpretations of being exploitative and gjgjjg. The famous sculpture of a dancing girl from Mohenjodaro, excavated from the gjjg of the Indus Valley Civilisation and five millennia old, is unclothed – a convention many of the artists continue to follow today for reasons I will explain in some detail a little
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