Artist takes a satirical dig at society with first solo show

Introspective and satirical works that question a farmer's diminishing importance in society form the crux of artist Akshay Raj Singh Rathore's first solo show that he has titled 'Impotent Rage'.
In the exhibition of mixed media installations at Gallery Espace art gallery here, the 36-year-old visual artist who hails from a landed zamindari family of Vidisha in Madhya Pradesh turns his gaze inwards.
"I grew up in an atmosphere dominated by upper caste politics and witnessed deterioration of rural social structure... Also, many other influences made me aware of forces and issues at stake within contemporary societies," says Rathore who holds a bachelors in Applied Arts from Baroda University.

In the year 2009 the artist was part of 'Soil Bite', a Khoj International Artists' Association workshop held in Patna, which explored ties between nature and humans.
In the year 2010, Rathore attended the Sandarbh Residency in Partapur in Rajasthan, where his performative work asked people to leave their footprints on a disputed street being claimed by two religious communities. His work questioned land ownership and its ramifications.
In his next residency in El Salavador in 2011, he witnessed a struggle over "fertile land".

"This show is a culmination, in a way, of all those experiences. It is a not a single-themed show. It delves into the hidden angst in rural India, which is invisible, even impotent," says Rathore, now based in Paris.

An installation in clay titled 'Civil/Uncivil' sequenced into three stages - the origin - a lump of raw clay; the moulding - a functional brick; and the third, the brick's broken down form, metaphorically questions the implementation of a system that forces people into following a rigid and edgy structure, whereas the original, organic counters are lost.
"It's a debate between what is civil and uncivil. It's textural...It's about the earth we inhabit and how we consider poor farmers to be uncivilized though they are the ones who are reason of the land's fertility," says Rathore.
'Obituary' is a portrait of farmer Tikaram, standing alone, staring at a wall of seeds from his farm.

"Tikaram, a 70-year-old belongs to a group of farmers who had mastered the best technique of utilising land fertility. He still does all his farming alone and maintains an ethos of bio-diversity and organic produce on his farm. The work is a tribute to the death of this sort of wise farming," says Rathore.