Konquest and Kerfuffle: Hard to put on wall, difficult to miss

Glittery set up, models walking down the ramp, audience cheering, ballons festooned everywhere, and amidst all of this, a semi-clad frail man with a protruding rib cage, sporting a pair of bright golden wings on his back.
Out of place? Welcome, you are watching 'Vidarbha's Secret' show!
If sarcasm and satire are two strong weapons to covey one's message, then artist Bela Gupta's recent work 'Konquest and Kerfuffle' was armed to teeth.
Be it capitalism, colonialism or consumerism, she takes on all the fronts and her message is simple: 'the growing gulf between the haves and havenots since the colonial era'.

Hence, she shows characters from 'Alice in Wonderland' circling around skeletal victims of the Bengal famine sitting on a purple victorian sofa with the title, 'Sentence first, Verdict later'.
"My art is not meant to adorn anyone's drawing room walls. It is to drive home a certain message. Unfortunately, many of the art galleries today have become commercialized. They are for bling and not to educate.

"I want to educate people by taking help of art. What I show might discomfort many, but at the end of the day it is about what had happened or what is happening," Bela Gupta told PTI.

And she makes her point by putting a towering coke bottle reeking of brand status in contrast with the earthy rural wooden hammock.
But, one art work that strikes the most is a painting showing Jesus having the last supper with his 12 apostles - inspired from the late 15th century mural painting by Leonardo Da Vinci -- and the table is laid with cadbury chocolate, happy meal, pizza, cake and what not.
Then, there are a couple of works that are essentially a twisted version of the art made by American artist Tom Wesselmann, who for many was the image behind the western pop movement.

The paintings were titled 'Wessel and Maharaj ji' and 'Wessel and Magnets'.
Bela also takes a dig at the farcical world based on the consumerist agenda with a picture of Ronald McDonald - the famous clown of the fast-food giant - sitting on his bench with an Indian farmer holding a can of softdrink.
The work is aptly titled 'McFarm'.
"Most expensive western brands do better and better business with each passing day, the contrast at the other end of this spectrum is too vast where a farmer poisons his family and then kills himself for not having the livelihood to pay for a paultry debt of Rs 10,000.

"We have been backstabbed again," says Bela.
Amusing enough, one also finds former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill making it to the famous L'Absinthe painting by Edgar Degas in her works.
In another work, Bela has recreated the iconic photograph from the Yalta Conference that originally featured Winston Churchill, US President Franklin D Roosevelt and Soviet Union Premier Joseph Stalin.
Only, this time, Churchill and Stalin are in the company of Mahatma Gandhi instead of Roosevelt
The show at India international here, came to a close yesterday.