Keya Sarkar: Simply priceless

Despite the overall decay in academic and administrative functioning of the Viswa Bharati University, the art department, Kala Bhavan, still has quite a formidable reputation and many serious art students from India and increasingly from the Far East consider themselves fortunate if they can get to study here.

What is surprising, however, is that despite being home to over three hundred and fifty arts students every year (an average of 50 students over the seven-year course) there is absolutely no evidence of it outside the boundaries of Kala Bhavan and the students’ personal studios.

There is no art on display, in fact no art gallery other than that of the university, no postcards, no T-shirts — nothing to tell those not in the know that Santiniketan is home to more artists per square metre than probably anywhere else in India. All that one gets to see being circulated are swish catalogues of artists of Santiniketan displaying in Kolkata, Delhi, London or New York. How much money these artists are making is evident in the nouveau houses they are building.

 

So I was rather surprised when last month I got a hand-drawn card inviting me to an exhibition of paintings and installations by a few under-graduate students of Kala Bhavan at a house in the “Ratanpalli” area which is where all the shops, cyber cafes and food stalls are and a place thronged by residents and students.

It took me a while to locate the house as it was dilapidated and quite unlike an art exhibition venue. As I entered I was greeted by a Thai student watering the garden. As I looked closer, he was watering the grass which was part of his installation on the “use and throw culture of the modern generation”. So there was amongst the grass a broken fridge, a TV screen, many empty and crushed mineral water bottles. Suddenly this house seemed like the perfect venue for an installation of the kind the student had chosen to do. As I walked inside there was more from other Thai, Korean, Japanese and Iranian students — very powerful paintings and installations. Made more so by the run-down condition of the house. The young artists had used the stained and dirty walls of the house to perfection as backdrops for their paintings and installations.

As I got talking to the students I learnt that they had rented the house (no longer liveable and, therefore, empty) for three whole months in order that they may prepare it for the exhibition. What was truly awe inspiring was that they had not called any gallery owners, press, and famous artist for inauguration. They were exhibiting only because they had a need to express.

And they had as their champions all the shop-owners, the cyber cafe operators, the neighbouring sweet shop hands, the tea stall boys, the cycle-rickshaw pullers. All those normal people who do their daily business in the Ratanpalli area were delighted to visit an art exhibition.

As I walked out I felt how by a simple act all these students from foreign shores had helped to keep the Tagore vision alive: That of art and aesthetics being integrated into daily lives rather than being relegated to cold and formal galleries. What these students had so simply demonstrated was that by exhibiting in a place, which is accessible, all those who would normally never enter a gallery were not only having a look but actually encouraging others to do so. Many of their peers would argue that this is no way for a self-respecting artist to make a debut, it does not establish for the artist a market price. But to me personally this effort of a few in an alien land was priceless.