Lounge
Artists break stereotypes around caste
Summary
Recent years have seen the rise of voices rooted in anti-caste resistance, but they refuse to be bracketed as ‘Dalit art’
At the Barbican, London, a recently concluded exhibition, The Imaginary Institution of India, featured nearly 150 artworks by over 30 artists done between the years 1975 and 1998, a period of drastic sociopolitical change in Indian history. The works “distilled historically significant episodes as well as intimate moments and shared experiences". Among the variety of mediums and themes on showcase were Savindra Sawarkar’s potent etchings on themes of caste and untouchability.
Sawarkar has often been described as one of the first Indian gallery artists to “foreground the Dalit experience of caste as an aesthetic mode", as mentioned in a 2022 article in Scroll about his practice. He has, over time, created a unique vocabulary featuring Buddhist imagery and social symbols attached with caste. And yet, in the prime of his practice, between 1980s to early 2000s, Sawarkar showcased his work primarily with Lalit Kala Akademi’s Garhi Studio in Delhi, outside of the private gallery scene.
“That was a time when art practices around anti-caste narratives were missing from the mainstream. Why did that happen? This is a question that we are still seeking answers to," says contemporary artist Vikrant Bhise, who tells stories of his personal experiences of caste politics and Ambedkarite consciousness.
Things have started changing slowly in the past decade—but not without effort. Suraj Yengde, author of Caste Matters and co-editor, The Radical in Ambedkar, in his 2023 essay Dalit Art, cites the example of Pramodbabu Ramteke, who experimented with art forms, “ultimately validating his subjects and themes through philosophical theories on Dalit life. Ramteke received a retrospective titled Open Mind at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Mumbai in 2021, which included over 250 artworks. It was the first time that a Dalit artist was recognized in this way, and it took four years of lobbying and fending off aspersions," he writes.
Today, contemporary artists such as Bhise, Prabhakar Kamble, Smita Urmila Rajmane, Tejswini Narayan Sonawane, Sajan Mani, Rahee Punyashloka and Jaisingh Nageswaran are presenting their unique vocabularies of resistance and solidarities both within and outside of the mainstream art ecosystem.
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In another essay, What and Who is Art For? A New Generation of Dalit Artists have some Answers published in 2024 in ArtReview, Yengde writes, “A Dalit as a creator and a subject is a new form now visible in galleries, art festivals and commissioned works. It’s important to say that the Dalit does not exist apart from the world. The Dalit artist is finding a kinship with the outcastes of the wider world, not least via the lineage of colonisation but also through the modern archives that these communities have created… It is incumbent upon the art world to take notice of this and theorise this freshness."
In some cases, the artists have taken on the onus to bring about a change. Multidisciplinary artist Siddhesh Gautam, who goes by the moniker Bakery Prasad and focuses on the visual documentation of India’s anti-caste movement, has co-conceptualised a magazine, All That Blue. He works on it with journalist Bhumika Saraswati, photographers such as Nageswaran and Anurag Banerjee, artist Shrujana Niranjani Shridhar and book designer Sharath Ravishankar to highlight practices that are often excluded from the mainstream narrative. He feels that often only stories of violence and oppression are considered valid enough as anti-caste narratives, but moments of joy, solidarity and challenges of daily living are ignored.
A critical turn is gradually coming about. Rahee Punyashloka, an artist, writer, researcher and experimental filmmaker who lives between Bhubaneswar and Delhi, attributes this to the growing conversation in the “Global North" on marginalisation. “The Indian art infrastructure has no choice but to answer those questions as well. That is why we are able to get whatever little representation that now exists. But I feel this course correction is a good thing," he says.
Bhise first showed at the India Art Fair in 2021, where Delhi-based Anant Art Gallery marked half the booth for his works responding to the cases related to Rohith Vemula and Payal Tadvi who died by suicide in 2016 and 2019 respectively. Since then he has shown his scrolls and multi-panelled paintings as part of an eponymous solo at Anant Art and the two-person exhibition, We Will See, at Experimenter last year. He is also showing his work at the upcoming Indian Art Fair at the booths of both the galleries.
At the 2024 edition of the Serendipity Arts Festival, Sri Vamsi Matta presented a performance piece, Come Eat with Me, about the close relationship between caste and food. The artist began with personal stories and oral histories from his own community, weaving in existing literature and academic insights.
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“Through themes of oppression, solidarity, grief, and joy, the piece culminated in a shared meal—inviting audiences to not only witness these narratives but to actively participate in them, sharing their own experiences around caste and food," says Smriti Rajgarhia, director, Serendipity Arts Foundation and Arts Festival.
In 2022, the foundation commissioned a publication, Imaginable Worlds: Art, Crisis and Global Futures, in collaboration with Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art. It featured an essay on Dalit art as politics by Yengde and artworks by Kamble, Rajyashri Goody, Narayan Sonawane, Manish Harijan and others. “The goal has never been just representation for the sake of it, but rather a deeper engagement that allows for meaningful dialogue and impact. By bringing these narratives to the fore—as integral parts of our artistic landscape—we hope to challenge perceptions, create space for difficult conversations…" she says.
Art as witness
Bhise did not set out to be an artist initially. He was part of the labour force, working as a courier delivery person in Mumbai. He had grown up in Vikhroli in a neighbourhood deeply rooted in Dalit literature, poetry and songs. Raje Dhale, writer-activist, artist, co-founder of Dalit Panthers and a relative of Bhise’s, also stayed there.
Dhale inspired Bhise to take up art studies first at the Raheja School of Art and then at Sir J.J. School of Art. “It was a second birth for me in a way," says the artist. His experience of being part of the labour force started to inform his practice in which he initially focused on farmers’ lives and hardships faced in rural areas.
The pause during the covid-19 pandemic led Bhise to read more Ambedkarite literature. That’s when he connected what he was reading with what was happening around him. “Those who read these books would know, but what about those who don’t? My art is not for adornment, but it is art as witness, art as an archive for future generations of the moment we have lived in," he says.
Digital media has become an important means of democratising art and making it accessible. Punyashloka, for instance, started by creating video works, which were exhibited at venues such as the International Film Festival Rotterdam and Tribeca Film Festival, New York. He then took a break and applied to be a doctoral candidate at the Centre for English Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi.
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Around that time, he also started to create digital art on Instagram under the moniker Artedkar. “I would like to term it an online intervention. The idea of constructing online solidarities still deeply fascinates me," says Punyashloka, who terms his work as Artedkar as just one aspect of his broader practice that covers literature, experimental video and more.
For artists like Gautam, expressing their voice is important so that their stories are not misrepresented or misappropriated. “We have been expressing ourselves but not documenting those voices. We need to do that to create better representation," he adds.
Resisting binaries
Often the messaging around identity can be linear and stereotypical, and that’s why lens-based practitioner Jaisingh Nageswaran, who has curated Vaanyerum Vizhuthugal at the ongoing Chennai Photo Biennale, wants to resist singular narratives. He has brought together 12 lens-based artists of Tamil origin, including Aishwarya Arumbakkam, Krithika Sriram, Sathish Kumar, Osheen Siva and Steevez, to express their take on contradictions and complexities around identity, instead of having a nostalgia-swept view of it. This is an extension of his personal practice in which he draws on his family history and then creates connections with broader social realities of exclusion.
For Nageswaran, it is important to tell inspiring stories such as of his grandmother, a rebel who started a school in Vadipatti 70 years ago not just for Dalit children but for others as well. Besides her, he counts artist Chandru—or G. Chandrasekaran, who taught at the College of Fine Arts in Chennai until his retirement—his biggest inspiration. “He told me to translate my lived experiences into my work," he says.
Over the years, Nageswaran noticed several photography exhibitions taking place in Chennai, which were put together by external curators. He would often wonder if he had to present work rooted in the local culture, what would his presentation style be like. The moment came five years ago when filmmaker Pa Ranjith started a festival to mark the Dalit History Month in April. There Nageswaran didn’t just exhibit his work but also wrote a curatorial note for the first time.
“That made me confident to apply to the Curatorial Intensive South Asia (CISA) 2023 fellowship," he says. CISA is an initiative of Khoj International Artists’ Association and Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan for young curators from South Asia.
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Drawing on his research and experience at CISA for his exhibition at the Chennai Photo Biennale, he decided to bring in Tamil voices that were rooted in local culture and history. He also commissioned works that brought a different perspective to lens-based practices. So, in the show, on view till 16 March, Krithika Sriram has responded to writer Bama’s novel Karukku. Photographer Alina Tiphagne’s work delves into family history, weaving in mythologies to create powerful visual narratives. Graphic and public artist Osheen Siva, originally from Tiruvannamalai and based in Goa, has created a soundscape.
“Osheen is not a photographer but a graphic artist and muralist. I came across her work as a DJ on her social media stories. There was this visual artist, who could also create sound," Nageswaran says. So, Osheen created Palakural, an immersive audiovisual installation, which delves into the multiplicity of Tamil Nadu.
It is these intersections that appeal to artists. Nageswaran wants the art ecosystem to look beyond binaries. “I don’t want to have the identity of only a Dalit photographer. I have lived the Dalit experience, but I am not limited to just that. I don’t want to be boxed or caged," he says.
Punyashloka, however, feels that this is difficult terrain to negotiate, especially within certain art spaces and institutions. “It is almost impossible to be a ‘person’. You are foremost a beneficiary as a Dalit artist," he says. “There needs to be a critical departure from this obvious depiction of what a Dalit artist should speak about. However, it is only when the ‘obvious’ layer is formulated, we can move on to more complex subjects. We need to create a net of signifiers in the beginning to move onto the next phase. And that responsibility also lies with the curator to make sure that we don’t just become, ‘Oh, this Dalit artist is talking about oppression’. There has to be a way to move ahead from that."
