Mithu Sen's new book ‘Unmyth’ is a mind map of two decades of her art
Summary
In the book, ‘Unmyth’, artist Mithu Sen describes her art practice as a breaking or unmaking of everything codified
Unmyth: Works and Worlds of Mithu Sen can be perceived in many ways. For one, it reads like a mind map of the Delhi-based artist, highlighting the way she constantly negotiates key concepts of radical hospitality, lingual anarchy, “untaboo" sexuality, counter capitalism and “unmonolith" identity in her practice. Another way is to view the recently released book like a performance. The viewers could engage with the universe of Mithu Sen by scanning QR codes embedded within the book. These tech gateways act as the artist’s acknowledgements for non-human, “un-human" and human, visible and invisible labour, and emotional and intellectual support that has deeply impacted her life.
“I, mithu sen, hereby acknowledge my deep connection with all mOTHERTONGUEs and D(e)ADS in this earth… . I acknowledge all wrong spellings and mistakes! Thank you lingual politics, and colonialism!... . Thank you tears, wet ontology, and female hysterics, nostalgia and sentiments, thank you, vernacular Unworld, and our mutual emptiness," reads one acknowledgement. It carries the spirit of poetic instability and performative multiplicity that she embodies in her practice. “This is an acknowledgement-as-performance that refuses finality or fixity. It invites you into a conceptual space of becoming," she says.
She performs gratitude as a poetic and political act, not as a footnote but as a centrepiece. “Who gets archived, who gets named, who remains unacknowledged despite deep contribution? This gesture destabilises traditional authorship and places the work in a relational field of co-creation," says Sen.
The book, published by Mapin and supported by Chemould Prescott Road, is the first such comprehensive study of Sen’s conceptual art practice. Designed by Anusha Yadav and edited by US-based scholar-writer Irina Aristarkhova, the book features contributions from academics specialising in transnational gender and sexuality studies, cultural theorists and curators such as Nancy Adajania, Max Delany, Sushmita Chatterjee and Karin Zitzewitz, each of whom have engaged with Sen’s work for years.
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The book delves into how the artist—by using gibberish, employing nonsensical phrases of her own making, prefixing “un" to words, or deliberately getting syntax wrong—has spent two decades creating “Unlanguage". This is part of her practice of lingual anarchy, which hopes to unsettle and subvert the ways in which language, especially English, has functioned as a hierarchical institution. “Un is libertarian freedom in a state of flux, Un is a linguistic tool in my vocabulary, a prefix, an extra-textual being and a narrative trope to confront codified structures and hierarchies," she writes in the beginning of the monograph.
The work on the book started back in October 2010 after the show Black Candy. Sen has always had reservations about being typecast, of being ascribed a certain fixed notion. Rather, she wanted the book to reflect the organic nature and fluidity of her artistic practice. “It is never about the ultimate execution. I don’t stay in that fixedness. I want to provoke the reader/viewer, and want the audience to come along with me, but without having to impose this on them," she says.
Unmyth sees her complicate the idea of the form and purpose of the book itself. It can be seen as an archive and a resource for scholars and students, while also acquiring the character of a coffee-table book to draw in people from all walks of life. “One part of the book has a traditional feel, while another part, with its non-linear style, is about unsettling the template. That was a conscious decision," she says.
One of the highlights of the book is the Fictional Interview, written by Sen in what she describes as a “poetic performance form". “Some of the interviewers are anonymous characters while others are famous historical, mythological or personal figures important to Sen. Throughout the decades, one imagines Sen, the artist, has been asked all kinds of questions about her practice. Some of the questions appearing in Fictional Interview could be these very questions. Others could be imaginary ones that Sen wishes she would have been asked," writes Aristarkhova in the preface. In an interview with Lounge, Sen discusses the decision to choose the format of an interview and don the mantle of a ‘trickster’. Edited excerpts:
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Unmyth has been called many things—an archive, a resource and a performance. What does it mean to you?
Unmyth is not a retrospective. Think of it like an “unarchive"—it does not follow a chronology, rather it is a maze. The monograph refuses to stabilise memory, and hence collapses the institutional idea of the archive. The Fictional Interview is an attempt to destabilise this format, unravel authority and question who gets to speak, who gets to record and who gets to perform. Language is not a tool here. Yes, the medium is English, you can read the text, but conceptually we have brought in a certain incomprehensibility. There are anxious words, glitches, nonsense phrases and no guaranteed format. There is a poetic rapture to the book. Poetry is a form of resistance, but one that affords immense freedom and meaning. It gives me space to breathe. By using poetry and by collapsing hierarchies, I have tried to create different timelines and a mind map. By using poetry and by collapsing hierarchies, I have tried to create different timelines and a mind map. Hence this book is a personal document as well—of a way of living.
The list of interviewees in the ‘Fictional Interview’ includes five performative voices—Me Too, Meet U, Me Two, Meat U, Myth U—besides your own voice. How do you ascribe personalities to these voices?
This is a fictional performative polylogue and not a conventional interview. Voices collide, echo, contradict: a child, a ghost, an algorithm, a shadow-self. The form is theatrical, not explanatory; lyrical, not linear. The idea is to disrupt the single voice. Most monographs seek a coherent artist. This one resists. Multiple personas dissolve the illusion of a fixed self or marketed identity. I am fascinated by the “Rashomon effect" as shown by Akira Kurosawa, in which a single identity is perceived and recounted in different ways by different people. In 2010, I was asked to create self portraits for a show. I created text-baseworks—Meet U, Myth U, Meat U, Me Two, Me Too, and more. I took inspiration from Fernando Pessoa’s heteronyms and created five different personas. By using these personalities, the Fictional Interview is like a stage for me as an artist. I assume the position of a strategic trickster. Traditional interviews enforce binaries—questioner and respondent, control and subject. Here, roles glitch and shift. The structure cracks. Inquiry replaces authority. Some questions loop, some answers refuse sense. Language is both game and resistance. Confusion is part of the method.
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The choice of interviewers is interesting too. You have placed figures from myths and legends such as Draupadi and Medusa and real people such as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Sylvia Plath, Stephen Hawking, ZAHA Hadid, and more, within this fictional performance. Where do your agency and the real personalities’ agency meet?
All of the interviewers are those who have shaped my identity in different ways. I have mentioned a disclaimer at the very outset that all interviewers and interviewees appearing in this interview are fictitious, impersonated and entirely coincidental. All of these personalities and figures are within me—the names and mentions are merely symbolic. There will be many more such mentions in the future. I am keeping the rest of my life to acknowledge and remember them. I will do it at my own pace and take control over it. I have kept the interviewers’ agency as well. For instance, when I ask a question through Sylvia Plath, you get a different perspective on her politics as well as mine within the complex format of a fictional interview. When ‘they’ ask questions—who is speaking?
These interviewers are within me and not outside of me. They embody the many different personalities—intellectual, emotional, political—and different frequencies that have shaped my life over the years. Some are protagonists, some are antagonistic, and some vile and violent. You will find Hitler in the list of interviewers, and also Mr Bean and Alexa. These have not been randomly selected, but each question fragment represents a terrain of activity and identity. You have the feminist ghost of Sappho, radical thinkers like Immanuel Kant, the mythical figure of Medusa for embodied trauma and rage in a female body, and Alexa to look at the gendering of Artificial Intelligence. These interviewers are within me and not outside of me. They embody the many personalities—intellectual, emotional, political—and different frequencies that have shaped my life over the years. The idea is to embody, not cite. Think Spivak, Lorde, Bhabha, Pessoa— not as references, but as presence. Their voices haunt the pages, not the footnotes.
