Anita Dube: The Velvet Touch

MOST ARTISTS HAVE an oeuvre; a signature style they can lay claim to. Artist Anita Dube’s multidisciplinary practice established over 40 years, however, refuses to be boxed in to oeuvres or styles. From being an art critic and activist champi­oning numerous causes, she seam­lessly moved to creating installations, photographs, videos, sculptures and printed canvases exploring different materials and themes that were both personal and political in nature. She was also the first female curator of the Kochi Muziris Biennale in 2018, and is the co-founder of KHOJ, New Delhi.

“When you are not trained, you are free. I wasn’t trained as an artist so I’m free to follow any path of my choosing. In my head I know what needs to be said at a particular moment of time and my art has always moulded itself to that,” she says, with candour.

This certainly rings true for Dube’s ongoing solo exhibition titled Three Storey House at Vadehra Art Gallery, Delhi. Curated in a pyramidical format, spread across three floors, the exhibi­tion consists of three recent bodies of work by Dube. There are sculptures, mixed-media works and a kinetic in­stallation, seemingly at variance from each other, yet interconnected in their underlying message.

Dube was born to a family of doctors in Lucknow. With no exposure to art in her formative years, she pursued a bachelor’s degree in history from Delhi University, which allowed her to segue into studying art history and criticism at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Saya­jirao University of Baroda. Among her first important projects as an art critic was writing the texts for the catalogues of the exhibitions Seven Young Sculptors curated by Vivan Sundaram in 1985 and Questions and Dialogue in 1987, which established her as an astute voice ques­tioning the biopolitics of the time.

Her ideals drew her to the Indian Radical Painters and Sculptors Associa­tion, of which she became the only fe­male member. Dube shifted her practice to visual art when the group disbanded in 1989, playing with unusual materi­als, words and photography, to critique India’s socio-political conditions.

Recalling her transition from critic to artist, she says, “It was a late realization in my life. I gave an interview to Gulam Mohammed Sheikh at Baroda for a mas­ter’s in art criticism. From there, spending most of my time with artists, and being heavily involved with artist groups made me try my hand in art making. Once I felt a mastery and ease with material, there was no going back!”

Initially drawn to wood carving and clay modelling, she displayed her first body of work at the open courtyard of Tara Apartments, a Charles Correa designed building in Delhi, where she lived at the time. Acceptance from the art community arrived soon after, and with it came a desire to experiment with found objects as well as the work of other artists and writers, which she used in her sculptural works in innovative ways.

“I’m not a navel-gazing kind of an art­ist. I love writing and artworks by other artists, as well as finding inspiration in ordinary objects. I integrate it all into my work as homages to them and to high­light the fact that we are connected in our creativity. When you really admire something, it just enters your system. When I read or see something I love, I establish a connection with its creator,” says Dube.

In the late 1990s, Dube lost interest in wood, and turned instead to velvet—a material she describes as “the love of her life”. This shift was first noticed in Desert Queen, an installation displayed in Namibia. Through a series of objects swathed in rich blue velvet, sequins and ropes, she made a statement on death and celebration as well as pain and pleasure, being two sides of the same coin. The work was well-received and crystallised her desire to work with crafts.

“Cutting, tailoring, embellishing, em­broidering and assembling it all togeth­er—I’m drawn to these kinds of skills. These are domestic crafts performed by women and I’m committed to this kind of domesticity as a means of depicting higher culture. I don’t believe that culture necessarily must be made in an industry. It can also be made at home,” she asserts.

The innovative use of velvet has since become her calling card. Its sensuality, ability to catch and reflect varied colours in the light, ability to absorb colour and make its appearance deeper and layered, its warmth and its weightiness are all aspects that draw her to this material. “The use of velvet allowed me to express myself as a woman, as opposed to an ungendered person,” she explains.

Other staple aspects of her work include the creation of language-based sculptural art, a penchant for making symbols of spirituality like her ceramic eyes which are typically associated with Hindu religious deities, as well as the frequent inclusion of dismembered body parts in her installations. These objects symbolise Dube’s focus on the ‘gaze’ through which she examines the politics of power, mortality, pain, desire and pleasure. Her use of colour is deliberate. Much of her earlier work— relying heavily on textual references as she emerged from her practice as an art critic—was made in black and white. Her later works break free from these conventions, with colour being used in abundance to signify pleasure and the human desire for effulgence.

These themes and new ones find place in Three Storey House. Even as Dube maintains her polemical outlook about the current situation around the world, she says this exhibition is an ode to her love of fabric, architecture, embroidery, crafts and carpentry. She adds, “I’m 66 years old and at this stage, I don’t want people to think my work is merely po­litical. It’s so much more than that.”

The works on display reflect her views on pleasure and lived experiences, especially surviving the pandemic, in addition to her politics. Dube writes: “One begins on the ground floor with the noisy nitty gritty of politics which focuses solely on the egotistical pursuit of power. Then, as you move up, you enter a more rarefied realm of meditative think­ing and pleasure. The second floor offers a mix of pleasure and pedagogy, and the third floor is very personal. I call it a series of small and beautiful love songs.”

Apart from the metaphorical move­ment of themes across the floors, there is also movement from Dube’s traditional black-and-white works towards a pure sensuality of colour; from large, impos­ing works to more focused and intimate forms; and of the changes in her state of mind while making these works of art.

The Animal Farm section, which takes its inspiration from George Orwell’s semi­nal work, stays true to its theme of the power-hungry imposing their will on the less fortunate. A variety of velvet fabrics in varying animal prints are used for the works in this section. Their most literal usage is seen in the leopard sculptures titled Half-Leopard A and B, which consists of a single sculpture sliced in half to reveal innards made of dismembered female body parts, dead babies, guns and other paraphernalia of violence.

OTHER WORKS COVERED in zebra-print fabrics, carry more direct political messages. At the centre of these is Big Mountain, modelled on the cultural act of forming a human pyramid to break the pot of yogurt sus­pended from a height during religious ceremonies. This particular pyramid, however, leads only to one’s ego with a stark “Main” in Hindi resting above it. The kinetic installation Clapping Hands periodically breaks out into loud and sycophantic applause.

The idea is further explored in Foot Soldiers, where vacuous talking heads are depicted as a series of dentures. Installa­tions like Big Zebra, Small Zebra and Old Zebra (Disappeared Poem) are inspired by the intricacy of Mughal jaalis, an effect achieved through the poetry of Amir Aziz written in busy animal-print, and in one case removing its letters to comment on the silencing of voices of dissent. “I’m interested in text and in visuality and how it all comes together,” she says, pointing to this body of work.

On the first floor, one sees large velvet multi-coloured tapestries, which Dube describes as protest banners. Inspired by the beautifully embellished cloths used for religious offerings, she decorates these wall hangings by embroidering poetry and text from writers on them. The writing aims to call people to action against social and political atrocities.

“I’m not religious even though I was born a Hindu, but I’m very interested in the sacred. I’m particularly fascinated by the effulgence of the gods we wor­ship. Human beings have this desire for beauty. They want to shine and our treatment of our gods reflects that desire. So why not use the same treatment for our highest ideals?” she asks.

On the topmost floor are her works made just after the pandemic. These smaller multi-coloured velvet collages mirror Dube’s state of mind during that period. “We were all stuck indoors and weren’t in touch with anyone. Hence, there was an interiority that was being ex­cavated in these works. I needed the mate­rial to depict what I felt during that period of isolation. As an artist, you have to speak in a language which touches people. The thought you are trying to convey should be able to enter their world,” she says.

(Three Storey House by Anita Dube is on display at Vadehra Art Gallery, Delhi till April 19)

Anita Dubeart ExhibitionBeing HumanBig MountainDelhiVadehra Art Gallery