Stories of Our Scars

In the silence of the gallery BluePrint.12, with nothing more than the low hum of the air conditioner, Devika Sundar’s work draws you in.

Diagnosed with fibromyalgia, a disorder characterised by widespread musculoskeletal pain accompanied by fatigue, sleep, memory and mood issues, Sundar (born in 1992), in documenting her numerous X-rays and other medical scans over eight years, began the process of creating visual references, tuning her artistic spirit to navigate through the bodily pain. Essentially Normal Studies, therefore, is a spectacular series of mixed media, which is born from the artist’s need to cope with this specific chronic illness. In doing so, Sundar creates a dialogue between art, identity, and the ethics of medicine and healthcare. A set of seven works from Essentially Normal Studies series wherein X-ray plates are backlit with neon lights could well be an artwork installation in one’s home or could be reminiscent—thanks to its bright light—a throwback to the dance floors of discotheques of the 1990s. While it may seem, on the face of it, a ‘satirical take’ on the medical condition of the artist, it never takes away from the seriousness of what she might have gone through. The artist’s own response—via lines and patterns drawn on the x-ray plates along with text such as #butyoudon’tlooksick—becomes an entry point for the viewer to, perhaps, consider his or her own medical condition, while also feeling the angst of the artist.

Tribulations and Turbulence… of the Body and Mind, curated by Rahul Kumar, featuring six artists, among them Sundar, becomes a cathartic experience for not just the artist but also those who view it. It’s one of the most profound contemporary art exhibitions I’ve recently come across, offering a glimpse of how art can become a vehicle to negotiate bodily and emotional pain emerging from medical conditions. It offers a rich example of how, when nothing is in our control, creativity can take birth in the most unlikely of circumstances, and allow us to move ahead.

“Art,” says Kumar, “is an expression of what you feel inside and outside. You cannot fake it.” According to him, Tribulations and Turbulence… reinforced his belief that honest expression always touches a chord with viewers.

Though familiar with each of the artist’s works, Kumar says that this exhibition has been in the making for roughly one and a half years. In most instances, he takes eight-nine months on curatorial projects. According to him, the participating artists, Neerja Kothari, Bakula Nayak, Priya Ravish Mehra, Khushbu Patel, Devika Sundar, and Avinash Veeraghavan, have undergone some or the other form of illness, be it physical and / or mental illness that left them with agitating pain and debilitating life conditions. “The anxiety,” says Kumar, “is real,” citing works from the exhibition, including Veeraghavan’s work Cradle that looks at how just one moment of collapse of the mind can sink everything around you.

Through the planning of the exhibition, Kumar learnt that he had to be patient with delays, especially given that the creative blocks were determined more by medical issues than by the typical “artist block”. There were, admittedly, moments of frustration given that deadlines had to be met in line for the exhibition’s launch, but Kumar understood that medical conditions forced the artists to experience something that was not in their control.

The “seed of the idea”, as Kumar calls it, was born in 2017 when he, in his capacity as then-consulting editor with Arts Illustrated, an arts and design-based magazine, interviewed Priya Ravish Mehra (1961-2018), a visual artist who was at the time battling cancer. Though, at the time of being diagnosed, Mehra was only given six months to live, she survived the disease for 12 long years. Unfortunately, she passed away at the age of 57. Even as Mehra’s lifelong practice was dedicated to textiles, she gravitated towards documenting the role of the unknown rafugars or darners from the Najibabad town of western Uttar Pradesh. Her response to these mixed media works evolved from her own experience when cancer suddenly encroached upon her life even as she fought to “mend” the fabric of the body. “Her work was giving her new meaning, especially as she fought the disease,” says Kumar who explains that Mehra’s tryst was to bring to the fore the anonymous artisan who, in mending the imperfections, is actually making the cloth perfect. “We celebrate the revival of weaves, the artisans, even the fashion designers, and the models, but have we championed the darners who are mending the defects?” asks Kumar, adding that this point of inquiry greatly informed Mehra’s artistic practice. “Mending fabrics that are torn makes the cloth even more real, and the artist chose to remember the skills of a people whom we never consider for their contribution,” says Kumar. One can’t help but still the mind while looking at the cuts, gashes, fissures, and the gaping holes that appear on the medium of paper pulp, fibre, and cloth.

Then there are artists such as Neerja Kothari and Khushbu Patel who find their artistic mettle in documenting their painful medical histories through fine lines, strokes, done in watercolour, ink, and colour pencils. In the case of Kothari, the artistic reference is drawn from every muscle twitch and every part of pain that the artist experiences. Her focus, then, is derived from memory, its loss, and the excruciatingly slow recovery that seems like a struggle. Each of the movements, then, is a fine stroke on paper with every hundredth stroke marked by a circle that denotes the pain point. In documenting her painful journey through an artistic form, Kothari gains inspiration from the time she spent trying to do everything via rehabilitation to cope with motor sensory neuropathy, which is characterised by the progressive degeneration of motor and sensory nerves.

In the case of Patel, her miniature art, which captures nature deftly, it is a “journey of healing from trauma”. For Patel, it was crippling anxiety, a sense of alienation from the world, and freedom from her own nonstop thoughts and chatter in the head that marked her entry point into using painting as a journey towards self-discovery.

Much like what Bakula Nayak reveals in her remarkable embroidered works, wherein she omits numerous words by embroidering furiously on them, leaving only some words for the viewers to see. Nayak’s works engage viewers spectacularly—you are constantly wanting to see what’s hidden while trying to understand why certain words have been left bare for us to see on purpose.

Her other work, Rework is a series of collages that tries to bring awareness to the fact that chronic illness and mental health go hand in hand. Documenting “the downward spiral in my mental health which stopped me from keeping up with my treatments and self-care,” Nayak says that she “sunk further into helplessness and frustration” as her health worsened. Fighting off the illnesses of the mind, she drew upon pharmacy ledger papers from the early 1900s, overlaying them with stickers from a defunct manufacturing factory; stickers applied by supervisors on products that needed reworking to improve their quality. Signing on them empowered her, putting her in charge of her health.

“We need to internalise that there is beauty even in pain. The damage and the imperfections are inherent in life,” says Kumar.

Perhaps, that’s why this exhibition should be celebrated for its sheer grit and gumption.

(Tribulations and Turbulence… of the Body and Mind is on view at Gallery Blueprint.12 till September 7)

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Abhilasha Ojha

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