Sunday, February 21, 2010

Krishnaraj Chonat's take on the ravaged Nature and environment

'My Hands Smell Of You', Krishnaraj Chonat’s new exhibition, is an effort to explore the complexities that exist between ‘us’ and ‘our’ environment, to investigate the inter-connectedness of all facets of our life and to identify the implications of our everyday choices, with an emphasis on aesthetics as a counterpoint to alarming statistics.

An accompanying note to the show at Bangalore based Gallery SKE mentions: “Nature and the tourism industry in our commodity culture are among the fastest growing economic forces. This has not only greatly transformed our whole understanding of the world but has also informed our attitudes towards other cultures and peoples, often creating tiny worlds within us.

“There is also a homogenizing effect shrinking these worlds, leveling out our cultural sensitivities and differences, as well as standardizing our experiences. Resistance to this homogeneity plus a craving for ‘real’ experience, if one, is also catered to by this industry, that our ability to transcend such leveling perhaps lies in our own gaze; the dominant image of ‘nature’ as a resource and an object of beauty to be contemplated. Yet, standardized images of this ‘mother’ in pain, ravaged, haunts us more than what they intend to present. One could then argue that this is as much an aesthetic crisis as it is social, cultural, economic or environmental.”

The artist explains:
“I have attempted to posit a tenuous embrace between the pressures to progress fast in a technological and consumerist fashion resulting in these mountains of waste and a desperate cry for slowing down. To see through a ‘forest’ of wires and ‘mountains’ of waste, to smell the last gasping breath of red earth still exuding fragrance; to create an affect through tangible forms and olfactory stimuli that I hope will resonate with the audiences for long, because after all it seems like Art is perhaps our last resort for being human.”
The artist uses a wide range of materials such as electronic waste that identifies itself as a ‘spillover’ of the economic boom we’ve witnessed and one that has increasingly led to an environmental crisis today.

No comments:

Post a Comment