'Excrescence' as an umbrella metaphor for out-of-control growth

‘Excrescence’ denotes an abnormal outgrowth; abnormal growth or increase; a normal outgrowth, as hair or horns; any disfiguring addition.

The new exhibition at The Guild in Mumbai explores the concept of “excrescence” as an umbrella metaphor for the seemingly out-of-control processes of growth, change, disorder and degeneration that seem to pervade our contemporary world. An accompanying essay states: “The rhetoric of our times is permeated by thinking that invokes what are sometimes called ‘hand-of-God’ variables. These hegemonic tropes invisibly frame our understandings of our changing world. Notions about these seemingly autonomous processes have proliferated in the popular consciousness and vocabularies of our times and are often framed with metaphors of viral growth and infectious transmission, genetic mutation, metastasis and cancer, endemic toxicity, as well as inexorable, entropic disorder, degeneration and decay.

It is towards this constellation of powerful, pervasive metaphors that the exhibition directs its gaze and invites our attention. The power of metaphor has been richly explored across the disciplines of the human sciences a glance across the breadth of this discourse will help contextualize the visual and conceptual explorations in the artworks on view.

From the work of structuralist semiotician and literary theorist Roland Barthes, who analyzed the de-politicizing function of myth as metaphor for understanding both past and present; to path-breaking studies of the 'metaphors we live by' pioneered by cognitive scientist and linguist George Lakoff and Mark Johnson; from social critic Susan Sontag’s illuminating discussion of the ways in which two “modern” ailments function as dominant social metaphors for the disorder and decay of our times, shaping our conceptions - we have seen the way in which our metaphorical discourses surrounding various phenomena serve as optics through which we make sense of larger social, political and economic processes we perceive as afflicting our contemporary world, with far-reaching ramifications.

One such disturbing ramification is the way in which such metaphors of excrescence perform a kind of conceptual sleight of hand that explains, amplifies and augments the widespread feeling of being without agency. In such a light, our world appears to be largely ‘out of control’, like cancerous mutations or viral transmissions, or entropy and inexorable degeneration. As such, the world often seems to be governed by huge, vast processes that are far more powerful than human design, or beyond the scope of human action."