Nostalgia, protest & beyond in Punjab’s visual arts

An exhibition on contemporary visual arts that concluded in Chandigarh on March 17 proved quite extraordinary and revealing. Called ‘Contemplation: A Journey Within’, the exhibition was organised by the Punjab Lalit Kala Akademi. It brought together six, mostly young, artists from Punjab: painters (Gurpreet Singh and Jaspreet Singh), sculptors (Narinder Singh and Parvesh Kumar) and printmakers and mix media artists (Ravinder Singh and Anita Kaur).

While the quality and maturity of their work took many by surprise, it is quite another aspect of this exhibition which I wish to bring to the fore. What did these works reflect in socio-cultural terms? What could one see in them as a student of social sciences and cultural studies?

One thing struck me immediately: The artists might have been picked up on the basis of individual merit alone, but they shared a lot in common, and put together, they seemed to complement one another. For one thing, they commonly affirmed that they are “deeply rooted” in their social and cultural background of rural Punjab. Even though they might have later moved to urban settings, their creativity flows from their memories of rural Punjab. That is where their motifs come from and appear as visual metaphors in their works. These are memories of a well-integrated agrarian community settled in a calm, rhythmic and idyllic cycle of life.

These artists realise that things have changed, that the flow of life has been disrupted by winds of change. Green farmlands have been taken over by highways, factories, modern residential colonies consisting of high-rise flats.

Individualism, competition and consumerism have shattered community solidarity. Pride in glorious traditions has been replaced by anomie and alienation. The love of motherland has been replaced by a mad urge to migrate abroad by hook or crook.

Economists and sociologists will give you nth number of reasons and factors responsible for this drastic shift of the social and moral-cultural compass. Artists, however, are intuitive rather than analytical. Their responses are more immediate, emotive and intimate.

Three kinds of responses are evident from the works of these artists. First, there was an attempt at imaginative re-creation of the past and imaginary re-living of life in that imagined past. There were roses, birds, nests, mud houses and traditional milch cattle. There were young lovers; there was the recurring theme of women doing embroidery. In other words, what has been lost in real life was recaptured in art. Art is not a mirror of life but a parallel dream.

The second response was of lamentation and protest. There was depiction of empty lives of isolated individuals. Denuded of their human essence by needs and desires, they appeared as mere outlines. Or they appeared as splintered individuals where one side is of a nurturing mother, while the other shadowy side is of a menacing, consumerist figure. These artists seemed to create not merely aesthetic objects but works that provoked thought and protest.

The third response could appear as exit and escape. More neutrally, it is an effort at cutting loose and walking away to examine other avenues of anchorage. This could take the form of an essentialist faith in the inherent goodness of life despite all changes and disruptions. Much of this is explained in terms of ‘ups and downs’ of life. Another form is of humanist universalism or existentialist philosophical belief that our identities are not destined to be imprisoned by our immediate geographic and cultural boundaries. Instead, our identities are shaped by our free choices.

While all these three kinds of responses were clearly visible to me in the works of these artists, what was equally visible was a certain unease with the dissonance the diversity of these responses created. As a result, some of these artists seemed to have chosen some kind of a ‘middle path’. They spoke of ‘narrowing the gap’ or ‘building a bridge’ between the past and the present by fusing tradition with modernity. It is a moot question as to how exactly they did so, or how successful they were in doing so.

Historically, Punjab has been considered to be a land of robust, hardworking and courageous people. But what is also historically true is that Punjab has remained a land of invasions, violence and looting. It has been a land of ‘clash of civilisations’. Punjab has seen more social-cultural ruptures than perhaps any other part of the country.

In modern history, Punjab has seen disruptions caused by the Partition in 1947 and the reorganisation in 1966. It has been a witness to violence during the Partition, the Naxal movement and the era of Sikh militancy. Then, there has been the lethal effect of the agrarian crisis in the form of income stagnation, rising debts, farmer suicides and ecological devastation.

Punjab’s memory of these disruptions is complex and layered. There are those among us who have seen all the above mentioned. That generation is fast dwindling.

Then there is the generation of ‘senior citizens’, born in the post-Partition years but witness to every other eventful turning of the wheel. Then, there is the youngest generation, to which most of these artists belong to. They may not have seen the violence, but they have heard about it from their elders in the family.

Moreover, they are the only generation that has been born and brought up during a period of agrarian crisis. The ‘green revolution’ has faded, and the post-agrarian future is uncertain and directionless.

If we accept that the art of each age is informed by its own present, then we should also accept that the art of periods that lie in between definable ages, is informed by the transitory character of its time. Could it be that, many years from now, these young artists would be remembered for depicting with remarkable empathy and density, the fickleness of our present?

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