The lockdown is not a simple event of confinement. It is an unprecedented temporal episode of collective as well as individual anxieties and uncertainties as regard the corona epidemic as much in regard to the future configurations of work, economy and ways and means of living. The feelings and experiences are not unitary just as responses are varied. How do visual artists feel and experience this unprecedented historical episode within their own selves and their exterior world? What thoughts and visual schemes have emerged in response to the happenings around and sufferings of different people? How have they themselves undergone the process of self reassurance and is there any message they would like to give?
In conversation with Swayambhu Biswalekh, contemporary artists Anil Tato, Shubhankar Tarafdar, Suryasnata Mohanty, Vinita Dasgupta and Shakti Singh share their feelings and thoughts and their lockdown art creations with Art Observer.
Shubhankar Tarafdar
Konark
‘There are so many stories to tell and to hear in this crisis. So many debates and fights are on in media and social media as to what should have been done, to the extent of colouring the issue in religious tones. But who cares for the lakhs of labouring people struggling to get back to their own homes. While we stay in the comforts of our homes to stay safe, those who built the walls and laid the roofs of our homes are lying like the stones on the roads, with nowhere to go. Their battle is with hunger, where will they go? This misery and agony of the stranded, uncared-for people is the theme of my abstract work Migrants.’
Anil Tato
Noida
‘It is quite an unusual time. The city is melancholic, streets are vacant and silent as lockdown has dawned upon us. Everyone is staying home while the corona virus roams large and we are all helpless specators. May be that is the will of nature. I have coloured these thoughts in my work Lockdown-1 Part-2.’
Suryasnata Mohanty
Delhi
‘Lockdown to me is a time of awakening. The invisible virus has challenged our medical science, technology and pride, paradoxically also underlining, in spreading through contact, the inherent connectivity of human lives. Our world is not an isolated entity, our existence in the universe is connected with the infinite energy that we do sense but seldom realise. As we evolve out of the lockdowns of mind, we will proceed upwards step by step to connect with the infinity and learn to surrender before it. I have tried to depict these thoughts in my work Up-Stairs’.
Vinita Dasgupta
Gurugram
‘To me corona has come as a response of nature to the rising evils we human beings have been doing. It is a warning sign to tell us that all is not well and the cosmos accounts for everything. The virus has made everyone helpless; everyone wants to run away to save themselves but running away does not help. Locking yourself down seems the only way right now but it is also a temporary relief, eventually you are going to have to face the pandemic. These are my thoughts which I have tried to show in my work Lockdown’
Shakti Singh
Rohtak
‘Corona confined us to our homes but this solitary time allowed me to enjoy art in peace. Since I love all art forms, I listened to music especially old ghazals and instrumentals. Those vibrations in my thoughts took shape through my brushes in a painting of a lady playing sitar in a meditative mood, sitting alone, just to herself. Isolation can be a time with oneself, I felt, as I painted Musical’
