Against a blackened horizon, a man crouches on a ravaged ground, cradling a mound of mud – the remnants of a household shrine or perhaps an entire house itself? In another painting, the same man is seen watering a denuded tree that pokes out of a plastic crate incongruously as well as defiantly.
The past persists in stubborn, sad ways in Chetan Kurekar’s first solo show At the Shore/Smrityancha Kinara. The collection of paintings, drawings, diorama and a video is being shown at the recently opened Fulcrum gallery in Mumbai’s Kala Ghoda neighbourhood.
At the Shore reflects 28-year-old Kurekar’s experience of growing up in the soot and dust of the mining belt in Maharashtra’s Chandrapur district. Kurekar’s father operated underground mining equipment that burrowed deep into the bowels of the earth. The destructive effect of such machines on structures above the ground is evident in Kurekar’s incredibly detailed dioramas.
In one, all that survives of a house is its entrance. A tiny Kalnirnay almanac remains on one of the walls. In another, a family photo lies on the ground, mixed with the rubble.
In a curatorial note, Fulcrum founder Ayesha Aggarwal discusses Kurekar’s artistic concerns and the manner in which the stubborn remnants of the past co-exists along the aching realities of the present in his works.
‘Memory and landscape’
“In his debut solo exhibition, Chetan Kurekar explores ideas of memory and landscape through a collection of sculpture, oil painting, charcoal drawing and a single channel video that together create a vestibule of the artist’s experience of his home, its landscape and a community left behind. The exhibition ponders the effectiveness of protest against unchecked mining practices and the gradual fragmentation of a community.
“The artist’s relationship with the changing landscape of a village overpowered by the coal mining industry is peppered with anxiety. In the work ‘Silences’, a young man overlooks the machine-made hills and lakes, his shoulders tense and his fist clenched around the edge of his clothes.
“The artist has witnessed communities being alienated from their land, the environment becoming inaccessible and turning hostile. People spend every afternoon outside their homes while the mines are blasted for fear of their roofs caving in above them.
“In the series of three sculptures titled ‘Fragments of Belonging’, as brick and mortar crumble and decay, Kurekar weaves stories of lives lived and lost, the everyday that is imprinted upon the objects and the relationship that these objects have with the people that inhabited the now ruinous homes.
“There is poetry in the artist’s attention to detail here, whether in the faded movie posters on the exterior walls or the meticulous placement of utensils in a kitchen. Each sculpture in the series serves as the paradoxical image of beauty and calamity, time stands still asking the view to pause and consider the fraught relationship between man and land.
“It is in this relationship that the artist situates himself. The son of a machine operator, the artist recalls delivering his father, a union leader, his lunch while he staged protest alongwith his colleagues and comrades asking to be relocated away from the mines.
“In the painting, ‘Which side are you on?’ while a man holds up a blank white banner, symbolic of the ongoing but futile resistance, Kurekar asks the viewer to pick a side, the choice a classical one; between the establishment and the proletariat.
“As a representative of his community, the artist embarks upon a performance where he sits on open land allowing the coal dust to settle on his face, keeping his eyes open and unblinking until they water and tears roll down his face. The resulting single channel video titled ‘Gaze of Dissent’ is a close crop of Kurekar’s eyes during this performance. It symbolises protest, resistance and resilience.
“Another modest but momentous symbol of resilience that features in some works is the sparing presence of life and growth; whether in the windblown tree, the sporadic shrubbery or the presence of aquatic plants in the blackened water pond.
“‘On the road with Monet’ captures the artist’s repeated journeys back home over the twelve years that he was away. He satirically invokes Monets monumental body of paintings of water lilies, with their harmonious colours and quiet luminosity, leaving viewers with feelings of awe and calm.
“In Kurekar’s pond, the water is blackened by coal dust and the presence of the imaginary water lilies are in stark contrast to their environment. This echoing dissonance is retold in ‘The night that never ends’: a man waters the trunk of a bare tree, only to have the water overflow out of the crate the trunk sits in.”
“A sense of despair dominates the work, only to be enhanced by the arid and vacant landscape. It appears that memories have faded, shifted and morphed into the vision for a dystopic future, one without the rays of hope. Kurekar extracts fleeting moments of his childhood from the recesses of his mind, allowing memory to precariously linger at the mind’s shore before being washed away by waves of melancholia.
