Bangalore Mirror Bureau | Updated: Jun 18, 2017, 09.54 PM IST
By: Suresh Jayaram
Dimple Shah's performances fall under the genre of contemporary art. Here, she wants to remember the forgotten faces who contributed to development of society
Dimple Shah juggles many genres as a visual artist. She specialized in Print making from MS University and has been exploring Performance art, and has been extensively travelling in India and the world with her performances.
As I stood at a prominent junction in Basvangudi to view Dimple’s performance art, I was asked by residents and auto rickshaw drivers about this event. I had to contextualize it with artist’s intention as a site and time specific event, a interdisciplinary live action, performed in a context. And it was a process of interaction with live audience. The artist is not acting a plot, but has constructed a liminal space and steps into this provisional time.
Dimple is conscious of the gendered body and uses it in different contexts. “In Indian women’s Performance Art therefore, apart from other issues, a preoccupation with women’s marginalization has been central. The collusion of cultural, religious and political discourses in subjugating women is probed. Such art-works reform the spatial segregation of women by pursuing personal issues of women’s lives in public spaces. By bringing their art into the everyday they infuse it with greater audience-performer interactivity, also implicating the audience in the issues being addressed.” As articulated by Minakshi Kaushik.
Dimple’s plays with local characters and identifies with their social, political and cultural associations. Her former experience in theatre has a decisive influence on her work. Dimple’s Basavangudi Project called 'Forgotten Faces- Reliving Past’,supported by IFA- India Foundation for the Arts- Project-560.This performance was about forgotten faces and looking back into important period of development of this area and the long association with writers and theatre people. Dimple recollected characters from a socio-cultural milieu with warmth and nostalgia and was made visible the people and spaces that had a history and local context. Dimple was dressed in a typical “Jubba-Dothi" with odd coat and Mysore turban”- the image of the “Modern man” from another era, and she had an instant reaction from her audience.
She said: “In this performance my attempt was not only through my performance introduce the images of famous personalities of Basvangudi but also wanted senior citizen to come out and share their bit of the past with us. I covered my face with a black cloth metaphorically to represent the forgotten personalities and their contributions. I was also carrying a custom made umbrella with images of famous personalities which was metaphorical-represented that we are under their shade. I interacted with audience questioning whose image it was and circulated photocopies of famous personalities with their names on it. It was made interactive as audiences were suppose to take and rediscover them."
Looking back at the history of Performance, it was a genre in which art is presented "live," usually by the artist but sometimes with collaborators or performers. It has had a role in avant-garde art throughout the twentieth century, playing an important part in anarchic movements such as Futurism and Dada. Indeed, whenever artists have become discontented with conventional forms of art, such as painting and traditional modes of sculpture, they have often turned to performance as a means to rejuvenate their work. Although the concerns of performance artists have changed since the 1960s, the genre has remained a constant presence, and has largely been welcomed into the conventional museums and galleries from which it was once excluded. The foremost purpose of performance art has almost always been to challenge the conventions of traditional forms of visual art such as painting and sculpture. Another Performance of Dimple was Meet K. Venkatappa (May 2016). This is was an interactive live performance, and was part of VAG forum, through this performance my attempt was to introduce works of K Venkatappa, artistically using old Bioscope to show his works by making a film strip of his paintings, landscapes and other mythological stories to common people. The major concern was to draw the attention of people towards the issue of Venkatappa Art Gallery.
Another of Dimple’s performance was called Piece of Earth in my Pocket, at Bangalore Santhe- Vivekananda Metro Station 2014 Part of Live Art Lab. “In this performance I intended to focus on two aspects, one rapid development of urban space leading to constant demand for more land leading to deforestation.
Dimple Shah has been consistently pushing the boundaries of her performance practice in our city where the artist sustains herself with a teaching job at the Bangalore University department of Fine Arts. The persistence to involve herself with issues beyond gender specific roles is admirable. She uses every opportunity to make her presence felt as a contemporary artist of our times.
(Suresh Jayaram is a visual artist, curator and art historian; his column features perspectives on the Arts)
