I am - Live Performance, Lagos, Nigeria.

From the Series of Cry from the Dark - UPDC Lekki Estate, Lagos Nigeria, Dec 19th 2013

In recent performance which was done as part of Afiriperfoma International residency in Lagos, Nigeria. The first performance was done in NKEM Gallery in UPDC Lekki Estate in Lagos on 19th December 2013, which was also part of international symposium on Contemporary Performance Art. This work again an extension of my work from Black fever performed in Delhi the national capital.

This performance was done keeping in social and cultural aspect of Nigerian especially in focus to Yoruba culture in mind. This was done with intervention by Nigerian artist who wrote Yoruba names of girls on my face. Visually In this performance I used small baby frock which were stamped with impression of female uterus image on them and with each shout of ' I am…' one name of Yoruba girl was added to my face which marked existence of birth /death and rape crime of each girl every minute in Nigerian scenario overall global scenario. 

In recent statistical report done on rape crime in India it was found that every 20 minute a rape crime happen so we consider in global scenario it might be every minute or even second such crime are inflicted on women. 

This highly alarming rate in which crime happens and it is issue of great concern and also after such crime happen how much is justice done to victims how many criminal are punished and how much a society learn from this what kind of justice is done ? 

What happens to these victims later whether they get respect and dignity in society there are so many such issue which I want my audience to think about. What about their identity and these names punch marks their 'Existence' and which they have to regain their dignity and identity in society.

Dimple B Shah 

2013

Time Immemorial -1st Aifriperform International Residency 14th -31 December 2013

The Black Fever - Live Performance in Delhi

This performance was about the darker shade of society. We are constantly bombarded with socio- political and religious issues in India. Every day we are bombarded with news of rape crime and even now when I am writing this the new rape case shown in News and might be even when I am performing some rape might be happening in any corner of our country every minute.  Every day we are left with feeling of helplessness with situation this news keep on circulating in one form or other form and we feel entangled with such unpleasant and insecure life with no hope for any good future.

Visually I wore black mourning dress with face covered with see through black mirrors that reflects audience face; simultaneously I could see audience, though audience could only see their reflection in Black. I have chosen black costume, to mourn, to show dark feeling and wound which has grown like black patch/reflection of society. I had conceived this idea keeping in mind the capital city New Delhi, since the news of Nirbhaiya, there had been no change in social security of women and especially girls and we have been seeing only an alarming amount of crime rates day by day in the villages, town and major cities in India. I really don’t understand why there is such a rise in such crimes may be  because those who  break laws and who does the crime  don’t have any more fear to be caught and punished, may be also due to decrease in moral values and respect to women or should we blame Bollywood items number and vulgar songs for this? We need to question and also seek out for answers about like what kind of mind set of people in the society is? Why women are not secure in India?  Once known for its moral and ethical values. 

The performance was done in highly populated area with migrated population from villages around and African population in Khirkee Village, Delhi and I used multiple audio receivers to interact with people in public space. The attempt was to bombard news to my audience just like News channels to a level of intolerance, to make them react and become sensitive towards issues of security and respect to women and voice their concern, rather than being passive to situations, I wanted my audience to react and become sensitive to issues rather than neglecting it as it has become a common news.

This performance was well received by people, some with very strange reaction they wanted me to pay to hear the audio and some seriously indulging in issue and inquiring whether I am activist or social worker etc., there were some more strange reaction since one audio was to calm them but they thought it was Bollywood music and tried to find out what song it was about.

Dimple B Shah

2013

Karmic Connections I

Performance at National Gallery Of Modern Art, Bangalore.

As per Jain philosophy, I strongly believe in Karmic Connections. We come across many people in our life, good or bad, because we may have earlier connections with them.

This performance was about how we connect our self to others. I wanted my audience to see themselves in me, by interacting with me one to one in a time and space. 

Although my audience come from different origin, roots, environment, space and experience. During the performance we are going to experience a moment of time and space together and I  used few objects as my tool to look into the past, present and future. In this moment we are building our bonds and we will all recollect our memories of the past and will look towards the future. In this performance my audience or my fellow performer will not see my face but they will see their reflections (in multiples) on to the small mirrors tied around my face, thereby encounter me in multiple perspectives and connecting with me by seeing themselves in me. It in general understands that, what we are, we see in other people. Most of the time we don’t understand opposite person properly due to our own preconceived ideas and understanding, so sometimes we arrive at positive and sometime negative emotions, hence it might block our real understanding of the person.

In general human tendency is that most of the time we assume and sometime undermine and block our way to really connect with people, It is human nature to like and love our self all the time, visually my attempt will be to show their own multiple faces instead of mine so that they might connect with me.  In this performance I tried to make connection with my audience through object of memories and they are my personal objects which are placed in front of the audience and through that they will try to see me.

Dimple B Shah
2013

Performance, National Gallery Of Modern Art, as part of ACT (Artists Create Together), Co-curated by Lina Vincent & Seema Kohli, Photo Credit Lina Vincent, Bangalore, India.

'Road to Thousand Lights' - Performance at Rangoli Art Center, M.G. Road, Boulevard, Bangalore.

Ever since we crawled out of that primordial slime, that's been our unifying cry, "More light." Sunlight. Torchlight. Candlelight. Neon, incandescent lights that banish the darkness from our caves to illuminate our roads, the insides of our refrigerators. Big floods for the night games at Soldier's Field. Little tiny flashlights for those books we read under the covers when we're supposed to be asleep. Light is more than watts and footcandles. Light is metaphor. Light is knowledge, light is life, and light is light. 

~Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider

'Road to Thousand Lights' is my second project for Live Art Lab which was based on concept of RE COLLECTION and RE P(L)AY of changes in city and especially in MG Boulevard, Bangalore which is transformed into new Space. Rangoli Art Center being a place for cultural exchanges so I thought the subject will be apt for the performance.

Through this work, I wanted to reconnect and reestablish relationship with old traditional Bangalore with the new grown city. Relooking the old historical roads of Bangalore which are transformed with a new look. The new cosmopolitan Bangalore is recognized with IT industries with hustling and bustling night life, meeting the worlds demand, the city has got new status as Silicon city from Garden city with flashing night lights. There city has undergone tremendous change in last decade with long flyovers cutting across the city and accommodating traffic. The city of Bangalore is slowly and gradually losing its charm and becoming like any other metro city of concrete land, where people hardly get the time to think about what they actual need and what they need to see. The people have blinded by more demands of modern lifestyle, the flashy glaring lights, thereby more and more distancing themselves from themselves. In this performance work I wanted to bring this very same message where they see old Bangalore but in the shadow of new light a mix of old and new together.

I was wearing a traditional hair plaits with flowers (Maggie na jade) replaced by light representing the new development in Bangalore the growth of IT industries, Companies burning their night lamps and city replaced with jazzy lights (electronic bill board night light).

The light has more Philosophical and psychological relevance for our life. We have seen people having suicidal tendency when they don’t see much light in their life the light in not in literal sense but more in spiritual context and connected to broader sense of life, having thousands of metaphoric connotations.

As we are progressing to new age of high tech life style people usual distance to real connection to themselves running behind meeting deadlines making money accumulating things. I also wanted my audience to see light beyond light the more inner meaning and metaphors of lights I felt a need of a hour as we are growing we are distancing ourselves from seeing inner and true meaning of light. In my performance I distributed light stick and light toys and postcard as souvenir to remember light, not miss the real meaning of light this was given in exchange of dialogue and seeking answer to question what is light for them.

Dimple B Shah, 2013

Soul Purpose -Channel 6

Sheet Happen -Time Out Bangalore

One Monday last month, as the city slipped into the bustling rhythms of the morning, Dimple Shah began supervising the unloading of 15 boxes from a truck that had driven up to Gallery Sumukha. She was just emerging from about with conjunctivitis, which she contracted before undertaking a train journey to the city from Baroda– but with a tight schedule leading up to the opening of her latest show Catharsis in a Forbidden Zone, Shah couldn't afford to let physical discomfort derail her work.

Over the next few days the artist had the formidable job of unpacking 400 kgs of material and getting her show ready. Possibly the most daunting task – setting up the extraordinary piece titled “Catharsis Chamber” – a shower cubicle that she designed, surrounded by PVC curtains and shelves made of acrylic sheets. Once the basic structure of the cubicle was ready, Shah would have to line the shelves with 1,800 medicine bottles, each one filled with either ash, salt, hair or nail clippings, to create a room for a viewer to enter, a space permeated with a sense of privacy and almost ritualistic calm.

“I initially wanted to use pieces of my own nails for the work,” said Shah, who, while talking about her work, veers between earnestness and giggly delight (the former, in this case). “I started collecting clippings two years ago.” Does that mean she’s been planning the details of this show for the last two years? “No,” she clarified. “I just have a habit of collecting things which I might decide to use. I would have used my own clippings, but in a few days I found that they had started attracting ants, so I threw them away. I don’t know why ants were interested in my nails. Maybe the ants inBaroda[where Shah studied, at the Maharaja Sayajirao University] are a little mad.”

The clippings that finally became a part of the show were artificial, procured by Shah after scouring dozens of beauty shops. But there was a problem. “They looked terrible, too artificial and white. My friend and I sat and painted each individual clipping so that it looked a little more natural.” What about the hair in the other bottles? “That’s my hair,” said Shah. “I collected it over two years.”

The sense of theatricality in Shah’s installation work is perhaps explained by the fact that, for many years, she’s had a parallel interest in performance art. Through her training inBaroda, she held performance art shows in which she herself featured, often rendered unrecognisable by blotches of paint. And over the years, photographs of these performances showed up in Shah’s print works and paintings, along with other traces of herself – an image of an eye, a hand print, a diary entry.

“You might enjoy this,” said Shah, momentarily distracted in the middle of going over slides of her work, and flipping open a notebook crammed with preparatory notes and sketches.

A glance through its pages suggested an almost obsessive bent of mind. Reams of notes about psychoanalytic concepts jostle for space with conceptual diagrams, such as the ones of imaginary scientific apparati that Shah ended up fabricating out of copper for Forbidden Zone.

In creating these apparati, and, indeed, in all her explorations into the show’s central theme of alchemy, Shah seems to be responding to a need to explain the inexplicable, and to organise the chaotic storm of ideas that rage through her mind. And while some of her earlier works can bewilder the viewer just because of the sheer number of elements used, in newer works like “Catharsis Chamber” these impulses are expressed simply, with an immediate and undeniable power.

Showing off the sketch of a piece of apparatus, which didn’t make it to the final show, Shah said it was a challenge to get vendors to carry out her orders. “They go crazy when I show them what I want done,” she said. “They’re used to normal orders. I have to spend days with them. They eat my head, and I eat their heads.”

These tedious transactions more than exhausted her, Shah admitted. “Every single work seems to take a toll on my body,” she said, gesturing towards the example of her infected eye. Then, a smile appearing, and her tone growing kinder, “But it doesn’t matter. After all, art is about hard work.”

Ajay Krishnan
Time Out Bangalore
October 01 2010 7.14am