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Lot 44

 

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Atul Dodiya's work is recognised by its dynamic references to a plethora of subjects, ranging from comic strips, religion, advertisements and cinema, to Indian and international "high art". His oeuvre negotiates his research and encounters with popular culture, presenting the viewer with a layered idiom. This idiomatic development owes much to Dodiya's growth as an artist in the 1980s and 1990s when India was rapidly undergoing a number of... Atul Dodiya's work is recognised by its dynamic references to a plethora of subjects, ranging from comic strips, religion, advertisements and cinema, to Indian and international "high art". His oeuvre negotiates his research and encounters with popular culture, presenting the viewer with a layered idiom. This idiomatic development owes much to Dodiya's growth as an artist in the 1980s and 1990s when India was rapidly undergoing a number of changes and opening up to the world.

Throughout his work from the 1980s to the present, certain motifs-such as those of Gandhi on shop shutters, as seen in the present lot-recur as testament to his understanding of himself and his experiences in a post-colonial, rapidly developing India, and the challenges faced along the path. The depiction of Mahatma Gandhi in the current lot serves to address Dodiya's reverence for Gandhi who has also been a muse to his own artistic development, while also offering a sharp commentary on the hypocrisy of society. Art critic Ranjit Hoskote observes that "Dodiya's interest in Gandhi is closely linked to his childhood memories as a Gujarati growing up in 1960s Bombay, and his reading of the Mahatma's works over the decades has brought him to a complex awareness of post-colonial selfhood, the vexations of the nationstate as it passes from revolutionary nascence to more established reflexes, the poetics of self-revelation, and the relationship of cultural production to larger public questions of citizenship and participatory democracy" ("The Portrait of a Practice", Experiments With Truth: Atul Dodiya Works 1981-2013, National Gallery of Modern Art Exhibition Catalogue, New Delhi, pg.6).

In the present lot, the act of transposing Gandhi onto a shop shutter gains significance not only because of Dodiya's artistic practices, but also its implications. The shutter made an entrance into Dodiya's oeuvre at the turn of the century. In a span of a decade, it grew from the numerous interpretations offered by its act of rising and falling to reveal the backdrop, to political implications of "...the thrum and clamour of the street, its fluctuating circuit of negotiations and transactions, its simmering discontent, and the collective energies that it could mobilise at any moment to constructive or destructive purpose" (Ranjit Hoskote, "Reflection on Malevich Matters & Other Stories", Vadehra Art Gallery Exhibition Catalogue, Delhi, 2010, pg.52). Gayatri Sinha explains how Dodiya's shutters are symbolic of business enterprise in Bombay and of global capitalism at large. Drawing parallels to motifs in his works, she offers an allegorical interpretation: "As vertical repositories, the shutters, the cabinets and the towers all embody materialism and its highly valorized display. However the shop with its shutters that come down at the first sign of trouble on the streets???[has] now entered the era of heightened threat perception" ("Atul Dodiya Artist/Arranger", Broken Branches, Bose Pacia Exhibition Catalogue, 2003, not paginated). While Gandhi's life and beliefs draw a sharp contrast with the consumerist tendencies of India today, his persona is constantly evoked via popular images and discourse to evoke a progressive and peaceful India, contrary to the realities of the modern nation. Gandhi's image on the shutter provokes deeper questions that hinge on a denial of numerous hurdles and harsh realities.

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