Distorted Images: Caste, Sexuality, and History in the art of Keerthana Chandragiri
Searching for Light (2016). Courtesy: Keerthana Chandragiri
“One becomes a beast of burden, a puppet in the hands of the inherited history.” 25-year-old Dalit artist Keerthana Chandragiri discusses how experiences of self-image, discrimination, and trauma shaped the intimacies of her art.
“Searching for Light, is a metaphor for the burden the historically oppressed people feel to ‘reform’ themselves,” says Keerthana Chandragiri, a 25-year-old artist sculptor and art historian. “The mirror is like a reflective surface imposing a ‘distorted image’ (a metaphor for the twisted and altered ‘mainstream’ history) at the figurines as if they are passive receivers. But the receivers are not passive victims. They are trying to get up despite the baggage of their mirror, of the distorted history, and the dogmatic text—like the Manusmriti.”
Keerthana Chandragiri
As much as art may exist ‘for its own sake’, unpacking the context(s) of the artists from a socio-cultural and historical perspective adds multiple layers of complexity. Such is particularly the case for Chandragiri, a young Dalit artist in Bengaluru, who currently works at Sahapedia as a researcher. Chandragiri did her Bachelors in Visual Art from Chitrakala Parishad and Masters in Art History from the University of Hyderabad. While she worked as a student-artist, she mostly used pocket-friendly materials like Plaster of Paris. Now, she has expanded her practice to working with fiberglass, stone, wood, leather, and Intaglio (printmaking).
In 2016, Chandragiri exhibited her work Searching for Light at Students’ Biennale, which is a part of the Kochi Muziris Biennale, Kerala—an international arts festival curated that year by the artist Sudarshan Shetty. Searching for Light is an installation featuring androgynous figurines whose head is made of bulbs and the rest of the body is made of Plaster of Paris. The bulbs have their filaments removed and are covered in black mesh cloth. Each of the figurines is holding a piece of reflective mirror, and some of them are lying down while some are placed at awkward angles as if they are trying to get up.
Searching for Light (2016). Courtesy: Keerthana Chandragiri
The Searching for Light installation also initiates a conversation on mental health in the contemporary world, especially with the rising dominance of technology and screens. The recurrent instances of lynching, and the act of recording it on one’s smartphone by the perpetrators, make the burden of the ‘distorted image’ in Chandragiri’s work palpable.
“The bulbs in Searching for Light do not function since the filament is removed,” says Chandragiri. “They represent the depression that can set in as one tries to (re)discover oneself outside of the stereotypes. It is not something one can just snap out of. The mesh symbolises the darkness like a paper bag on one’s face. There is little to no hope but this is not a constant.”
As shown in her artwork, even if the bulbs did glow, the light would have to pass through the veil suggesting it is not enough for the individuals to try and ‘snap out of it’. It is important to acknowledge the mesh—the larger system at work—which curtails individuals’ freedom to choose.
“It is a difficult task to understand one’s history, both personal and historical. The distress passes on from generation to generation but this is not a personal or a unique phenomenon. It is a part of systematic violence.”
Searching for Light (2016). Courtesy: Keerthana Chandragiri
Chandragiri’s work has been actively informed by the discrimination imposed by the caste system, which precedes the existence of an individual. However, the process of becoming aware of it has been a painful journey through books and memories. “In school, I was shamed for my skin colour,” she says. “All of this happened in an urban Bengaluru school. Words like ‘black bitch’, ‘untouchable bitch’, and ‘nigger’ were used for me. I was not allowed to sit with or touch or mingle with my peers. Once, a particular friend refused to share her water with me, and her mother offered me food in a disposable dish when every other kid was eating out of the dishes they used at home.”
“Some privileged people find it convenient to just lay down and conform to these stereotypes, but some people—who are at the receiving end of the system—try to break free from the imposed images, like the figurines trying to stand up.”
“One day, when the bullying got the better of me, I scrubbed myself hard, exposing my inner white skin and beads of blood. This is the image that the ‘mesh’ in the sculpture symbolizes. It was when I read Annihilation of Caste while making Searching for Light that I recognised their behaviour as a manifestation of caste discrimination. There were people with dark skin, like mine, from upper-castes as well, but they were not treated like I was.”
“The installation, hence, is about the distortion of self-image. One becomes a beast of burden, a puppet in the hands of the inherited history. Some privileged people find it convenient to just lay down and conform to these stereotypes, but some people—who are at the receiving end of the system—try to break free from the imposed images, like the figurines trying to stand up.”
Another of Chandragiri’s works, Gender Fluidity (Periscope), 2015, engages with and attempts to question the fixed lens through which gender is ‘looked at’ as a binary. As a society, we have a pathological need to point and tag, to compartmentalise and identify. It is like pareidolia; unless we can identify the ‘unknown’, using the signs and references we are habitual of, ‘the thing’ is either not allowed to exist or it remains on the outskirts of our meaning-making process.
Gender Fluidity (Periscope) (2015). Courtesy: Keerthana Chandragiri
Gender Fluidity (Periscope) is an erotic installation with a queer way of engaging with it: one has to bring one’s face close to the backside of the sculpture to look through the periscope.
“The installation’s concept revolves around trying to ‘contain’ something as fluid as one’s relationship with the body,” says Chandragiri. “The two legs represent the gender binary and the concrete block at the bottom—making the sculpture ‘immobile’—represents our fixation with it. When I made it, I did so from an asexual perspective—it was just a pair of legs in underwear. I created an interactive sculpture and saw it being sexualised as the viewers interacted with it.
“The work was inspired by the design of a submarine as I felt gender is a vessel that we are expected to embody to survive in the world. The periscope allows one to look from inside out but through this work, I wanted to reverse the gaze. The eyepiece of the periscope is placed in the centre to reflect on and explore everything that lies ‘in between’ the fixed binary. The details of the waves pattern at the bottom are meant to highlight the fluidity of the gender experience. I intended it to be an intimate, vulnerable experience. I wanted to explore the body as a receiver of violence.”
Gender Fluidity (Periscope) (2015). Courtesy Keerthana Chandragiri
Gender Fluidity, like much of Chandragiri’s art and vision, provokes an important question: how to navigate the thin line between being intimate and being violent. It also makes one wonder that, however we approach the artwork, how may we engage with it without violating it? Chandragiri provides the complexities and the questions, and like the ‘periscope’, the gaze must be reversed for us to contemplate the answers ourselves.
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Preeti Nangal is an independent journalist who has written for platforms like Firstpost, Two Circles, Feminism in India, and others. She covers health, culture, and politics. You can find her on Twitter: @preetinangal and Instagram: @preetinangal.
