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Raghavendra Rao
Artist/Teacher, lives and works in Bangalore, India
The last few years have been very intensive and interesting, as my work has been going through a much-awaited shift! I feel that I went through a full circle but of course when I have reached the other end of the circle I have gained a lot more. As many artists I started off as a painter, interested in the act of image making and discovering images rather that creating them with a preconception. My work dealt with issues related to industrial and communal violence. My participation in the group installation projects later, dealing with issues like territory, consumerism, communalism and identity enhanced my interest and gave me an opportunity to study these issues in depth. My involvement in workshops with people from different backgrounds and communities like ‘backward’ and ‘tribal’ communities from different parts of India and working on various art forms and performances have broadened my horizon in understanding ‘Indian-ness’. It has also exposed me to the issues of consumerism and the politics of culture and understanding the reality behind the so-called development of society in particular and nation on the whole. Born and brought up in a relatively conventional society and exposed to the strong regional culture that forms an important part of one’s psyche, I have attempted to distance myself and analyze it and understand it better through interactions with artists from India and abroad.
For the last few years I have been able to travel and participate in residency programs and that has helped me to explore my ideas further both in terms of contents and form. I have been working with installation and video as my main medium and tried to push the line as much as possible. The shift from painting to installation to video and later back to painting (!) has been gradual.
I have taken part in a few International artists workshops and I like to connect to the place where I am working responding to both environment and work accordingly… I would like to call such work place specific.
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I climbed the hill with my cousin in my parents’ native place Karkala - the hill where Gomateshwara statue (a Jain naked sculpture that represents simplicity and about 200 meters tall) is situated, one among the four in Karnataka state in southern India. I have spent most of my childhood summer holidays playing on this hill and have a strong bond with this extremely beautiful, simple and an intense image.
This day was going to be something that was to remain in my mind forever… as we reached the spot and as I began to admire the image once again it started pouring as if some spirit turned on the rain switch. My cousin and others began moving hastily towards shelter and more specifically down hill as they expected lightning!
I just couldn’t move from where I was standing as if something came over me and watched this amazing image of Gomateshwara in heavy rains. I remembered what people in Karkala had been complaining for sometime about the theft of the spike that is placed on top of the sculpture to avoid lightning strikes. I noticed that the spike was missing again and for a moment thought the lightning may strike the sculpture!
At that moment a thought crossed my mind that shook me… ‘I would rather the lightning strike me than the Gomateshwara… me a 28 year old man rather than a few centuries old image.’ This thought in fact made me realize that I wasn’t just 28 years old but as old as the human race!
I lived with this thought and wanted to paint about it but just could not as it was too close to me. I had to distance myself from it as well as make it part of my system.
Gomateshwara eventually emerged in my work one morning at 5 when I woke up to paint my 6 foot by 5 foot canvas that had troubled me for a few months. He became part of my series of drawings and paintings titled ‘Wounded Terrain’. (Text by Raghavendra Rao K.V)
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This piece was written to describe a spiritual experience and how it may or may not get translated into one’s own work.
