13/06/2016
Blackening her face for 125 days was a new aesthetical mode that artist P.S. Jayamol adopted to create a social critique on the discriminated 'living' experiences of the Dalit communities. But it seems to have almost backfired on the face of the artist herself. The onus is now on Jayamol to defend her 'creative social experiment' which was lauded as a piece of performance art by local as well as international media.
Jayamol's 'performance art' was almost a reaction toward the infamous 'Rohit Vemula' incident at the Hyderabad University. Taking 'black complexion' as a definitive marker of the Dalit identity, the artist had embarked on her 'social experiment cum performance art' by smearing her face and the exposed parts of hands and feet with removable black paint whenever she ventured out of her home/studio.
However, the argumentative Kerala intelligentsia, especially the Dalit intelligentsia, came out strongly against the artistic 'co-optation' of the Dalit issues by using her 'upper caste' body as a point of departure and made the artist accountable for such superficial 'sabotage' of a Dalit 'agitating and theorising' spaces. On the other hand, a major section of the artist community questioned Jayamol on the very idea of 'performance art.' Their contention was that the artist herself wasn’t clear about whether it was a piece of performance art or a social experiment. They also raised questions via social media regarding the aesthetics of 'black' and the politics of the performing body or that of the body in 'performance.'
Kerala is no longer the same. The issue of 'black' taken up by Jayamol could've been lapped up by the intelligentsia had it been done a decade before. Today, the Dalit intelligentsia doesn't allow any such 'integrationist,' 'patronising' and 'co-optation' moves from anybody. For the spokespeople of the Dalit sections in Kerala, no discursive space that has exclusionary tactics or inclusive approach for the sake of democratic norms is acceptable. What they want today is 'debate'; they no longer want to be spoken at or spoken to. The clear and precise political positions of the Dalit intellectuals have categorically made it clear to Jayamol that while they accept and appreciate her 'artistic performance,' the very idea of sabotaging the discursive space that they've been creating for so many decades now cannot be allowed for whatever reasons, including the aesthetical ones. The colour Black is not the only marker of a Dalit or a Dalit's experience. Black is a general marker for Indians, though the upper castes don't accept this until they face discrimination at the hands of the real White within the country or elsewhere. While Black being a universal derogatory marker of the evil, marking a Dalit or a Dalit experience with the colour black is almost a reductionist approach. According to the Dalit intelligentsia, blackness has transcended to various daily experiences of the Dalit even in their interactions with patronising integrationists.
It would be a reductionist argument if I say that only a Dalit has the right to speak about the Dalit experiences. However, empathy can't be a replacement for the real experience. Jayamol's contention regarding her performance is that it was her position/status as a woman that made her at par with the black skinned Dalit. Though we could argue that women are gendered Dalits, there is a Dalit discourse within the gender discourse itself. Feminisms all over the world have debated the multi-layered experiences of women in various social strata and have come to a conclusion that white feminism can't speak for black feminism; similarly white upper class feminism can't speak for the white labour class feminism. Even within Black communities such debates prevail. Jayamol has failed utterly while conceptualizing her performance art, as she hasn't understood the nuances of Dalit and feminist discourses. Simplistic equations like Dalit= black and Dalit= woman made her almost a laughing stock within the cultural communities all over the world. However, I won’t say that Jayamol as an artist doesn't have the right to 'perform' or 'conduct' social experiments on caste system in Kerala using a 'color' as a marker. While she has the right to do so, she should also be aware that the word 'color' or 'colored' itself is a marker of race or caste (in India’s case) and it isn't just white against black, it is white against all the other colors. In Indian context, it is Brahminism against all other castes created by Brahminism itself.
When art is treated as a 'reaction,' not really as 'response' or 'assimilated experiential responses filtered through intelligence and feeling via adequate methods and materials,' many Jayamols would happen in our society. Such reactionary artists, as they are driven by the urgency to 'react' rather than to respond intelligently, fail to understand the gravity of the situations. The failure that happened to Jayamol's art project is because of her 'reactionary' approach. This performance was a 'reaction' to Vemula’s suicide. Her concerns were extended to the unfortunate incidents like 'Ooraly's arrest' and the 'rape and murder of Jisha.' Reactionary artists often grab the opportunity of famous as well as infamous social happenings and attach their 'art-ivism' to such developments. That's why Jayamol's performance looks like a tacky social experiment meant for a 'desired result' masquerading as a piece of performance art process. The reactionary verve of the artist blinded her in seeing how artists like Vito Acconci, Chris Burden, Carolee Schneemann, Marina Abromovic and so on used body as a performance tool much before the social experiments intend to shock and eke out a reaction from the 'shocked' or 'offended' or 'don't care' audiences.
Jayamol isn't alone. Reactionary art is the latest fad in Kerala where people are looking for publicity by attaching themselves to the latest social events that demand intellectual solidarity from different sections of the society. This is an outcome of the Kochi Muziris Biennale that has been promoting an art culture which is predominantly spectacular, and supporting capitalist art with a rebellious streak. While claiming its leaning toward political art, Kochi Muziris Biennale runs with the pray and hunts with the hunter.
Before I close this article, I would like to tell the artists in Kerala and elsewhere that art is political only up to the level of the political integrity of the artist himself or herself. Painting Mahatma Gandhi with a blackened tooth or talking about Dr. B. R. Ambedkar doesn't make an artist political. Mere sloganeering and claiming of a political voice or space also doesn't make an artist political. Even the party affiliation of the artists does not make them political. Picasso was a Communist Party card holder, but apart from the forced reading of 'Guernica,' we don’t identify Picasso as a communist. Reactionaries are never political. Whether they are visible or invisible, accepted or rejected, accommodated or thrown out, Dalit political discourses have been there for over a century now in India, and a reactionary artist just cannot snatch that space for whatever reasons. As a Dalit scholar and leader had put in one of the television debates, 'Jayamol can wash the black colour by evening, but what about us who can't wash it off and also have to hand it over to the successive generations like a pollutant?'
(Photos: Kalakakshi/Facebook & See-ming Lee ??? SML via Foter.com / CC BY-SA)