While I was at work last night a man from India came in and we started talking about fine art and Indian fine art and artisans. I have always been drawn to their craftsmanship and design and we discussed how there are different ways to show movement and progression through art; much of the same as I am currently doing with my work. After I explained to him my process and concept he explained to me a piece that he got from an artist in India that depicts the movement and progression of a popular Indian dance. After he left the store, I started thinking about all of the many ways throughout different cultures that performance art can be depicted and portrayed.
Monali Meher is a performance artist that I recently found who is from Pune, India. She graduated with a BFA in 1990 from Sir J.J. School of Arts, Mumbai and in 1998 she received “Unesco-Aschberg” Residency in Vienna by Federal Chancellery for the Arts and Science. In an exerpt from her website states that, “she felt immense necessity to work with her own body and emotions in public as a new expression/tool.” She has performed at the Tate Modern, the Jehangir Art Gallery in Mumbai, at National review on live art Festival in Glasgow, and has been a part of numerous solo and group shows. Most recently, in 2008, she performed “Departed, Assembled, Wrapped, Captured: Time”, at the Lumen Travo, A’dam. In 2005 she performed “Reverse, Rewind, Replay” at the Goliath Visual Space in New York and in 2004 performed “Ceremony” at the Artkitchen gallery in Amsterdam. She has received the VASL International Residency in 2008 from the Triangle Arts Trust Network; in 2007 she was a finalist in the “Black Magic Woman Award” in Amsterdam. In 2004 she received the Khoj International Residency that is funded by the Hivos in New Delhi, India.
She explains that her performance work is based on what is currently surrounding her and usually deals with social and cultural elements in her every day life. She has a specific interest in materials and “how two different materials react to each other and what sort of shape they create, what kind of smell they produce and what impression they make on the viewer” (excerpt from Artist Website). “Use of natural things like roses, used tea bags, coffee filters, henna and cooked rice have a quality of decaying and changing every moment of the time. These assemblages and installations are temporary structures in the time and space created by the performative act.” Much the same as myself, she wrote that the process of getting the performance together and gathering all of the materials and information is a performance in itself and a bulk of what makes the performance either successful or a failure. She uses drawings, photos, and text as a big part of her planning process. I have found that writing out my concept and fully thinking it through on paper helps me prepare for all of the potentials that could happen during the performance.
“Since last ten years, I have been working with performances, using my own body and voice in the space and with video, photographs and installations. My performances are atmospheric and they usually content props. They are sometimes ritualistic and show the cyclical circles of destruction and renewal as well as formal and conceptual ideas and the framework of personal references that inform the fragile divide between my life and art. The element of the past or the process transformation of the material as a quantity of time is of significance. To be able to record and replay time frames and juxtapose real time with mediated time is a vital area of the work.” Exceprt by Monali Meher about her artistic process on her website.
After reading through her statement and looking over a good amount of her stills, I find our styles very similar and our aesthetics. We both work very conceptually and our performances are based on the concepts and not on the attractiveness of the images/video that will be the end result. Both of our footage seems rare and real and I find that those aspects of the performances make them unique and essential for success.
Freewaves Article
Artist Website
No comments:
Post a Comment