AHMEDABAD AHOY AND THE IDEA OF ‘META MAYA’!

FROM A DUSTY TEXTILE AND DYE MANUFACTURING TOWN TO A MALL AND BUSINESS HOTEL-FILLED CITY THAT SHOWS SOUL WHEN NURTURING ARTISTIC TALENT…AHMEDABAD’S PEOPLE, CUSINE, HERITAGE STRUCTURES AND STREET MARKETS (OPEN BEYOND 10PM) PROVE TO BE DELIGHTFUL, SAYS SANGEETA WADDHWANI

So many inhabitants of Mumbai and Delhi consider other metros to be in some way substandard when it comes to the quality of living. This myth is getting challenged each year. A recent trip to Ahmedabad offered a portrait of a city that once smelled of toxic textile dyes…(I remember a terrible attack of hay fever and an earthquake on my first visit in 1994)…now transformed into a commercial, ticking hub dotted with Novotel and YMCA International hotels, a mall of some scale virtually in every neighbourhood…and an art scene not driven by the commercial ethos and insularity that presides over Mumbai.

So very heartening!

Yours truly was there to attend the third installment of a series of showcases of art entries for a nationwide competition and art exchange program hosted by the ICAC (Art Gallery. The man who conceived of this idea was Ravindre Mardia, President of ICAC, who couriered art paper and canvas (depending on the artist’s choice) to every participant. “We had 415 artists participating, and received a total of 1,684 artworks, from more than 100 cities from India & abroad,” shares Ravindre.

The diversity of styles, techniques used, and nouveau visual languages, was a treat to witness when we walked around ICAC on the opening of the third show for the competition.  Little wonder, when you consider that participants were not only from North, South, East and West India (from Gwalior to Guwahati, Jhansi to Junagadh, Kolkata to Kerala) but also slick global hotspots like Singapore, Dubai, the US, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Spain and Hong Kong,”

Ravindra has a history of being in business as a manufacturer of metal goods, but has chosen post retirement, to nurture artistic talent in India. Just engaging with artists from such diverse geographic and cultural backgrounds in an age of online showcases and NFTs, is laudable. “Artists are often dealing with the pressures of full time jobs but with Pandemic disruptions and lockdowns, they were in a better place to create new art by hand, and hence we chose to have this contest,” he shares.

Ravindre and I had first met at the 10,000 square feet artspace called The Art Hub which he presided over, at the Atria Mall many years ago. Here, I was contemplating hosting my Coho Bohemia Bombay artwalk  as it was all about mixing a visual art experience with other art expressions..music, dance, poetry, prose presentations, theatre, short films, etc. I also secretly wished to showcase my Swarovski Divinity paintings there! Somehow this didn’t come to pass.

But here I was, many years later, part of Ravindre’s generous curation and vision in Ahmedabad…meeting his friend Hon Manahar Kapadia, IC Principal of the CN College of Fine Art, Ahmedabad, who opened the show. There was something pure and minimalist about the evening. Punctual. No wine (but nice cutting chai). No VIP marching in at a hefty price with an entourage, no paparazzi and no tamasha! Just reveling in art for arts sake.

Ravindre and I chatted about the decline of interest in art through the last two years, in Mumbai. One saw barely a trickle of art lovers attending show openings and “I see most people only visiting Jehangir Art Gallery for shows,” he shared. I ask him what he feels about the NFT-isation of art! And show him ‘iconic’ NFTS like the BoredApe, which has been traded like hot stock for millions, even when one sees no artistic value in the lame digital image. Even Warhol’s Campbell Soup on a loop made some kind of statement about American life!

Ravindre seems blissfully out of the NFT art “business’ so far though he shares, “Yes artists are wondering about earning well in this trade, but how many NFTs actually become so popular on the block chain?”

It reminds me of the many Indian artists of top stature who I had interviewed for L’OFFICIEL when digital art interfaces had become popular. MF Husain had felt that working with a mouse and digital palette and digital brush “did not feel painterly.” Suhas Awchat, Jaideep Mehrotra were just a few of this First Gen of artists expressing their ideas with digital interfaces.

Today one sees a parallel art scene that serves only a digital viewership where artists may never NEED to touch art materials or ever interact directly with galleries or buyers. Their ‘patrons’ simply click digital buttons and become token holders (joint stakeholders) of an NFT or pay a lot more and buy into its copyright! (We are talking upto 25 lakhs for copyright ownership!)

But where is the joy of carrying a physical work home…finding a place for it…gazing at it with different friends and family, across generations? Where is the spontaneous and messy experience of smearing colour and material around a work…clicking a mouse and dragging the cursor from a digital palette circle…to see what colours you are getting on a screen..it’s just way too clinical!

How do you feel about this digitization of art? At least at ICAC this dystopian form of art creation..or to be more with it NFT-isation and trading of digital imagery…seemed to be on the fringes of things. When Saraswati can manifest without the overt pursuit of Laxmi …it is said Laxmi gets jealous and starts to arrive at an artists doorstep!

Time will tell whether NFTS are just a bubble or will persist. Strange are the fallouts of the Great Digital Takeover of our world, Non Fungible Token did you say? But of course, fungus only collects on real time matter! Here’s to a non fungible formula for everything then…intelligence, relationships, ecosystems, societies community…for I believe there are people who live entirely in the Metaverse..inhabit cities there… drive, date people, transact, love and loose..

We in India had a word for it centuries ago…MAYA. Meta Maya? Sounds like a deal embraced by a crazy new world!