A Place In The Sun And Hope For Everyone
By: JohnyML: Curator, Critic, Writer
Sangeeta Singh's works embody a silent scream that once had made Edvard Munch create violent colour frequencies around a faceless human figure thrown alone on a bridge; the scream of Munch's protagonist had exemplified the scream of the existential man dipped in utter solitude. Today, the world has moved further with soothing and enticing images to lure away human beings from solitude and tranquillity. In an image saturated world of ours image itself is the message. Caught in the maze of images, sights, sounds and spectacles, the contemporary human beings no longer get a chance to let out the silent screams that brew up in their innards. These screams are visceral but made captive within the human bodies, eventually causing fragmentation of the self only to be reorganized, ironically by images, sights, sounds and spectacles. In the abundance of images, artists are thirsty for adequate metaphors. Overused and misused by the image makers of market, metaphors soon turn into cliches, thereby rendering artists to rely on their own devices. A constant search for fresh metaphors is a daunting task especially for an artist who lives right in the middle of a jungle made out of concrete, steel and glass. If she finds one within the distorted reflections of an urban space, then one should say, she has won half the battle. Sangeeta Singh, by capturing the silent screams choked within the contemporary human beings in a sharp and poignant metaphor of cycle rickshaw pullers has placed creative self in an empathetic zone with her 'objects' of interest that turn out to be the 'subjects' of her paintings.
For the last three years, Sangeeta Singh, an artist who lives and works in Gurgaon, one of the fast growing urban sprawls lying at the outskirts of India's capital, New Delhi, has been taking a special interest in the cycle rickshaw pullers seen working in the city. Cycle rickshaw pullers belong to a peculiar 'tribe' which is not claimed by any power or religious factions. These menial workers do not belong to the city where they work; most of them do not even have a rented place to stay at night. Coming from the poverty stricken innards of rural India, these people, mustering up the last bit of energy left in them join the herd of other rickshaw pullers. Deprived of a normal civilian privileges, these workers are 'faceless', therefore unidentified people in an urban space like Delhi or Gurgaon, where even the commuters who avail their services do not recognize their 'identity' as a human being. Their straining calf muscles, stretching shoulders and aching bottoms are often smudged out from vision through deliberate distractions by the commuters. The social exchange and trust that have to happen between human beings in a public domain also end once the pittance as fare has exchanged hands. Nobody remembers their faces, let alone the pain and struggle etched largely over them. Nobody remembers their existence as they are seen as shadow beings within a rich society. However, Sangeeta Singh sees them as she does not distract herself from the human being who rides the rickshaw with strain and pain. She sees them as the embodiment of silent pains and given a chance human beings with dignity, self worth and self respect.
One cannot say that Sangeeta Singh's interest in rickshaw pullers is flimsy and a fanciful fetish for the straining bodies or bodies in agony. On the contrary, for her it is an ideological therefore a personally decided political choice to travel in cycle rickshaws though she has the ability to travel by other modes of commuting. For the artist, the choice of travelling by cycle rickshaws for small distances amounts to helping these hapless people who eke out their living by pulling rickshaws; it is an environment friendly mode of commuting; besides, it is an occasion to see human lives from a different angle. In two of her previous exhibitions, Sangeeta Singh had attempted to portray the lives of the rickshaw pullers, perhaps in a romantic way. The colours that she had used then were bright and a fair amount of flatness was attributed to the pictorial surfaces. Her presence in the paintings was reduced to the presence of her nail polished toe just on the platform below the saddle of the cycle rickshaw. This was quite a subtle suggestion of the artistic involvement with the object of her interest or the affinity for the metaphor that she had chosen then. However, when we come to the present body of the work, the plight of cycle rickshawwalahs is accentuated through modes of focusing and fragmenting and is contrasted with the bold presence of the artist within the pictorial scheme. One could say that in these paintings, the artist reduces the cityscape or landscape around her to the minimum and maximizes the presence of her own fragmented identity; she herself turns into a landscape within which or against which the rickshaw pullers work. She becomes, metaphorically a reflective surface for the metaphors that she has created within the pictorial frame.
As far as Sangeeta Singh is concerned, these paintings create two types of fragmentation and different kinds of reclamations (of her artistic self as well as the dignity of the rickshaw pullers). First of all her self-portraits are not done with any hagiographic detailing. A closer look reveals that these self portraits are fragments resembling a honey comb coming together to create a facial resemblance of the artist. The rickshawwalahs are equally fragmented against this 'landscape' but there happens a strange identification between these two: the artist and the rickshaw pullers are fragmented beings. Together they make meaning. It is almost living the other's life through a strange empathy. This alchemy of transforming one's self into another which is non-identifiable in a normal situation is somewhat surreal in effect. Like in her previous works, in the present body of works too, the artist takes a special care to focus on the parts to create a full impact of the subjective and objective fragmentations. However, the artist does not scrutinize the 'bodies' of these rickshaw pullers. Despite having the position to exercise a 'female gaze', Sangeeta Singh does not indulge in that power game. She repeats the metaphors in sequential frames, from large to small and vice versa in order to emphasize the ruptured narratives of their lives. One may wonder, despite all conducive materialistic circumstances don't we all feel but avoid these ruptures happening in our respective lives! .
Had it not been her intention to reclaim the dignity of these workers within the pictorial narratives (though fragmented), Sangeeta Singh's works would have been taken for a charity ride on somebody's agony. But she makes it emphatically clear that she wants them to occupy the spaces that lie beyond their reach. Hence, in a series of paintings, the artist brings them into the home interiors; on the dining table, in the tea jug, at the window sill and so on. She makes them comfortable there, giving them a sort of strange iconic status at times and at other times by portraying them sleeping within the jug as if it were a mother's womb. In her works, Sangeeta Singh repeatedly celebrates their efforts in 'running' the city by highlighting the rickshaw and the pullers in a cinematic way. They are presented as slices of suspense before revealing their existence as a whole. Every frame is given a witness and the witness is the artist herself. It is another way of telling them that they are not alone in their plight of existence. When they are going alone on a path, riding their rickshaws, she is with them in the form of a bunch of balloons where she has portrayed herself. When they are out there, taking rest or passing by, she is there to witness them from the window. She cleverly plays up and down the suspended romantic angle in order to heighten the experience of the painting.
In this body of works too, Sangeeta Singh employs the artistic device of presenting her nail polished toe as a strong and unique metaphor. This could at once suggest her superiority over these poor workers and also a comforting presence for them. The most striking image that I have found in this series of paintings is the sweating back of a rickshaw puller which the artist has painted with some amount of rawness. Along with the saddles, the narrow bottoms that press on them, the taut calf muscles, the pedals, chains and wheels, this sweating back of a worker screams for attention. Sangeeta Singh gains this attention for them for the simple reason that she has reclaimed the working class to the paintings without any sense of romanticism. These are raw paintings with metaphors treated with sensitivity and empathy. At the outset, I mentioned the 'Scream' by Munch. Throughout these paintings, a sensitive viewer could hear this scream; and if one harks more, one could also listen to the artist saying, 'Don't quit. There is still hope.' .
November 2014