Exploring the unexplored

Explored and yet unexplored; known and yet unknown; defined and yet undefined; the politics of one’s identity is often a point of conversation lost in a myriad of shades.  While the question of identity has been explored time and again, multidisciplinary artist Swarup Dutta’s photography debut in the city is taking the dialogue of gender identities to another level.

In Armour of Weaknesses, Swarup, a Kolkata-based artist, photographer and scenographer, has explored the painful process of assuming identities under external pressures. In 30 odd photographs exhibited at ARTISANS’, the models or the ‘beings’ are captured in the process of slipping in, donning and slipping out of the bamboo cage or armour metaphorical of the gender and sexual identities. “I was questioning the structure of gender and other similar identities that we don, and how sometimes they change when we don’t have the pressure to be somebody or to identify with something. That’s when we are able to explore the other aspect of us,” Swarup reveals.

Previously working on a scenography presentation displaying interesting costumes for women, Swarup had collaborated with the bamboo craftsmen of Kolkata to make the armatures. Once the presentation was completed, he extended these armatures in this experimental photography work featuring androgyny. In one of the pictures, a person in a crouched position is seen wearing heels, although the rest about them is left to be elusive. “I was looking at blurring the lines between the two kinds of bodies ­– male or female. When you see heels, there is obviously a construction going on and you are looking for clues. The idea is to take people from the point of known, get those clues and then disseminate those traces completely and then take them slightly in the stranger zone,” he says. Further adding that the bamboo cages are also metaphorical of the other roles we desire to imbibe, but don’t because the society, politics and religions are odds with them.

Moreover, the artist reveals that once the models had been embalmed with paint, faces covered, and slipped into the armours, there were stark changes in their behaviours as well. Talking about it, Swarup says, “Once they were donning these costumes, their behaviours, posture, all of it changed – some slightly some quite drastically. And it seemed they were donning the roles, which otherwise they don’t. That was basically the premise of the project.”

These photographs of contorted beings in the cage are technically elusive too, as they resemble black and white drawings. “We have also challenged the notions of what a photograph is because they almost look like drawings and so we are also questioning that do we always have to draw and that can we not see drawings,” Swarup confirms.

The series Armour of Weaknesses is a part of the other two similar photography series Khelna-bati and Other Worldly under the project KAW by Swarup that too explores the various facets of identities. While Khelna-bati explores the power dynamics between the objects and users, Other Worldly depicts the loss of human identity. “There is a whole body of work called KAW (like the Hindi alphabet) because ‘k’ is the root alphabet of all the interrogatory words like kab, kahan, kaise. We are just trying to arrive at the point that identity is never sacrosanct and that it’s open to interpretation,” he concludes.
—The Armour of Weaknesses can be viewed today at ARTISANS’, Kala Ghoda