When forces of power collide
Rachana Chhetri
KATHMANDU, AUG 27 – Super Nataraj I, a work of art that has become a visibly powerful and easily recognised representation among art circles in the Capital of Manish Harijan’s ongoing exhibition, The Rise of the Collateral at the Siddartha Art Gallery, best speaks of the theme that binds together the 11 works on display. The painting brings who is perhaps the most enduring of all super heroes (he is known as Super Man, after all) together with one of the most powerful figures in Hindu mythology—the dancing Nataraj, Shiva’s feared avatar of destruction. It is here that the artist most clearly presents an amalgamation of what are essentially religious and non-religious, and increasingly traditional and modern, ideas.
There is no questioning who the blue and red spandex-clad hero with the huge ‘S’ upon his chest is, but he is neither white nor is he flying across a cityscape dotted with skyscrapers. The superman character in Harijan’s painting is a dark, smiling man; a real man from one of the ‘lower castes’, the artist tells me. “I like doing portraits of real people when I work,” he says. Even the woman in the painting Infanta (Why Do You Hang Me Like a Puppet?) is based on an actual young girl, he says. Infanta is based on Diego Velázquez’s Portrait of the Infanta Maria Theresa of Spain. The girl in the white gown (Spain’s King Philip IV’s daughter in the original) has been given two figures—traditional Nepali puppets—in Harijan’s rendition. “The figures represent the living Goddess Kumari, and the questions that this age-old Nepali tradition faces in the modern world,” he says.
The artist has attempted to raise questions about how the goddesses of Kathmandu, Lalitpur and Bhaktapur are found to have evolved (and not always in a positive way) in the modern world. It is evident that these works of art represent a collision of sorts between the east and the west. As individuals who have undoubtedly been psychologically influenced, even colonised to a great extent by ‘western’ ideas and ways of life, most of us can relate to Harijan’s paintings as explorations of ourselves, as well as the place we find ourselves inhabiting in an increasingly smaller world.
God Creates Us, God Loves Us, a 60×60 inch painting on exhibit, is a collection of skulls painted rather disconcertingly together. The skulls are given individual frames within the painting and in a way prefigure the Super Kali painting that also forms part of the exhibition. Each skull in the painting is given a third eye; but the eye is very ‘modern’ and certainly avant garde in the sense that tiny fluorescent stars are placed inside sections cut out of what seem to be a strip of medicinal pills. These ‘third eyes’ are more like the star Wonder Woman has on the bandana she wears, rather than the tika with which many Nepali women adorn their foreheads.
The influence pop culture and pop art has had on Harijan’s works is strikingly evident in all of the works on display. “I have always been amazed by comics and superheroes,” says the artist as he talks about his decision to paint an entire collection on the theme. “The divine and supernatural occupy an important space in the Nepali psyche and way of life,” he continues. “It is in the gods’ role as upholders of all things good and right that I found a real connection between our Shiva and Parvati, and modern popular culture’s Superman and Superwoman.”
Super Kali presents a very clear manifestation of Harijan’s observations of the space ‘god’ has come to occupy in our ever-modernising world. The medusa-haired goddess is clad in a Superwoman costume and her multitudinous forelimbs are placed in such a manner that it is almost impossible not to associate them with Marylin Monroe’s flowing white dress in The Seven Year Itch. The way the middle finger of one of the goddess’ many hands finds itself lifted does not need much explanation, and the artist says that the work represents the “modern Kali.”
The Rise of the Collateral can best be described as an amalgam of traditional ‘eastern’ and more popular ‘western’ symbols, ideas and visual manifestations of power. It explores the modern Nepali identity, influenced as heavily as it is by more global concerts, and attempts to provide a new motif to our ideas of goodness, authority and super-human feats. Perhaps it is about old ‘gods’ and new ones wrestling to find a space in the modern individual’s life.
The exhibition will remain on display until September 20
