To create art within the walls of a prison is a journey that trains the mind to power itself in the realms of fantasy and reality. It is like exploring travels in the dungeon of dreams. As part of the Tihar Kala Utsav, artworks created by jail inmates from all over the country including Tihar Jail are on display at the Lalit Kala Akademi in Delhi.
“The art gallery we created at the Tihar Jail is a great example of creating a space for reformation and redemptive human practices,” says C.S. Krishna Setty, Administrator Lalit Kala Akademi. Setty has personally looked into the training practices at Tihar with artists of repute sharing techniques and practices with artists from Tihar Jail.
This show at Lalit Kala Akademi has a slew of works that have been put together from Tihar Jail inmates, Lalit Kala Art Camps and the Sahitya Akademi.
Sudhir Yadav, Director General (Prisons), the brain behind the confluence with the Lalit Kala Akademi says: “This is a beginning for us, I would like to take this venture a little further to make a difference to the lives of the inmates of Tihar. This will give them a vocation after they finish their sentences. ”
“Spending one’s time after a crime can be an experience of great upheaval and trauma,” says Setty. “When I saw the works of some of the inmates I was not just surprised, I was so delighted to discover so many great artists who have never painted in their lives.” Setty takes the examples of art ventures in prisons abroad and states, “some of the greatest graffiti and murals have been created in prisons all over the world. From this experience we come to the realisation that art is therapeutic, it adds to the growth and balance of one’s inner recesses, this is why it is so important.”
Colourful canvasses
At the Lalit Kala, some works stand out apart from others. Most works have been done on canvasses with the use of acrylics. Pudhakar Sharma’s profile of a woman has been juxtaposed to a man in cage, flowers many small feet and a baby. Toned in yellow and orange hues, it makes a joyous beginning to a show that fills all the galleries.
The top floor has two works which are worthy of scrutiny. There is a frontal image of a woman with rainbow colours, a suggestion of meditation hues and inner searches by Akram who has a hand that is fit for figurative forms. The robust resonant guitar by Radha speaks to us about the beauty of music that can banish away the blues.
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While on the ground floor, it is Ajay Kumar’s Tree created amidst the forest of many coniferous trees with leafy embellishments that train one’s eye towards a green planet.
Works from jails all over the country show there are some neat hands, some confused and some mundane. One can understand that many of them have never drawn or touched a brush let alone paints. One work of a group of Hanumans is an example of a deep understanding of miniature traditions that has come upon quite naturally.
Terracotta sculptures
But it is the terracotta sculptures done by the inmates at different times in groups and individuals that becomes a testimony in knowing that works of art can be created by anyone as long as there is someone to train and bring out hidden talent. A pity that most of the terracotta works do not have the names of the creators, because the identity of the human hand is the most important part of the signature of these novel journeys that portray the power of human endeavour.
Setty states: “It seems sculptors have gone and conducted workshops and given them clay to create these terracotta pieces. It is good to see that some of them have a deep understanding of composition. It is not just a face with many folds that becomes one among many studies, it is also knowing that they have learnt how to make works that can stand.”
Particularly powerful is the little ornate trellis like work that looks as if it has mushrooms growing. Yet another work has a group of tortoises sitting in slumber which has quaint and piquant postures. The colour of the clay and the treatment of the firing all techniques point to a sense of deep learning within the parameters of art disciplines.
Undertrial Chintan Upadhyay’s works have been relegated to the last gallery at the Lalit Kala Akademi on the left hand side wall and the two works open up the possibilities of new realms of reality, in the life of this brilliant artist who is now at the Thane Jail in Mumbai ever since the macabre murder of his wife Hema Upadhyay and her lawyer in 2015.
Two works on paper that are filled with colours but seem to echo disturbing undercurrents. The artist focuses on a female elephant with extended legs, gone are the pillar like limbs here are four giraffe like extensions and intriguingly they rest inside the cavities of cracked polka dotted eggs. Indeed you wonder if he is making fragmented references to the life of a female individual who literally walks on egg shells.
The second work is a bouquet of flowers with a ladder and a shadow that looks like pale matted blood. While the rose buds speak of the allure of feminine genitalia, it is the ladder that has an equivocal echo. While the riot of colours in the bouquet makes us think of suppressed sexual desires, this work is all about virile suggestions and the dichotomies of male female equations. Feminine elements float within contexts in both works by Upadhyay who knows too well the language of surrealism.
The show bears testimony to the fact that the impulse to make and create is heightened in prisoners because of the tension between “desire and actuality”— hope, dream, and fantasy cut with the bitterness and despair of their sentences.
