Present Encounters : Papers from the conference of the Second Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane, 1996

forms. No other I ndian artist's work demonstrates this more affirmatively than the sculptu re of Mri nalini Mukherjee. Both Kapoor and Mukherjee seek to instill a radical contemplativeness in the mind of the viewer, though , of course , the means each deploys could not be more dissimi lar. This is the occasion to flesh out - in relation to the theme of the present session - what in my catalogue essay is a very condensed account of Mukhe�ee's work. As if in harmony with the vegetal realm from wh ich her medium is derived , the lead i ng metaphor of Mukherjee's sculptu res i n hemp fi bre comes from the organic l ife of plants. Improvising upon a motif or image that serves as her sta rting point, the work's gradual unfolding becomes analogous to the stirring into maturation of a sapling. The tough , hand­ dyed hemp fibres (the matte lushness of their hues recalling jungle flora) twisted and knotted around a fairly rud imentary metal armature, are, as it were, roped into a logic of inexorable growth. Possessed of something of the heavy languor of tropical vegetation, the resulti ng forms are i nstinct with the luxuriance of proliferating root, u nfurling leaf, burgeoning flower: the suggestive protrusions and openings are poised at the wondrous moment that precedes a dehiscence. I n a slow upsurge from the ground the frontality of coiled tumescence and swollen declivity betokens an exuberant implantation in the soil of the erotic: these totems are the avatars of an (abstracted) iconography of aroused sentience. Further, the unabashed copresence, rather than the oppositional polarity of female and male attributes within a single configuration, is the sign of an exceptional intuition : a potential collapse of sexual difference , a blurring o f t he boundaries that unexpectedly brings t o m i nd examples from a tradition that one would not instinctively associate with Mukherjee's scu l pture - the inexhaustible carnal ambiguity of G iacometti's Suspended Ball, or the metaphor of a 'round phallicism' evoked by Roland Barthes a propos of Georges Bataille's dark narrative of erotic transgression, The Story of the Eye. As a cou nterpoint, we may recall the Sanskrit word for base or pedestal to appreciate another kind of erotic economy pertinent to the work under consideration: 'Pitha': the pedestal of a statue or of the linga; in the case of the latter, it is interpreted as the female counterpart to the male symbol of Shiva; in Northwest I ndia, especially, the pitha of both sacred images and of the lingas has a raised edge and a spout to col lect and drain off the water from ritual lustration. It is common to find the snaking roots of lianas adhering to the surface of rock. This smooth and si nuous form is as common to I ndian natu re as gnarled tree forms are to Europe. The (Indian) sculptors spontaneously turned to these most typical natural analogies, as their Romanesque counterparts i n Northern Europe stud ied the growth of oak and elm. One often in I ndia sees the trunk of some huge tree locked in the embrace of a creeper, or one trunk coiled another in a marriage as sensuous as the couplings (maithuna) of the I ndian deities. Although occasioned by a d iscussion of the Sanch i gateways (second century B . C.) , Richard Lannoy's remarks might almost be descri bi ng the i rrepressible anthropomorphism of Mukherjee's scu l ptures. Conversely, when she treats the human form, it is to affirm the organic bond with the vegetal . (Some of the titles of her works allude explicitly to forest deities.) Imposi ng in their physicality, their compactness is that of an arrested rampancy, so that to approach the spaces in which one confronts them is almost like a trespass. 'My anthropomorphic deities owe much to the equation with awe and reverence that a traditional i nvocatory deity i nspires i n her spectator. But my mythology is de-conventionalised and personal , as i ndeed are my methods and materials'. The mythological references are harnessed with the desire to create a hierophany, as if the knotted mesh were a receptacle for the numen even while continuing to be . . . a scul ptu re, according to the 'dialectic of the sacred' descri bed by Mircea Eliade. (A stone that is sacred, continues, nevertheless, to sti l l remain a stone.) As Richard Lannoy has observed : Sacred temple images, or cult images, reputed to possess the most potent magical qualities, are frequently aniconic-vermilion, white or black stones of extremely rudimentary shape . Sometimes they are not even carved , but are curiously shaped natural forms that caught someone's eye as possessing numen - sacred potency. A shri ne wou ld be built over such a stone in situ, and in the course of time (possibly several thousand years) great sanctity or healing powers came to be associated with 83