The Second Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art exhibition catalogue (APT2)

AHouse for the Self Lives and works in New Delhi, India Right House of heavens 1995 Resin, fibreglass, aluminium, marble dust 229x150x90cm Collection: The artist Bottom Man near the pond 1994 Charcoal on paper 40x28cm Collection: The artist N. N. Rimzon belongs to a generation of artists who, as they started their practice in the early 1980s, came to inherit a legacy of a consolidated and subsequently, strongly contested, modernism in Indian art. The Kerala, where Rimzon and his colleagues came into adulthood, was witnessing a resurgence in vernacular literature which contributed to the formation of a strong sense of place and historical location in their work. Several of Rimzon's contemporaries went on to form the Indian Radical Painters and Sculptors' Association in 1987, an extreme left-wing group of artists whose agenda was that of an art rooted in the life of the people, of art as an expression of humanism. In what came to be a highly polarised situation, Rimzon did not align himself with the radicals. It is vital to an understanding of Rimzon's work to note that his relationship with ideology has been uneasy; he has tended more towards a conceptually– oriented practice. In 1984 Rimzon and six other artists participated in a workshop for young sculptors at the Kasauli Art Centre and the subsequent exhibition, 'Seven Young Sculptors', New Delhi, 1985, declared the coming of age of a generation of young practitioners, 'working within a sort of "personalised realism" (which involved a) conscious choice and containment of multiple (contemporary) experience to construct a totality'. 1 Much of Rimzon's work is strongly animated by his experience of alienation as an exile, 'in exile from family, from society and from a mainstream culture, I feel rootless, nomadic ...' 2 These impulses are 96 I ART I ST s : sou TH A ND sou TH - EA s T A s I A discernible in works such as Departure (still life) and Man in chalk circle, both from 1985, and continue to underlie his subsequent work as well, with the very important addition of an involvement with the erotic as a life-affirming principle. His work in recent years has operated allegorically, deriving a formal vocabulary from objects of everyday use with undert9nes of the archetype due to the associative, contextual meanings they evoke. The installation House of heaven 1995 may be seen as a summative statement in terms of Rimzon's concerns, and as a sublimation of the latent tensions that arise from his spelt-out position as exile. The absence of the human figure from this work is an evocative absence-the effects of a human presence are present: the dwelling, and the egg, which is symbolic of fertility and life, together form a structure which has ramifications of the sacred space as a shelter. The partially concealed sword under the structure however, undermines, denies the possibility of solace, of refuge, of utopia. The symbol of the house is by no means a new addition to Rimzon's oeuvre-mark From the ghats of the Yamuna 1990, and The virgin pot 1992. In fact the house takes on dimensions of wish fulfilment in the context of the subjectivity of the exile, especially as seen in relation to the absence of the figure. Rimzon's other symbol is that of the carrier -the earthen vessel and/or the (fertile) egg as the receptacle-the carrier of tradition and of belonging, of security and the affirmation of life: these functions being read onto a sexual symbology derived from the body of the biological other. Rimzon is interested in 'the idea of an expanded concept of the self' 3 that can transcend historical and religious barriers. He uses the container as metaphor for the body which, in turn, is a metaphor for the self by virtue of being a container for the self. The archetypal images used by Rimzon have inbuilt in their simplicity a close correlation between their forms and their contents/meanings. Rimzon's containers ostensibly enclose a space, and this space may offer a place of inhabitation for a self that is that of the wanderer. Rimzon inhabits his work. In terms of the contemporary situation in Indian art, Rimzon's work and the allegorical impulse that it represents speak perhaps of a possibility for a historically conscious practice in the face of the untenability of any universal paradigm of thought and of action. Chaitanya Sambrani, Lecturer, Kamla Raheja Arch. Bombay, India 1 Anita Dube, Seven Young Sculptors [exhibition catalogue!, Rabindra Bhavan Galleries,Lalit Kala Akademi,New Delhi,1985. 2 N.N.Rimzon, 'The Artist as Exile', Art Heritage 10, 1990-91. 3 Artist's note, 12 March 1996.