Art, for long, has been used as a medium of social change and resistance throughout the world. In India, the Dalit community has made a number of promising attempts at democratising art and using it to exercise one’s freedom of expression.
Visual artist and filmmaker Rahee Punyashloka (28), a Bhubaneswar native who is currently living in Delhi—he did his master’s from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and is pursuing his PhD in English Literature from there—is an evolving name in the sphere of Ambedkarite art (works that are rooted in Ambedkar’s philosophy).
Punyshloka’s art project, ‘Artedkar’, is a keen attempt at using minimal aesthetics to create illustrations that send across a strong message on the issue of caste discrimination. In this interview, Punyshloka talks about his art, his journey as an artist, and more. Excerpts...
Tell us about your art project ‘Artedkar’ (2020).
In the Noise Reduction films [Video works made by Punyashloka in 2014 that were exhibited at film festivals such as Tribeca Film Festival, New York, and International Film Festival, Rotterdam], there was this sort of unfocused political stance that I was trying to take. There is a particular movement, especially surrounding the death of Rohith Vemula that forced a lot of people from my community to look at how structurally questions of caste oppression, systemic violence, and discrimination are so thoroughly operative. My political stance was sharpened during that atmosphere.
I also felt there was this need to expand my art within the discourse of Ambedkarite art. My background in filmmaking has always been conceptual and focused on abstract, minimal aesthetic. I recognised that something was missing, and I thought the obvious [way] I can employ these artistic interests of mine was to take the blue and white colour scheme of the Ambedkarite flag. I, then, proceeded with that.
Would you say your work is a personal response or a bigger reaction to the issue of caste discrimination?
It is not a reaction per se because a lot of times, art that comes about the community has a reactive history. When you think of news articles about the Dalit community, they tend to be reactive, about some incident or some horrible atrocity that has happened. There is no uneventful ground on the basis of which the idea of Dalit person exists. I try to resist the reactive element of it.
People from marginalised communities are not [only] to be thought of when a horrible atrocity has happened. I try to provide a more nuanced, complex, holistic thought of ideas through my art. There is a lot of personal history and broader collective Dalit history, how our icons and people’s interaction with these icons is enmeshed in the idea of what dignity is, what freedom is, and what is true liberation.
You quote (in captions as seen in his works) a lot of instances from BR Ambedkar’s life in your work. Do you read a lot about him?
I do but these [the instances] are very well known for anyone who belongs to the Dalit community because these have been conserved . The way Hindu elders sit at the adda and discuss things, the same way, people from the Ambedkarite and Dalit community have these discussions constantly. If we talk about reading practices, the Ambedkarite community has a very strong reading habit. You can buy Annihilation of Caste in any major language for `5 or `10, which is impossible for other books; so there is a culture of reading and disseminating ideas. These are things that are part of the popular consciousness.
You are conducting a series of live conversations titled: ‘Postulates for a Less Opaque World’. Tell us about it.
The way Dalit History Month [April] has operated so far is that we celebrate our history but in process, people who haven’t had much interaction with the Dalit community, they get educated. I wanted to destabilise that and bring in people from upper caste communities and make them share knowledge and resources. So that the hardships I faced when I started my artistic career because I had no role models, is not faced by others.
You are a part of South Asia Speaks [literary mentorship programme]. Tell us about your first novel.
It is an experimental anti-novel. It draws from people. There was a literary movement in 1960s France, called the anti-novel ‘Nouveau Roman’. It was about deconstructing the novel while writing a novel. My novel draws from that. It talks about how we remember violent pasts. The protagonist comes from a group whose equivalent in the real world would be the Dalit community and this person is trying to recall what had happened in his childhood, the way that person can do that is by circling back to that one particular mundane moment he experienced in his childhood because history has been written by people who have oppressed this community. I intend to finish the final draft by this year. It should be out next year.