Shiva Gor throws light on the poignant lives of gypsies in his ongoing solo debut. Ornella D'Souza reports
Thieves, crooks, illiterate, backward, wayward, wanderers, encroachers, fortune tellers, black magic practitioners. Artist Shiva Gor is fed up of these labels perpetuated towards the Gor-Banjaras, a gypsy clan in India he's descendant of. "We are very open-minded. On Holi, our women drink alcohol, recite erotic poetry, and even beat men in jest. It's been donkey's years since we've also normalised widow re-marriage," says the 30-year-old who has a Master's in painting from JJ School of Art.
Thus Gor's ongoing solo and debut exhibition, 'Tanda – Perspectives of Gormati and Roma Aesthetics', aims to deflect stereotypes and stitch his community and the entire gypsy diaspora, called Romanis or Roma spread out in 60 countries today into mainstream culture. In fact, his show was timed to catch International Romani Day on April 8. A Roma flag, the Roma anthem and the Indian Constitution's Preamble written in Devnagri and recited in Gormati (the Indo-Aryan language that the Gors' speak comprises Hindi, Marwari, Gujarati words and has no script), are attempts at this unification. "I've made many Romani friends on Facebook. I feel one with them because our food, costumes, and language are similar. They also call water, paani," says Gor.
While the bohemian lives we perceive gypsies to have are showcased in slivers, the largely installation-based display mainly points at the marginalisation Romanis face for their dark skin and migrant ways. Amplifying the thought is a morbid exhibit of three headless statues of babies, redolent of Ganpati idols and sandcastles that point at crumbling banjara identities.
Gor picks objects that typify gypsies and places each of them in isolation to let their symbolism resonate with the viewer. Open black umbrellas – 'black flowers' – and a sewage pipe display point at racialism and inhuman conditions they experience the world over.
This is also a case in point that an insider, who becomes a voice for one's own community, is privy to lesser-known facets that hawkeyed outsiders may miss. For instance, few of Gor's parents' belongings become exhibits for ethnographic enlightenment: his father's pair of jodha (footwear); a parcel wrapped in his mother's stole; the mirror border of her ghungto (head scarf) and jewellery in silver, coloured beads and threads.
Gor also tampers with the size of objects that trademark the community: A gigantic needle glorifies the gypsies age-old association with warp and weft, and a cluster of 'parked' miniature caravans (this space where thy halt to settle down is called tanda) is indicative of what many from the semi-nomadic group want: a fixed job and a postal address. Soft-spoken Gor is brimming with additional details about the gypsy life. Men and women as one gender – those with nipples – and snakes, as another. They consider human, animal, tree, rules and authorities who dictate the rules, along with the five elements (Panchtattva).... Gypsies are called 'gor' and the rest of the human race, 'kor'. "But those'gors' who disown their cultural roots are also 'kors'," educates Gor.
'Tanda – Perspectives...' also bears residues of his painterly ways: Pencil-portraits of gypsy women from different geographies and origami structures painted in typical banjara woven patterns.
On view at Clark House Initiative Bombay till April 9
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