Two decades earlier, he was doing exactly what he is protesting against today. A young boy of 20, veteran artist Ajay De was locking up people inside rooms, disrupting work by force and hosting protest marches all across town.
After all, he was part of the Communist Party’s Communist Student Movement, a popular culture in the country in the 70s and 80s. But today, years later, he has given up his disturbing past in favour of his new passion — art. And De pours in all his repentance and regrets into his works based on the ghosts of Communism.
“I was 20 years old and got emotionally attached to Communism. I never knew I would be an artist. Ultimately, I came out disillusioned.” He amazes us with his candid confessions, “I locked up my own old principal in a room, not even letting him go to the toilet. I am ashamed.” Guilt rings loud and clear in his voice.
In his current show, De has worked on multi-mediums, weaving together drawings, charcoals, sculptures, photographs and installations to recreate snippets out of his Communist past. The entire space at the Jehangir Art Gallery has come alive with smatterings of red against a black backdrop that has been artificially created to hide the “ugly mosaic floors” of the gallery. Several trips to the Chor Bazaar provided him with more than 100 tall microphones and flags that form a milieu for his show.
Procuring the photographs from the lanes and bylanes of Kolkata was a mammoth task for the artist. We are shocked as he recalls, “It was a huge problem. I was threatened. People came to beat me up.” But the senior artist’s influence in the upper quarters of the society was what saved him.
De makes a strong political statement as he concludes, “Radical measures by the Communists — protest marches and propaganda — are totally unnecessary and unnatural.”
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