When profanity is a ‘virtue’

It’s hard to imagine that artists Sanjeev Khandekar and Vaishali Narkar would come up with a title like ‘Tits, Clits ’n’ Elephant Dick’ for their controversial exhibition. By their own admission, both artists, who are clearly more comfortable in Hindi or Marathi than English, this is not parlance they normally use.

Growing up in middle-class neighbourhoods in Chembur and Sangli — Narkar comes from a somewhat conservative family of white-collar professionals, who had to be convinced by her professor at the JJ School of Art that she was doing the right thing by studying art.

Khandekar is a self-taught artist who used to edit the Marathi activist magazine, Srujan. Swearing and using slangs were frowned upon at his home.

So the only way the title makes sense is as a form of protest. The artists say that’s exactly what it is. “The name comes from a underground feminist comic of the ’70s,” says Khandekar. “We believe that corporatisation and commercialisation are the new faces of fascism in a democratic society, and that’s the theme behind our current exhibition. It’s all about the continuous attack of the unreal, as exhibited in the world of shopping malls and the market economy, upon the real. And ultimately nobody knows what is real and what is unreal.”

So was it all about shocking viewers? Narkar, 31, is pretty straight. “Yes the shock was necessary,” she says. “We are all living with masks. This is a protest against hypocrisy and urban decay.” Khandekar has certainly made a career out of protest and provocation. Last year, in a show at Pandole gallery, again intriguingly entitled ‘La Peau de Chagrin’ from a novel by Balzac, he used an installation of a human body infested with 15,000 insects, including maggots. In his 2005 ‘All I Wanna do’, the 47-year-old artist had installations of 150 human organs (10 intestines, 15 livers etc) strung out like lamps. “People were disconcerted by the image of the digestive system hanging in the air, and by the fact I had reduced them to beings who merely eat and shit,” says Khandekar.

That’s probably a valid question. While ‘Tits, Clits...’ has been censured by the moral police, other artists and connoisseurs had only one thing to say: It isn’t exactly high art. One person described it as shock, something which is of inferior and shoddy quality. Others thought it was Narkar and Khandekar’s perhaps undeserved ticket into the big league. Narkar’s last, a 2002 solo show about the Gujarat riots which invited visitors to express their opinion, for instance, was apparently much more accessible than ‘Tits, Clits...’ But the artists have one thing to say in their defence - when people saw Dali’s surreal images, or Picasso’s cubism for the first time, they immediately dismissed them. “We are living in a cutting-edge world,” says Khandekar. “A lot of things break down, new metaphors come, images and language changes. It sometimes shocks and disgusts people. But as an artist, it’s my job to bring that change.”