Serpentine invasion of technology

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An art show usually evokes pictures of a spacious art gallery, with each painting adorning the walls telling its own story. It’s easy to imagine the artist mixing with the audience, discussing what went into making a particular work of art; why oil on canvas was preferred over acrylic or why it was difficult to work with mixed media.
It is, therefore, a different experience altogether to witness an art project in the unlikeliest of spaces: an under-construction site in New Delhi’s Vasant Kunj area. But, Delhi-based artist Mukesh Sharma’s work invites more awe than just its unusual setting. Titled A Terabyteing Serpentine, the project is a testimony to on-site installations that beautifully reflect the art of recycling as the material that Sharma uses is mostly junk computer components like keyboards, monitors and computer chips. This is the artist’s way of making us think about the complexity of recycling the non-biodegradable and the environmental hazards created by the redundancy of technology.
The art itself is ambitious: an inverted tree covered with computer keys, junk monitors transformed into planters, a wall-sized mural of Sharma’s village temple, a serpentine installation of keyboards and digital prints and a three-dimensional painting doubling up like a computer monitor — this is just a peep into Sharma’s fascinating world of art which is beyond market and economic pressures.
For instance, the installation titled Inverted search for immortality is a dead tree Sharma found at the site itself. Installed upside down from the ceiling, he has stuck thousands of computer keys on the dried out branches of the tree creating faux branches that reach out towards the ground like complex, tortuous arms. The 39-year-old artist, who did his masters of fine arts in printmaking from MS University, Baroda, says: “I have been developing with the imagery of computer and its components in my mixed media installations, paintings and digital prints for the last four years. However, there are no random hits on composition, but a very deliberate construction of what I see around me. Now I have taken the idea several steps forward for this project. It is to see how we are enslaved by technology and how this simple keyboard button is taking over our lives.”
Sharma believes that rapid technology change and its outpourings alter the aesthetics of a society. In this context, it becomes increasingly important for him as an artist to synthesise global visuals into a local vocabulary. “In my journey from rural India to its rich, sinister urban cousins, I have encountered the rapid wipe-out of the local art traditions and their morphing into something totally different from the way my art aesthetics were. I look around me at skyscrapers and digital billboards with the same sense of amazement as I once did while looking at my village temple or the monstrous-looking aerial roots of the tree in its chaupal and the vibrant colours of clothes village women wore. My current collaborative work is an attempt to create a synthesis of my experiences of technology with my surroundings — those of my past with those of my present,” he says.
This intensive project is the product of a five-month-long intense collaboration and deliberation between Sharma and project curator Unnati Singh, herself an artist of repute. Indeed, it’s a curatorial venture with a difference, as Singh has been part of every stage of the art production process since its beginning. “Science has allowed man’s knowledge of the world to make its way up like an endless serpentine. With one invention being replaced by another in a blink-and-miss nano-second, the junk that is created is often ghastly. In Sharma’s work, he is creating the image he perceives of this vicious cycle. The keyboard, like a serpent, has entered our lives and is eating us, becoming much more than just a thing of usability. The way keys are taking us into a new virtual world, Sharma’s work is a new direction of seeing the real in-site specificity and art that goes beyond,” she explains.
In the same room, on a wall behind the inverted tree, Sharma hangs a huge wall-sized hand-stitched blouse as a memory of his village ritual where women would throw their blouses on a tree after fulfilment of a wish. “I had visited my village in Rajasthan three years ago and happened to see this ritual outside the village temple. The imagery stayed with me and I have used this to co-relate the changes technology has brought forth even in my small village but where because of simplicity of faith, technology has merged seamlessly with rituals. It’s also a statement of how I am talking about technology, but not using it for my work,” says Sharma. In an
adjoining room, a video installation will take viewers through the intricate process of stitching the blouse, but what will make the work interactive is when viewers will be encouraged to throw digital prints of blouses on to the tree installation as if creating a wish tree of their own.
Next to the video is one of the most intriguing works of the artist. Titled Botanic monomania, this is a collection of nine junk computer monitors whose top has been severed to sprout money plants. “These plants have grown to full height in the last five months since the project was initiated. It forces us to think about recycling the non-biodegradable. This work also extends into an illustration and manual of how to make a planter out of junk monitors,” Singh adds.
In the far end of the same room hangs Sharma’s three-dimensional painting titled Chip on the shoulder where a few men ride on horses adorned with intricately painted computer keys and chips. “Galloping into the world of technology seems easy, but it’s a big chip to carry,” chuckles Sharma.
The show-stopper in the project, however, is the eponymous installation that occupies one whole room. This installation is made up of thousands of pieces of computer keyboards and their digital drawings that have been stuck together to entwine the whole room like a serpent. “The work alludes to a movement that is unseen, like that of a ghost, creating patterns with the mind, digging its fangs into the nerves that rule mankind, numbing the senses that question its path. Humanity is in the grip of this serpent getting twisted with each nanosecond,” Singh explains.
The month-long show will be open for public viewing at Mukesh Sharma’s Studio, 105, behind Sector D-2, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi, from July 24 from 11 am to 7 pm