MONOTONIC SYMPHONIES

I had always used painting as my choice of mode of artistic expression. It was always my comfortable medium, but recently, for the first time in LASALLE, I took up performance as a medium to convey my thoughts.

Initially I never thought of incorporating performance in my artwork, it was only when I came across the performance artist, Tony Orrico using the limits of his body when drawing life-size figures that I thought it would be a good idea to perform. I was looking at the themes of restriction, where how I felt restricted as an artist coming from India, where other professions are given much higher value than artists. This was the time I was considering the impact of being bound by the laws of the Indian society, and it was the time I chose performance as a medium in which I can engage these ideas. 

For the performance, I planned to ‘cage’ myself in an open space and to leave traces of my steps as I walk around that space. To prepare for this I covered the floor and walls with white A3-size sheets. I began the performance by covering myself in charcoal powder and then slowly walking over the sheets. Marking my traces, I sat on the floor, walked and smudged charcoal all over using my body to make the prints. The whole idea was to capture myself both mentally and physically in an open space, and to capture my traces, so that even after the completion of the performance one could see human traces in that space. 

Initially I had planned on finishing the performance in about thirty minutes but it went on for an hour and a half hour. It struck me how completely engaged I had become while acting out a piece. 

The scariest moment for me would have to be at the beginning when I started putting charcoal on myself and start walking semi-naked in front of the audience. Initially I was not even sure if I could perform it for 30 minutes. Everyone staring at me made me extremely nervous. I was not sure of my body, hence the first 20 minutes was just my being very conscious but as time passed, I felt something else. I felt numb. Suddenly all the staring did not faze or trouble me. Suddenly, I was sure about what I am doing, I could see everyone but could not hear a thing. It was as if I am in my own space, my own world, completely zoned out, simply performing the piece, overlapping the traces. And finally I had captured myself mentally in that space, where nothing else mattered. Performance made me realise how, in life, it is important to numb a few things out – how we should go on in life, how to mentally envision your inner self. It made me so confident that despite everyone looking or even when no one was there, I continued doing what I wanted, continued it without any fear.

In my opinion, art is something that we do for ourselves and not for others, and performance was something that made me realise that. It helped me overcome my fear, fear of what people will say and think. It was a great experience for me and I feel the personal touch that is sometimes left out in paintings can be easily filled with performance art.

Images courtesy of Arora Aryan