INTERVIEW: ArtworldNow talks to Mithu Sen
By Tehezeeb Moitra
Intimate, sexual,
intensely personal and yet wildly universal at the same time, there is
something unrestrained in the quality of the work of Mithu Sen (b. West Bengal,
India, 1971).
This exceptionally talented Delhi-based artist creates an intricate tapestry of complicated narratives
that make use of drawing, painting and collage for expression. Sen’s impressive
résumé includes a vast array of international shows, residencies and awards. Her work 'I am a Poet' is showing at Tate Modern in London until 3 November, 2013.
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| Mithu Sen, You taste like pao bhaiji, 2009 Mixed media on handmade acid free paper. 28 x 40 in. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris |
One of the
most intriguing things about your work is that it unapologetically penetrates
into those intimate spaces of the psyche with a kind of pounding viscerality
that at times borders on the Bakhtinian sense of the grotesque. Yet,
somehow your creations are incredibly elegant and almost delicate in nature.
What inspires such a juxtaposition and what provokes you
to engage with your subject matter?
I have always tried to give a voice to the
marginal that resides in each one of us and also the marginal that exists around
us. I am constantly dealing with taboo aspects of human ‘culture’. Sex and
death have been two of my many interests so by bringing out on canvas that
which is always kept behind walls of propriety or proper behaviour I like to
make my audience confront these taboos.
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| Mithu Sen, installation view of Drawing Room, 2006 Courtesy of the artist and Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai |
In one of my shows, Drawing Room (2006), I had literally brought out sexual taboos into
the gallery space re-created into a drawing room where usually the private is
never brought out into the public! There were paintings decorating this hall
that swelled with bodily sexual innuendoes - tongues, a penis, hair, cut-out
pictures of women were all part of this yet there was a morbid quality to it
which gave this playfulness its shadows. I also try to turn the ‘familiar’ into
the grotesque. I don’t really care if it is the sexuality in my works that
interests the audience - for me sexuality is the means to enter the self, the
psyche.
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| Mithu Sen, Untitled, 2006 Mixed media on paper. 11 x 15 in. Exhibition: Drawing Room. Courtesy of the artist and Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai |
In earlier
projects you have used human hair as well as blood, both of which are
significantly from your own body, as primary materials in your work. The use of
hair makes me almost automatically think of Julia Kristeva’s theory on the abject.
Do you see the use of hair as disrupting the viewer’s (or your own)
understanding of the boundaries between subject and object? Or very simply put:
why hair?
By using hair and also my own blood I
tried to add a dimension of organicity to the overall materiality of my work.
Both hair and blood are parts of the human body. They are common to all
irrespective of racial, regional, gender, class or caste-based differences so
by using them as material I intended to make a statement about the universality
of human existence. It has been my response to all sorts of inequalities that
exist around us.
The use of hair also has another side to
it. Hair is like ‘unbelongings’ (this was also a name of one of my shows), they
are part of our identity as long as they are part our body. As soon as they
fall, they belong to no one so by using the fallen hair as material in my work,
I was reclaiming those ‘unbelongings’ which may belong to anyone!
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| Mithu Sen, From the series Unbelongings, 2006 Human hair sculptures, five boxes of varying size, lights, stools and video Courtesy of the artist and The Guild Art Gallery, Mumbai. |
A
lot of your work is highly eroticised and has often been interpreted as dealing
with issues that are primarily feminist in nature. Would you agree with this?
Also, how do you contextualise the role of female sexuality in your practice?
My works are
highly eroticised. Some have found them even uncomfortably sexual possibly
because I try to draw sexuality from both living and inanimate objects. I don’t
deny the sexual overtones in my works but I do object to people dealing with
only their surface value and overlooking the sensitivity and political acumen
invested in my art practice. Many of my works deal with femininity, eroticism
and interiority in that sense.
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| Mithu Sen, To have and to hold, 2002 Painting and drawing on embossed handmade paper. 30 x 22 in. Exhibition: I hate Pink. Courtesy of the artist and Lakeeren Gallery, Mumbai |
As mentioned
earlier, sexuality for me is a way to enter the psyche - be it male or female
sexuality. I’d rather like to conceive the body with an androgynous
identity, where what is feminine and what is masculine is confined to the realm
of ideology so I insist on being looked at not as a
‘feminist’ but as a ‘post-feminist’.
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| Mithu Sen, detail of Untitled, 2012 Mixed media on custom made, handmade acid free paper, plexiglass plate engraved. 41 x 29.5 in. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris |
For me, it is important to craft one’s own feminism. What one wants to create/claim need to be related to something specific of womanhood. I ask, who exactly is a ‘woman’? Feminism is not to have a set of theories; individually everyone is a feminist. To have full freedom is feminism. One can be feminist by one’s own personal relationships in order to have one’s own dignity and one’s own power. It does not have to put anybody down and it’s certainly not against men!
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| Mithu Sen, I Cunt Imagine, 2010 Graffiti, 60 x 96 in. Courtesy of the artist and Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai |
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| Mithu Sen, Banana Couple, 2006 Dental polymer, artificial teeth, glue and thread, 10 x 3 x 6 in. Courtesy of the artist and Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai |
You won the
very prestigious and highly coveted Skoda Prize for Contemporary Art in 2010.
Can you discuss your prize-winning series Black
Candy, which in many way changes the focus of the gaze from the female and
onto the male subject.
The drawings are viewed as an extension
of audio and text – a trans-disciplinary gaze. The Black Candy series is like repackaging and auto-critiquing my own
art practice viewed inside a box, creating a more intimate space and asking
people to experience each piece by touching, smelling, tasting, listening and
viewing them. I am aiming for the viewer to be a participant - to act/play
and hence become responsible for their act of gaze/voyeurism. This show was an
attempt to explore the idea of chaos through different human senses as a
metaphorical and eternal collage of life.
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| Mithu Sen (from left to right) Place the spine on the blade / There is No Hero No Victim / Beheaded after Prostate Surgery, 2010 Mixed media on custom made acid free handmade paper, 83 x 42 in (each) Courtesy of the artist and Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai |
As I was saying earlier, I always try to
define the human body in terms of an androgynous identity in my works so both
female and male subjects are looked at with empathy and sensitivity. I would
not like to look at men with a scrutinising or demeaning gaze but I would like
to bring out the vulnerability to which men are subjected with the stereotypes
in which the male body is bound usually. My series Black Candy did precisely that. Also, the full name of the series was
Black Candy - iforgotmypenisathome, which
added another layer of androgyny to it.
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| (l to r) Handle with care but do handle / Twist your Pelvis, Scratch where it Itches / RIP another stomach, Another time, 2009 Mixed media on custom made acid free handmade paper, 83 x 42 in (each) Courtesy of the artist and Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai |
In that series, I painted a pregnant man, also a man with a flower-chest. I also painted men in very close proximity of each other, seeking love and comfort, in tears. I tried to bring that side of men which is denied to them on the pretext of this ‘ideal’ notion of machismo. It is certainly pro-homosexuality but I’d like to open up this idea that how even a heterosexual man could also exhibit tenderness of character.
Your work
seems to focus a great deal on identity and your interaction and understanding
of the self - yourself - in the context of society. Do you
have a favourite piece of work that reflects this connection?
I am constantly interacting with my
surroundings, my audience through my works. My works also capture/reflect my
response to this interaction with society. Against this interaction, I place my
‘self’ and my identity so I am not only looking at myself as a woman but also
as a post-colonial artist in a globalised world and also as a migrant from a
small town in Bengal living in a metropolitan city like Delhi. By using
different mediums of expression like drawing, sculpture, video and sound
installations, I try to come to terms with the matrix of my identity vis-à-vis
the world around me so be it the narcissistic presence of my image literally in
Half Full or my physical absence from the show’s opening of It’s Good to be Queen, I try to understand myself in this keen
play.
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| Mithu Sen, Half Full, 2007 Photocollage on archival paper, 24 x 17 in. Courtesy of the artist and Bose Pacia Gallery, New York |
Language has also been an important part
of this self-exploration. Coming from a Bengali background into a city where I
was forced to marginalise one language in order to communicate in a more
socially accepted language – English –
I had to find my own ways of reconciling with the world. Obviously, over
the years my approach has grown and evolved. It began with the exploration of
lingual symbols in No Star, No Land…
and it has transformed into a need to find an non-syntactic language that is
driven by emotion and not by ideology or grammar.
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| Mithu Sen, No star, no land, no word, no commitment, 2004 Installation view. Artificial hair on wall. 72 x 240 x 24 in. Courtesy of the artist and Art Omi, New York |
Free Mithu: Summer Dhamaka was a project where you exchanged your original works
for letters of love and affection. This sort of altruism is almost unheard of
in the art world. Can you tell us about this project?
I have this playful relationship with the
market that I love to mock every now and then. Every artist, at one level or
another, is confronted with this conflict between the market and creative
expression. I try to reconcile them through my playfulness. Free Mithu was one such way.
While supported by many artists and others, the Free Mithu project was launched in early
2007 as an approach to devalue the cooked art market prices. I invited people
to send me a letter with love to challenge and critique the conventions of
art world exchange and over the years, various forms of ‘letters’ have been
received from a wide range of participants across the world.
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| Mithu Sen, Display of the Free Mithu works wrapped in pillow cover bags to be given to those who send 'letters of love' to the artist. Courtesy of the artist and KHOJ International Artists' Association, New Delhi |
Through interactions with these contributors, Free Mithu explores the fragile notions
of sincerity, generosity and gift-giving and also probes the meaning of this
project for my art practice and a broader contemporary market-driven art culture.
The initial proposal would have indicated a series of
emotional, psychological, conceptual, intellectual and material exchanges and
‘free’ in the sense of being gratuitous or at no value. Instead, the exchanges
between Mithu and her participants already contained everything of worth –
beauty, sincerity, truth, life, love, art, warmth, sweaters and mangoes – each
metaphoric of an individual interaction. This created a conceptual
exchange that might have a different edge from the other types of contributions
and gallery
concerns that the project might devalue my work.
It is a ‘transformative gift’ in which the gift changes its recipient profoundly over time, often in the form of psychological healing or teaching.
As Free Mithu began to take shape as an event, exhibition and performance that went beyond the boundaries of online space, the complexity and overflowing contradictions of the project, which attends to the psychological and emotional depth of performative exhibitions to subvert commercial art market practices Implicitly or unconsciously became apparent.
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| Mithu Sen, Web announcement for the Free Mithu show, inviting people to send a 'love letter' to the artist. Courtesy of the artist |
One of the central
tensions in Free Mithu is between its
public and private lives. The project was online, publicly accessible and
interactive and aspires to art being more available. It encourages new and
young collectors to seek out and live with work that they love and enjoy and is
educational in that and other senses. It is also as private as any art, taking personal relationships and interactions
from intimate exchanges and revealing them in a public sphere.
But there is so much more to this
project! For me it transcended boundaries in the true sense of the word. The
letters came to me in all sorts of ways, from all over the world. Through these
letters I was preserving human touch, frozen in time, yet existing beyond this
temporality.