Broken Cogs in The Machine:  Collectivism and a Witnessing Note of a Propagandist

D-53 Defence Colony now becomes an address of almost a monochromatic world of resistance over an array of injustice, a witnessing note of a communist-propagandist-Anupam Roy (b.1985) who is displaying his last three years’ body of works, culminating as an exhibition titled ‘Broken Cogs in the Machine’. If the contradiction starts with the idea of displaying works in a white-cube gallery space itself, then I want to request the reader to remember the image of the common mass enjoying the swimming pool at the residence of the Sri Lankan president. Why can’t we spread our limbs to the so-called elite spaces, when our roots are grounded in the actual space of resistance? Defence Colony is an affluent neighborhood in the center of South Delhi, developed in the aftermath of historical partition of the subcontinent in 1947. This area was allotted to resettle the serving military officers whose homes lay across the border in Pakistan. Thus, the space itself contains a history of partition, migration, and the politics of owning land, and similarly, one can rethink the very idea of ‘politics of owning land’ from this ongoing exhibition.

The name Anupam Roy sounds like an individual entity but his body of work generates or belongs to the very act of collectivism or partisan-comradeship, which he also proclaims in each and every public intervention. Anupam was born in Silchar, Assam. His memory of childhood is a memory of migration, traversing from Assam, Ladakh and Bihar to West Bengal, as his father was a technician with the Indian Armed Forces. Finally, the family settled in Ashok Nagar, Habra, a semi-urban space of West Bengal, very close to the border with Bangladesh. After completing his formal training in painting at the Bengal Fine Arts College in Chandpara in 2008, he became a fervent propagandist of the CPI(ML) Liberation, and started making posters for its different mass organizations such as the All India Students’ Association (AISA), Revolutionary Youth Association (RYA) and All India Central Council of Trade Unions (AICCTU). Since then, he has traveled to various parts of India and engaged himself with different movements and resistances. From 2008 to 2016, Anupam and other artist comrades – Pronobes, Tumpa, Kallol, Ritika, Vishakha and many others – painted and pasted the famous monumental posters against the corporate and fascist regime on the walls of Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. Not only at JNU, he worked at different other University campuses such as Jadavpur University, Lucknow University and Banaras Hindu University. For a short span, he also founded an artist forum called ‘Liberation Art’. Due to these grassroot engagements with various activists, artists, writers and students from different disciplines, the show has a footfall of different common masses apart from elite art lovers. Anupam completed his two consecutive masters’ degrees in Visual Art, the first from Ambedkar University, Delhi in 2016 and the second from the De Montfort University, Leicester, UK in 2020 as a Charles Wallace Scholar. He was also awarded the FICA (Foundation of Indian Contemporary Art) Emerging Artist Award in 2018, and the ongoing show at Vadehra Gallery is a part of this award. 

While entering into the monochromatic three-dimensional world of black ink and white paper with a glimpse of three colors – red, blue, and green – on the left side wall of the first gallery, one can understand the fast but meticulous way of making propaganda paintings. The affinity to the minimal colors is not just an aesthetical choice rather a political subject of material consciousness. While considering the economy of colour, Anupam also explores his artistic endeavors with various scales from long paper scrolls to the page of small diaries, and also plays with different media such as oil on canvas, watercolor on handmade paper and printed copies, ink on cloth, ink on corrugated sheet, marker on printed paper, pen and ink on printed books, sculpture with wood, m-seal and wiggle eyes and a performative animated video.       

The long scroll on the first right-side wall, composing a band of a headless drummer, sweeper, farmer, fisher, and other working figures, delving into a wet vegetational land reveals a non-narrational history of his homeland. Multiple background strokes assimilate the figures, and thus create an obscure imagery as a symbol of ‘inarticulateness’, a very basic question of ‘representational impossibility’ for a propagandist. How one can witness a holistic history of a landscape? The ‘inarticulateness’ not only exemplifies the question of ‘representation’ or ‘witnessing history’, but also verbalizes a question of ‘land’ and its ‘ownership’. This transforms into different complexities and underpins the entire exhibition as a specter of ‘guard’, which he terms ‘Land-garde’ for some instance or the ‘broken cogs’ of this machinic Leviathan as described in the curatorial note of the exhibition, written by Sandip. K. Luis and Shivangi Mariam Raj. In his argument for continuous change of political subjectivity, ‘Land-garde’ is a revolutionary class, akin to the Leninian conception of the vanguard in this contemporary climate of neo-liberal global capitalism and its nexus with fascism. In this continuous historical change of political subjectivity, the very idea of ‘Land-garde’ is not limited to the anthropological periphery, rather it transgresses to the realm of ecological questions around land which is clearly evident in the imagery of an endangered reptile, trying to guard the constitution while peeping from a red blooming flora at the foreground whereas a ‘bulldozer of development’ is in an incessant operation at the far background. The persistent movement of the ‘Land-garde’ covers the ceiling of the first gallery, thus creating a monument of resistance against agony and injustice launched by tormented bodies and organs.  

The existence of the ‘Land-garde’ is as precarious as the question of ‘encroachment’. Who encroaches on whose land? Some landless laborers from the villages of India encroach on the municipality-owned space of Delhi or the Capitalism-induced modernity encroached on the space of trees, animals, and species? Thus, in Anupam’s oeuvre the ‘bulldozer of development’ runs over to the yellow helmeted birds, sometimes transforming into the ‘bulldozer of fascism’, deliberately targeting the bulging faces and skulls which could be the minority or any other precariat of our society.

Just opposite the gigantic bulldozer image and in contrast to violence and resistance, there is a hilly monochromatic landscape with a frozen sense of a crime in a mining site painted with acrylic on the tarpaulin sheet describing the departure of a certain historical moment where a couple is leaving their land, carrying sacks on their head and perhaps going towards the megacities like Delhi where the bulldozer is waiting for them. The painting reminds me of the famous sculpture ‘Mill Call’ by Ramkinkar Baij, here also the lady is stepping forward but at the same time looking backward to their village, creating memories and referring to history, whereas the man is looking forward towards the future.

Within the variety of materials and mediums, the industrially produced wiggle eye of different sizes is one of the most significant objects that Anupam has used in his various enunciations. Starting from the white-on-white oil painting where a small wiggle eye is sleeping on an empty hospital bed, one can think of the idea of witnessing the horror of Covid, the shortage of hospital beds, the next painting depicts a tormented open trunk with several wiggle eyes spreading here and there, perhaps a propagandist’s attempt to the question of ‘presence of witness’ in communal violence. In this era of the mobile camera, the question of ‘witnessing violence’ is in a state of dilemma where the eye of the camera itself became a weapon for spreading hatred. Then, what is the role of a painter-propagandist in this digital age? Is the presence in each place of violence necessary to be a propagandist? How can one understand and depict the distance? What could be the possible ways of representing violence, injustice, and struggle when one is claiming himself as a ‘propagator of truth’? These questions haunt the mind of the artist while brushing a single stroke on any surface. It is clearly manifested when one finds the watercolor images of burnt factories of Delhi, painted on an opaque photoprint on handmade paper and displayed on the surface of the gallery, an attempt to showcase the process of witnessing from a distance and with solidarity.

The wiggle eye travels to the next room of the gallery, consciously scattered on the large white scroll and three other paintings on the handmade papers where a series of moving legs also contain a few eyes. Placing the most precious sensory organ on the legs is possibly an attempt to break the hierarchy of body parts, as described in ‘Manusmriti’. Using industrially manufactured eyes is not a new stance in the art industry but consciously scattering the same object into different contexts in different paintings is a radical artistic proposition in response to making a singular spectacular object out of industrial products by other artists. 

Poetry, quotes, slogans, and texts are some conceivable parts of Anupam’s practice, developed from the longstanding proliferation of political posters and banners, repetitively juxtaposed with the visual entries in his diaries. In the history of art and literature, the diary is considered an intimate space for a creative mind, and the art industry always unravels it in a way that creates the aura of an artist and celebrates individualism. While arguing ‘Personal is Political’, the displayed diaries are some notable examples of collaborative personal practice, where all the contributors can claim their authorships, and diminishes the idea of individualism, possibly proposing an alternative question ‘Is political personal’? Thus, all the solid form of collectivism that he developed in his practices now melts into the air of the Vadehra Gallery and resonates as morbid symptoms, sometimes echoing slogans like “Men are mortal. So are ideas. An idea needs propagation as much as a plant needs watering. Otherwise, both will wither and die” ... B.R Ambedkar.