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Mesmerized by the light catching the waves and the foam breaking on the shores of the remote Keri beach in Goa, a young boy gazed out to sea and an artist was born.
For Subodh Kerkar, Nature is both theme and medium for his artwork. He gathers mussel shells and assembles them in the sand to mimic the waves through shape and shadow. He stands fishermen in the sand to form the shape of a boa, uses mirrors to catch the memory of the sunset, and recalls the great Indian poet Rabrindath Tagore: “Waves write their poetry on the sand. Not satisfied, they wipe them away and write them again and again.”
Art As Meditation
Much of Kerkar’s artwork is in the moment. Much like the sand mandalas that Tibetan Buddhists painstakingly create and then almost as soon as they finish, they brush the coloured sand away - their art a process itself – Kerkar’s work is a meditation.
It is a meditation on time. A meditation on the cycles of nature. Moon and the Tides is a beautiful example of this – a perfect circle of shells assembled at the shoreline creating a fat full moon, as the tide comes in the shells slowly go back to the ocean.
These works are ephemeral, but Kerkar does freeze them in photographs. Works like The Fishermen And The Boat (using men to create the form of the boat) and Sea Anemone (using mussel shells and light in the sand) are art installations first and photographs second. Kerkar is an installation artist, who can luckily capture these stunning installations in rich black and white photographs.
Kerkar’s Process
Kerkar started out with simple watercolours, capturing the ocean and the boats. Then he simply painted the elliptical forms that the boats made or the way the light hit the surface of the boat. Then he started collecting the wooden fishing boats themselves, sawing them in half, standing it on end and lighting it from the inside to resemble a wave. Most recently he started using the human form: the fishermen become the boat itself, their arms the oars. Next he wants to play with the human form resembling sea creatures.
“Art installations on the beach attract people who would never step inside a gallery. It opens art to a wider audience,” says Kerkar. He wants to create a sea art festival – Ocean Odyssey, invite other artists and the public to contribute. He can foresee a kilometer of cable hanging along the beach adorned with lamps all designed by the public.
Or using the idea of “wiping your slate clean” sending out a thousand slates and inviting people to write or draw on them. “I want to make people think. I work with nature and generally landscape painting is apolitical. I infuse politics into the landscape.”
Already he has gathered 1,000 school children on the Mandovi Bridge, overlooking Goa’s capital Panjim as they held up banners saying “no to nuclear arms”.
International attention
Inspired by the Tibetan prayer flags “lungta” he wants to hang 1,000 flags along the beach in Karnataka near the largest Tibetan monastery, as it is believed that the wind carries the prayers to be answered. It will be called Oceanic Prayer for the Snow and it will be a prayer for peace in Tibet inspired by a poem by the Dalai Lama. And again everything comes back to the sea, as Dalai Lama means ‘Ocean of Wisdom’.
The first hundred flags will be dipped in bright turquoise dye, the second batch a lighter distillation, the third lighter still, until the last hundred are just white, as Tibetans believe that as the prayer flags fade the prayers are answered.
Kerkar’s works have already been shown in Dubai and he is preparing for a new installation there as well as in Lisbon.
Some of Kerkar’s work captures the imagination, making us rethink our political environment, the cultures that we are a part of, while others offer us passage into a different time and space, an insight into a mystical world – nature reframed through light and shadow to create magical realism. In his work he shows us how every wave is part of the ocean, how we are all a small part of the whole.
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