Numbed: Art of Bandu Manamperi
17 October to 9 November 2009 at Red Dot Gallery.
Bandu
Manamperi’s first art approach entered the society with the Made in IAS
exhibition. That was with his powerful work “Instant Nirvana Private Limited”.
This work received international and local attention. Organized under Jagath Weerasinghe’s
curatorial intervention, Made in IAS showcased the art reflecting the discourse
of 90s Trend.
After the Made
in IAS exhibition, Bandu’s art manifested as performances. Performance art emerged
within the art practices supported by the 90s Trend. Being one of the
initiators of performance art in Sri Lanka, Bandu Manamperi remains as one of the leading performance
artists active at present. As a performance artist, Bandu Manamperi explores
three themes. One is to highlight
critically the oppressive cultural believes or practices forced upon woman that
continuously prevailing in the male-centric society looking at the whole issue
through a humane position. Another is to present through sensitive performances
the individual’s pain in a war ridden society and its extreme anxieties. The
other is to interrogate critically, the extreme religious interventions and blatantly extremist
behavior of the state through political and sometimes witty performances.
This time,
through the visual art exhibition at the Theertha Red Dot Gallery, Bandu Manamperi engages in finer
and deeper socio political issues. The visual motifs that Bandu suggests for
this process are of three types in their basic appearance. The fist type is a visual-form
that shows an expression ‘instantly frozen’ made from a mold taken from his
body. This form is covered with different textured surfaces and hung at an elevated
position from the floor. The second type of form is more flexible, similar to a
skin without any texture. This can be suggested as the primary form that exists
before putting on different textured surfaces as coverings. It is presented in
the gallery space as limp form. The third type of visual form that Bandu
presents in the exhibition is his own performance. Bandu’s attempt through this
exhibition is to say that the individual in a society ware different cultural/
political coverings as protective membrane over one’s own natural covering, the
biological skin while finding comfort
and security within it. That is, the individual would put different coverings
representing extremists and obsessive positions reflective of religion,
history, nature, patriotism, self absorption, independence and media. This is
done in relation to or in supportive of the relevant cultural and political
environments. Bandu suggests, that such
tendencies in this complex political, cultural religious moment has restricted
each other’s integrity and ideologies.
These
socio-cultural currents are influenced
and dominated by a powerful political dialogue. This can be explored and
elaborated further. That is that the first cultural covering is politically
more innocent. The subsequent coverings tend
to be more political, and therefore not so innocent. Bandu articulates that in subtle
political moments, all those social phenomena are experiencing a morbid
relaxation, uncritically and in an exonerative manner. In other words Bandu suggests
that all these social phenomena have succumbed to the common denominator, the
total state sponsored ideological discourse.
The current
exhibition shows a direct connection to Bandu’s
earlier works. In his earlier work Bandu
, primarily a performance artist has used his own body as the artistic form and
built different textures on its surface. In this exhibition, Bandu uses his
body as well as textured surfaces and works toward a singular objective.
Prasanna Ranabahu
13 October 2009
13 October 2009
Translated by Lalith Manage
In Pictures: “Numbed”, Exhibition
on sculpture by Bandu Manamperi
by Dushiyanthini
Kanagasabapathipillai
“Art is a fruit that grows in
man, like a fruit on a plant, or a child in its mother’s womb ~ Jean Arp or
Hans Arp-German/ French Sculptor . (September 16th 1886-, 1886 –June 7th 1966)
“Numbed” –Exhibition on sculpture
by Bandu Manamperi’s exhibition of sculptures is currently being held at the
Theertha Red Dot Gallery in Pitakotte. The exhibition began on October 17th
2009, and it will end on November 9th 2009. The Theertha Red Dot Gallery is a
contemporary-artist- run gallery, and first of its kind in Sri Lanka.
A series of exhibitions are lined
up for Theertha Exhibition Season. Seven sculptures are displayed- named “Skin”
and “Numbed”. They are elevated from the ground level, hung by the top of the
heads with steel rods; the figures look frozen and rigid. He has used rubber
and fibre to depict various situations of mankind. Bandu Manamperi uses variety
of techniques to explain his thoughts.
He is a founding member of the
Theertha International Association, a visual artists group based in Colombo,
Sri Lanka. He has participated in several exhibitions held in Sri Lanka and
abroad. His exhibition is absolutely an unusual experience in the Sri Lankan
contemporary art scene.
The Context
Left: Artists Bandu Manamperi and G. R. Constantine in a performance during exhibition opening.
If Langer was talking of a situation in which pain and suffering in far away places
Lost in The Maze by Sasanka
Perera
(Sasanka Perera, a professor of Anthropology
at Dept. of Sociology, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka)
Left: Gallery view of the exhibtiion 'Maze' by Bandu Manamperi and G.R. Constantine held at the Lionel Wendt Gallery, Colombo, Sri Lanka.
Left: Gallery view of the exhibtiion 'Maze' by Bandu Manamperi and G.R. Constantine held at the Lionel Wendt Gallery, Colombo, Sri Lanka.
November
2006.
The Context
What came to my mind when I saw ‘The Maze’ during its opening night were
the
opening words in Lawrence Langer’s 1996 essay, ‘The Alarmed Vision:
Social
Suffering and Holocaust Atrocity.’ Even though talking of another
context,
Langer’s central concerns are also central to the foundational ideas of
‘The
Maze.’ Langer noted that “until we find a way of toppling the barrier
that
sequesters mass suffering in other regions of the world from the comfort
and
safety we enjoy far from its ravages, little will be done to rouse the
attention of
our political or professional leaders, to say nothing of our own.
Domestic calm
encourages distancing from foreign pain.” The relevance of Langer’s
words
would become apparent when we pay attention to the ideas and local
experiences that gave genesis to the ‘The Maze.’ ‘The Maze’ is a
collaborative
performance art and installation art project by Bandu Manamperi and G.R.
Constantine that was hosted by the Theertha International Artists’
Collective at
the Lionel Wendt Art Gallery from 2 nd to the 5 th November 2006. Writing the
conceptual clarification upon which the basic premises of ‘The Maze’ was
based,
Anoli Perera made the following observations in the catalogue produced
to mark
the event:
“Ours is an anesthetized society. We
are oblivious to the other’s pain.
We have lost our capabilities of
either empathizing or sympathizing.
The weapons of “mass instruction”
give us the view of a distant theater.
Our living rooms become the safe
pavilions for watching far away wars
and killings. We are the cheering
spectators.
We have found psychological
mechanisms to justify our collective
amnesias and have anesthetized
ourselves to block out traumatic
experiences of the society.
Once we are in this world of
decadence, we lose all rationality where
priorities get misplaced and extreme
emotions govern the order of the
day.
This is the maze we have entered
into” (Theertha
2006).
Left: Artists Bandu Manamperi and G. R. Constantine in a performance during exhibition opening.
Right: audiance attaching flowers to installation as a participatory
activity.
If Langer was talking of a situation in which pain and suffering in far away places
were not perceived in the comfort zones of the West, ‘The Maze’ was
referring to
similar situations of loss, destruction, pain, chaos and collective
amnesia in our
own context. As this review progresses it would be self-evident that
Langer’s
critique is not structurally any different from the critique of the two
Sri Lankan
artists. Manamperi’s and Constantine’s visual narrative is not merely an
unusual art project in the Sri Lankan context but also a powerful
critique of the
social and political currents in our midst at the moment, which has also
been an
uncomfortable aspect of our reality for a considerable period in the
recent past.
This is why a review of ‘The Maze’ has to be located within the
wider context of
contemporary Sri Lankan politics. Both artists are amply qualified to
comment on
the issues of destructive politics and their consequences that they have
opted to
comment on. One has been very familiar with the politics of loss and
destruction
in the North while the other had similar experiences from the South. For
both
artists, what they were commenting upon through their art was a part of
their
lived reality from the past that they were also seeing in the present.
Both
represented the contemporary visual art trend now known as the Art of
the
1990s , which as a movement has a serious
preoccupation with the politics of
violence in their art. On the other hand, both are among the handful of
wellknown
‘performance artists’ currently in the country who identify themselves
as
such. Performance art, which has not captured much imagination and
attention in
Sri Lanka, is essentially a process of art where visual artists such as
painters opt
to use performance as their main method of art-making while often making
the
body itself and its movements as the object of art. Installation art on
the other
hand, is more commonly seen in contemporary art events in Colombo. It
combines different elements that sometimes include paintings and
sculpture to
formulate and construct a site-specific artwork that would often cease
to exist at
the end of the exhibition period.
In this sense, ‘The Maze’ actively combined a very visible installation
and a
staged performance by the two artists. It was exhibited at a time when
the issues
it beacons us to ponder over have become central issues in our society
while the
kind of amnesia that it attempts to critique are also clearly at work.
Structure of ‘The Maze’
‘The Maze’ as a work of art constitutes of a number of elements: the
central
attraction is an area, a veritable comfort zone of a living room with
luxurious
leather sofas and chairs, a coffee table stacked with newspapers and
television
screens flashing ‘news’ from around the world. Encapsulating this area
almost as
a cocoon is a somewhat surreal domain filled with life-size mannequins
and body
parts with medicated bandages covering most parts of the bodies. Large
reams
of surgical gauze stretched from one injured body to another and from
one
injured limbo to another, making an intertwined, hospital-like, sedate,
scary and
surreal socio-scape. This is the maze. Exterior to this installation, a
stereo was
blaring out the sounds by now very familiar to this kind of socio-scape
where the
end results are death, injury and destruction: police and ambulance
sirens,
machine gun fire and racing vehicles. As the main component of the
staged
performance itself, mingling among the crowd, G.R Constantine was offering
artificial red rose buds to visitors making a request to pin them on any
of the
curtain-like pieces of gauze they could reach. Deconstructing the
notions of
superficial and commercialized love that red rose buds are nowadays
supposed
to indicate in this area of globalized velentinism, these rose buds were
supposed
to symbolize the many dead and injured in the Sri Lankan civil chaos.
While
some did what was excepted of them, may opted to take the artificial
rose buds
home perhaps to be used as a memento of the exhibit or more likely as
yet
another dust collector in the standard middle class living room cabinet.
At the
same time, Bandu Manamperi was selling the sounds of our times already
being
played in the background recorded on CD for Rs. 100.00 apiece, perhaps
indicting the monitory value of death, destruction and uncertainty. Both
artists
had their hands wrapped in ‘benzoin’-doused gauze and bandage.
On the one hand, the artists were interested in commenting on the death
and
destruction amidst ourselves. On the other hand and more importantly,
they
were also commenting on how fast these issues become mere distant
realities
for those people not immediately touched by this chaos. It was not too
long ago
that the battle for Sampur and Mavil Aru and the early spectacular
military
successes in the most recent bout of choreographed violence between the
Sri
Lankan armed forces and the LTTE enthralled many individuals who were
glued
to their television sets as if they were watching a series of war
movies. It is
precisely in this kind of context that television programs bring into
our living
rooms news bulletins, live coverage of events, experts’ commentaries and
interpretations, candle light vigils of professional protestors and so
on that we
can watch in comfort and security while enjoying our evening tea or
scotch as
they case might be. It is that same comfort zone that we too become
military
experts and political pundits making our own trivial opinions that would
make no
difference to the people who are directly at the receiving end of
violence. We
have become cheering spectators of our own destruction not really
fathoming
what is actually going on. That is essentially the crux of the narrative
that the two
artists were narrating. They hoped that the people who entered the
Lionel Wend
Gallery while the exhibit was on going would go into the mock living
room,
browse through newspapers and watch television while being relatively
oblivious
to the sounds and scenes of destruction evident in the overall structure
of the
maze. Some did exactly this. But others had a more attractive
distraction on the
opening night. The wadai, helapa, sandwiches, soft drinks and beer
available to
visitors at one corner of the gallery proved to be a highly successful
attraction in
the context of which the awe of the destruction and the depth of
narrative that the
very vocal exhibit was attempting to narrate was drowned and
marginalized from
the collective vision and perhaps the conscience of the spectators. It
was quite
clear that consumption had the capacity to subvert senses of many of our
citizens. Constantine and Manamperi were hoping this would in fact
happen that
would further prove their point.
In addition, as part of the national security regime currently in place
in the city,
the Police Department on its own accord had mounted its own performance
to
augment the work of the two artists. They were diligently ensuring that
no car
was parked outside the gallery, and in fact hardly allowed individuals
to slow
down their vehicles. When the rain poured down it appeared that the
constables
abandoned their performance indicating perhaps that their script
contained an
MOU between the government and the LTTE that no bombs would be
transported, installed or exploded when it rains. When taken as
performances
however, the impromptu performances of the Police Department and the
hungry
public were more dynamic in making the arguments that the two artists
were
attempting to articulate than the staged performance of the artists
itself.
It almost appeared that rather than a mere commentary on the politics of
our
times, the artwork of Manamperi and Constantine was a scaled down
simulation
of our times, politics, collective stupidity and structural amnesias.
Indeed we are
in a maze where reality is not seen for what it is. In that maze,
television would
always be the purveyor of fabricated news as truth and we would be the
spectators. We were enthralled by the movie serial, ‘Battle for Sampur’
and are
still talking about the latest blockbuster, ‘The Murderer of Raviraj’
without really
knowing who the director might be. In the comfort of our living rooms,
these are
mere flickering moments that do not touch us while we would hardly
ponder to
think about those directly involved, touched and hurt. This evening we
might
watch a protest march on TV against disappearances and killings in the
city. But
we need to go to bed early as we have to go to UK in the morning on the
cut rate
tickets offered by Sri Lankan Airlines. We are indeed in ‘The Maze’ and
would
seldom see any reality other than our own inverted realities.
Published in The Island, 15 th November 2006.