‘Outside In’ : An ongoing show offers up a study of contrasts
Outside In exhibition at the Museum of Art and Photography (MAP) in Bengaluru is certainly an intriguing one. Mukherjee was 26 years older to Baghel. When she visited his father, Sriman, in Kondagaon in the early 1960s to learn Dhokra metal casting, Jaidev would have been barely adolescent.
While there may be some evidence to suggest that they met, it is unlikely they collaborated or influenced each other during their long careers. The connections are therefore apparent only in their shared metal casting approach using the lost wax method, and the presence of commonfolk in both their sculptures. The most synergistic pairing, in hindsight, is served as soon as one enters the exhibition.
He Who Saw, one of Mukherjee’s early works, is a towering two-metre-high figure. It was inspired by the local deities she saw during her visits to Bastar, and is meant to represent the one who witnessed the creation of the world. Her work is presented alongside Panch Mukhi Vandevi (Five-Headed Forest Goddess), Baghel’s polemic response to the exploitation of the environment in his region, where a glowering five-headed-goddess of the forest foretells the destruction of the world.
Throughout the exhibition, Mukherjee’s firebrand approach shimmers through the dark purple setting of the exhibition. Rain (1980), perhaps the most evocative of her works on show, captures masses huddled against a monsoon downpour. The water fails to pierce and drips down the bodies, its force of nature rendered futile by human solidarity against the lopsided odds.
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