My post is on the first question of interest listed on the blog” How do you see your identity as an artist? How do you (if you do) reconcile the politics of the public versus the personal, the fragile areas of practices? How do you as an artist investigate the intimate personal histories that need retelling?”
Identity is a term which sometimes confuses me, am I an artist? I yet don’t know. Sometimes I feel I am an artist, sometimes I feel I am nothing. I am learning drawing &paintings from my childhood but I was never that serious about any art, at that time I learned musical instruments and many other things but nothing properly. I was never serious about anything, until 2nd year of my college.
Language is one of my problems from childhood, my mother tongue is Bengali, but I never read Bengali properly because in my school there was no Bengali, only Hindi and English was there.I didn’t like to read that was my problem and hence I ended up becoming very poor in English and as well as Hindi. I somehow can't get words and phrases etc. Together I am not good at that . after I got admission in art college that time also I wasn’t serious, about art. but somehow because of one good teacher I started getting interests because before that art for me was just a curriculum which was one of my hobbies , but when I learnt that it is not only a curriculum activity it is a language like English, Hindi etc . it gave me interest I started seeing paintings , attended classes on history of art , slowly slowly art became a language to me to communicate with myself and I started expressing whatever I wanted to it gave me a confidence somehow . I am a person who lacks motivation and confidence. Because sometimes what I do I just do intuitively without knowing, and I find pretty confusing whether it is something or not.
I never had any interest in politics or whatever related to that is happening outside because I don’t know I don’t find that directly related to me. I am not against anything but I think politics is everywhere in a family, with friends and we all are connected with that and that is more direct to me which I have to deal with. I don’t read the newspaper I don’t know why but I don’t like, I somehow find newspaper boring and a lot of hard work to read, I see images in newspapers. My general knowledge is very bad. But I find experiencing something rather than just knowing it is essential.Thanks to the internet I can read what I like, for me like to see videos rather than reading. reading is really a good habit but I don’t find it interesting, but now I am reading &writing a bit. because there are certain things I feel can only be expressed bt writing. I write in my diary. but more than writing I think my drawings, photos, videos, somehow works as a diary for me. these are two of my works I did recently, the medium is mixed media, digital print on paper.
I enjoy what I do. medium is sometimes very important to me sometimes it is not. I do paintings, photographs, videos, GIFs, etc. I don’t think much while working I play. I love accidents, I feel accidents are really important. I m trying to know more about myself, art helps me in that someday I might know myself. I always like to question the way I look things, are there more ways of looking? I think there is, and sometimes I look things differently through different mediums.
I am writing blog for the first time I don’t know how to write, I tried. I am up for any conversations and I want to know & learn from u all.
Souvik, I’m really happy to read you and see your works. I’m writing about your first post and this, the second one, in one comment. First, it’s so big issue that even the COLORS are divided into two GENDERS. Doesn’t make any sense. So, with your works, you are breaking all the stereotypes, in one easy and spontaneous way. And looks great!
I’m using also these colored-stereotypes in a different context, with a lot of sarcasm inside, where, the PINK color it’s still girlish and it’s all over my installation who are telling more about what woman identity ‘should look like’. (You can found more photos from my installation here: http://runevska.portfoliobox.net/pinkghetto)
And, also, I totally agree with you about your first sentence: “Identity is a term which sometimes confuses me, am I an artist? I yet don’t know. Sometimes I feel I am an artist, sometimes I feel I am nothing.” Because identity is not just about my profession, it’s not just about my gender or sexuality, or which color I will choose… Maybe every day I will choose a different color? Who knows…
Hey thankyou for the response , and yes i agree with you i think identity changes , and it is not a constant thing , it changes with the way we live or adopt things , according to me . About breaking stereotypes ,honestly i came to know this term in this blog page after readong others post what is stereotypesi didnt know before , and for me i had this thinking about colour division , pink as a girls colour , and somehow i realised because of my practice and it helped me . For me because of my practice i am knowing my self and breaking my thinking ,knowing new things and challengingmy way of thinking . There are two things always play parallely one is the thinking which my family ,friends ,society etc introduced to me and other is my way of thinking based on the life i lead , the work i do the films i see ,the things i read so sometimes it clashses , and then the questions arives , . And it is a very interesting yet confusing .
I will look into the link you sent , thankyou 🙂
I dont know why the gif is not working .
Souvik, we are sorry about the gifs not working. Unfortunately it would require too much work to add that feature to the blog. Apologies from the Emergent Art Space team.
I havent seen “the tree of fluids” before thankyou for the info. I am very inspired by egon shiele and gustav klimt also , yes i am struggling to finding a self expression , i want to see egon shieles works originally you are very lucky to see. I like tracy emin too . Thankyou for those articles . This is one of my work. I did it month back .
I find gif is avery intresting medium which has many possibilities and i like to work on gifs.
my works are mostly based on my old memories, emotions, obsessions, issues related to my body complexes, sexuality is an area which also interests me a lot, I have a lot of questions about my sexuality and my preferences. It is confusing and yet interesting area of practice for me. When I work with my memories somehow I find I am traveling through time, I am recreating a moment ,a space which is not a replica of that time, there are certain things which I find I missed that time, I can add those I can manipulate in the images. there are many things I didn’t have the guts to say to different person sometimes in my drawing I do say . and it gives me a satisfaction. a drawing series is there , I did 2 months back.
The first work reminds me somewhat of a work by Jean Debuffet ‘The tree of fluids’ I saw in Liverpool last year http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/dubuffet-the-tree-of-fluids-t07110 and the others are a little reminiscent of Egon Schiele in the way they are quite overtly sexual. This is a good article about the exhibition of his work with Tracy Emin’s it also talks about the emotion behind the works. http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/tracey-emin-egon-schiele-ndash-where-i-want-to-go-review-leopold-museum-vienna Although you say you lack confidence speaking the works speak to me as someone who is trying to find expression and show their true self through other means. This is something I have explored in my art before the struggle between the strong desire to hide and the knowledge that I had to show myself and be seen.