{"id":96726,"date":"2013-02-21T17:58:50","date_gmt":"2013-02-21T12:28:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tehelka.com\/?p=96726"},"modified":"2013-02-21T17:58:50","modified_gmt":"2013-02-21T12:28:50","slug":"death-by-preservation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/death-by-preservation\/","title":{"rendered":"Death by preservation"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"WHoly<\/a>
Holy roller<\/strong> Chromatophobia (2012) by LN Tallur, at Nature Morte, Berlin Photo courtesy:<\/strong> Nature Morte<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nWHY DOES society hold certain things as \u2018valuable\u2019? This is a question LN Tallur asks of those who look at his work. The 41-year-old artist won the \u0160KODA Prize 2012, one of India\u2019s biggest contemporary art prizes for artists under 45 years of age, by questioning the sanctity of the very space where his prize-winning show Quintessential<\/em> was held \u2014 the Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum (BDL) in Mumbai.<\/span>
\n\u201cI see myself as a museum. I try to see where a work comes from, how to see it and how to show it to the audience,\u201d says the artist hailing from Tallur, Karnataka. He also questions why people see what they see in a museum. Take, for example Thatwamasi<\/em> (that thou art). Dust sucked from a vacuum cleaner swirls around in a resplendent case that museums use to preserve artifacts. The dust becomes \u2018art\u2019 simply because of the space it occupies. \u201cIt\u2019s tongue-in- cheek and spoofs the aura an object takes on,\u201d says BDL Museum Director Tasneem Zakaria Mehta, adding, \u201cthe show is an investigation of how museum spaces work.\u201d<\/span>
\n
\"\"<\/a>
Photo:<\/strong> Dijeshwar Singh<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nIt\u2019s not just space. Tallur questions the value assigned to money and to religious symbols in India. As he says, \u201cI want my work to make people think.\u201d To do so, in his 2010 show Chromatophobia: The Fear of Money<\/em> he invited his audience to nail coins into a hollowed out log affixed to bronze statues of Goddess Laxmi (or a laughing Buddha for an exhibition in Berlin). Tallur renders artifacts symbolising cultural history and the worship of wealth, worthless. By engaging the audience he makes them complicit. He appropriates traditional symbolism, tying it to contemporary concerns of empty idol worship and society\u2019s obsession with ritual. \u201cHis low-tech machines destroy idols from popular iconography. His works are tangential to current political debate. But he deals with time and history through a gentle humour, not sharp criticism,\u201d says art writer Girish Shahane.<\/span>
\nTallur has been living in South Korea for nearly a decade with his wife and daughter. He has spent years deliberately globetrotting, starting with a scholarship to study in Leeds having already studied museology in Baroda. Despite the wanderlust he has remained rooted in India. In Veni Vidi Vici<\/em>, the installation on display at the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), New Delhi, he has used Mangalore terracotta tiles, with the legend \u2018Exhibition December 1917: Golden Medal for the Tile Works\u2019 printed on the wall next to it. It harks back to the tile factories set up by Basel missionaries, nearly 200 years ago in Mangalore, to employ Christian converts. These competed with each other for the best product, not unlike Indian artists competing with each other for the \u0160KODA Prize. He cheekily calls his win history repeating itself.<\/span>
\nTallur\u2019s content makes an impact because of his proficiency with form. The artist Dilip Ranade, his mentor from the erstwhile Prince of Wales Museum, Mumbai, says, \u201cHe knows how to manipulate materials to create shock, fear and uneasiness. His form becomes his metaphor.\u201d For instance, Panic room<\/em> (2006) is an enclosure made of inflatable sacks that swell up and enclose one in a claustrophobic space. Eraser Pro<\/em> (2011), a bronze Gandhi statue, has been polished till it\u2019s weathered. Polishing is used to make things look better. Yet, in their desperate attempts to regain the sheen, people often forget what\u2019s underneath the surface. \u201cPeople forget what Gandhi stood for and appropriate him for various agendas,\u201d says Mehta. Tallur\u2019s human figures are in states of disintegration \u2014 the original thought is warped beyond recognition.<\/span>
\nAll is not shock and horror. Tallur gives his work grandeur and lushness that comes from his interest in traditional craftsmanship. As Nature Morte curator, Peter Nagy says, \u201cThe way he fuses wood with iron and bronze produces sexy, luscious pieces.\u201d Tallur breaks the sacred space of art, with its no touching rule. Sight, smell, hearing and touch, all engage the viewer.<\/span>
\nTallur\u2019s works are currently on display at the NGMA, New Delhi<\/span><\/em>
\naradhna@tehelka.com<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Artist LN Tallur subverts the stifling seriousness of the museum by treating objects we revere with humour and irony <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73,"featured_media":96747,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[21],"tags":[7051,5933,5993,7558,7559,7206,7560,7561,7562,7563,7564],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96726"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/73"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96726\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}