May Diwas, Mazdoor Mela, Bhim, Rajasthan, 2025
Oil on canvas (diptych)
60 x 144 inches / 152.4 x 365.7 cm
Nothing Human Is Alien To Me
Aban Raza
At first, you might mistake the image for a stage. The structural logic of the shamiana —three-sided, made of vividly coloured red, ochre and green canvas, and open on the fourth—creates the illusion of a recessed room-like space, crowded with many actors, in short, a stage. What you see, however, is a site of dharna or a sit-in where the figures milling around, of mostly women, veiled or with head covered, are staging a protest for better wages, the fulfilment of the promise of MNREGA, and the implementation of speedier and more equitable laws. The location could be interchangeable—from Singhu border on the edge of Delhi to Shaheen Bagh to Bhim in Rajasthan—but in every case, the workers’ presence speaks of a churn and an insistent message for change. The tightly adjacent bodies are at rest after a day of protest, marches or group meetings. Aban brings to her work a passionate engagement with colour and the early influence of the German Expressionists, drawing on the bright, unselfconscious chroma for the working-class body.
In the eight paintings on view in this exhibition, there is a startling oscillation that makes the images palpable and proximate. Aban stages both death in its violent throes and scenes of protest with their seething vitality. The links are there for the viewer to make, drawing as much from the subcontinent’s long history of protest movements—as current images on social media or as news items buried in the inner pages of newspapers. Implicated in these gatherings, then, is conflict with state machinery and acts of reprisal; the crescendo-like climax of a protest and its gradual fading away from public memory. That “historical memory”* is one of the intents of the artist as witness-participant interweaves some of the works into a document of critical moments of our time.
(Excerpted from the essay by Gayatri Sinha that accompanies the exhibition)
*Partha Chatterjee For a Just Republic: The People of India and the State. (Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2024).