A Tale Of Hope And Water

On바카라 웹사이트March 20, 1927, Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar and 10,000 Dalits (untouchables) had descended on Chavdar Tale in Maharashtra라이브 바카라 Raigad district, cupped the waters in their palms and drank all that they could. The iconic moment overthrew the바카라 웹사이트sarvarna바카라 웹사이트(upper caste Hindu) norm that forbade Dalits from accessing any public water tank notwithstanding the Bombay Legislative Council라이브 바카라 resolution to permit the community concerned to use it. In 1950, Article 17 of the Indian Constitution drafted by Ambedkar abolished untouchability.

Yet, instances of바카라 웹사이트sarvarna바카라 웹사이트dominance run rife in contemporary history. On바카라 웹사이트August 13, 2022, mere one week before Rajyashri Goody opened her show at Galleryske in New Delhi, Indra Kumar, a Class VII Dalit boy from Jalore in Rajasthan died. He had been hospitalized on바카라 웹사이트July 20바카라 웹사이트after his teacher beat him mercilessly for drinking water from a바카라 웹사이트matka바카라 웹사이트(pot) in school reserved for바카라 웹사이트sarvarnas바카라 웹사이트only. In August alone, Rajasthan recorded three other cases of Dalit children thrashed brutally.

Dalit histories are made up of such casteist battles, till recently, widely underreported in the mainstream. People like Goody who belong to this sub alternity—the Pune artist and ethnographer who hails from the same Scheduled Caste, Mahar, as Ambedkar—have taken it upon themselves to chronicle Dalit struggles won and still being fought as inspiration for the road ahead. The Dalit food aesthetic and traditions with its recipes involving ingredients occasionally rotten, half-eaten, and considered deplorable, like rats, form the core of Goody라이브 바카라 art practice, which she tries to immortalize using ceramic, photography, poetry, and installation mediums.

Like her 2017 exhibit titled,바카라 웹사이트What is the Caste of Water?, first referenced the Mahad satyagraha. It showcased one hundred and eight Coupes, Martini, Highball, Collins, and other popular varieties of cocktail glassware containing remnants of the바카라 웹사이트panchgavya, five by-products of the cow—gobar바카라 웹사이트(cow dung),바카라 웹사이트gau바카라 웹사이트mutra바카라 웹사이트(cow urine),바카라 웹사이트doodh바카라 웹사이트(milk),바카라 웹사이트dahi바카라 웹사이트(curd) and ghee—concocted as a purification brew. The glasses symbolised the 108 pots of바카라 웹사이트panchgavya바카라 웹사이트that agitated Brahmins had emptied into the Tale to purify it after the Dalits had ‘touched’ it during the satyagraha. “But technically the바카라 웹사이트sarvanas바카라 웹사이트polluted it… you can die consuming바카라 웹사이트panchgavya,” says the Dalit artist, who holds an MA in Visual Anthropology and is at present completing an art residency at Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam.

This time, her ongoing solo is titled바카라 웹사이트Is the Water Chavdar?—chavdar바카라 웹사이트means tasty in Marathi. “But I am not interested in the water or its taste. Just why animals and바카라 웹사이트sarvarnas바카라 웹사이트can ‘touch’ the water, yet Dalits are still attacked and killed for doing the same. My touch is not any different from yours,” says Goody. Her focus is on the 10,000 satyagrahis who remain nameless and faceless in public memory as there is no photographic evidence of the historic event in institutional archives simply because it had never been photographed! Quite contrary to the widespread media coverage Mahatma Gandhi garnered for his salt satyagraha, his symbolic breaking of the British Raj salt laws at Dandi in 1930.

To rectify the absence of visual documentation of this people라이브 바카라 movement, Goody recreates the Chavdar Tale with 10,000 tiny ceramic mounds arranged in a square, covering almost the entire gallery floor. This water body is cool and inviting, the light dances off the smooth, glazed exteriors of its mounds, and the eye smoothly scans the tapestry of browns, beiges, greens, yellows, whites, and blues… all soothing shades there are to water. Palm-sized and smaller, these ‘hemispherical domes‘ appear like water scooped in cupped palms, then crystallized and upturned to sit on a flat base. Goody calls these domes Buddhist stupas, and there라이브 바카라 one for each of the 10,000 unsung heroes in Ambedkar라이브 바카라 satyagraha. Drop by drop, it became an ocean of people who fought for caste equity. Walking alongside ‘this lake’ is thus intended to feel circumambulatory, where instead of a reliquary stupa, one meditates on the collective bravado of people who reclaimed their right to access public space.

Peculiar to the work a white pillar rising from the ceramic lake, is symbolic of the Kranti Stambh (Revolutionary Tower) in Mahad at which Ambedkar burnt copies of the바카라 웹사이트Manusmriti바카라 웹사이트on 1927바카라 웹사이트Christmas바카라 웹사이트Day. Onto this pillar, Goody has slathered paper pulp, produced from copies of the바카라 웹사이트Manusmriti; an artistic tradition common to her oeuvre. On a side note, watching her over-three-hours-long performance with Goethe Institut—available on YouTube—of tearing each page of the ancient text into vertical strips, then square chits, building into a pile, meant to pulp and make into바카라 웹사이트laddoos…can prove a gratifying A.S.M.R. experience for some.
바카라 웹사이트

The Buddhist markers in Goody라이브 바카라 lake and around Chavdar Tale take note of the religion Ambedkar and his followers converted into as a way out of바카라 웹사이트sarvarna바카라 웹사이트oppression.바카라 웹사이트 The setup is similar to her 2019 installation titled Gravel, where rock fragments filled an L shape ‘road’, implying certain sections remain stuck in casteist jobs such as daily wagers at stone quarries, and construction sites, who build modern infrastructure but personally never experience these benefits.

To reposit the historical landmark in contemporary history, the walls overlooking the ceramic lake are dotted with photographs downloaded from Google Maps of visitors to Chavdar Tale. The photographs now exist in two forms of documentation, digital archives, and physical copies. Further, the images, all monotypes, were subjected to experiments such as printing with wet ink and then transferred onto printmaking paper, to appear leaky, ‘stained’, with ink running in places, “to retain the ‘wetness’ while talking about water,” she notes. “We have existed as a community for over a thousand years, but our stories were not photo-documented until 50-60 years ago. But now, these photographic archives are constantly being built. We complain that there라이브 바카라 not much data on minority issues, but there is a lot. It is about where you look. And also realizing that if such incidents had not happened, so many of us wouldn’t be where we are,” Goody observes.