The poetry of the Dalit revolutionary Poykayil Appachan has lengthy been a touchpoint for the artist Sajan Mani, whose work examines the caste system and the oppression of marginalised teams in India. One poem by Appachan, concerning the darkly plumed pariah kite, evokes the title of Mani’s first solo present in India, A number of Legs of a Traditionally Wing-Chopped Chicken at Shrine Empire gallery in New Delhi. The time period pariah “connotes the degradation related to the caste system”, writes the tutorial Cleo Roberts-Komireddi in her essay accompanying the present.
The exhibition delves into the histories of Kerala, the place the artist is from. “You’ll be able to see my observe as an act of history-making,” Mani says. “From the completely different works which are proven within the exhibition, one can undergo the layers of historical past that had been both not captured precisely or erased.”
From Sajan Mani’s 2023 collection Transmigratory whispers
Courtesy of the artist and Shrine Empire
Coming into the gallery, one first encounters a set of drawings held on a vibrant pink wall. The collection, titled Transmigratory whispers, exhibits Dalit figures painted on archived pages of European missionary stories and dictionaries. Notably, Dalits had been strictly forbidden to learn and write, or to enterprise out of the social caste hierarchy. Mani elaborates: “By way of a acutely aware act, I selected these pictures from a German anthropologist who got here to Kerala within the Twenties; his title is Egon Freiherr von Eickstedt. Later he grew to become a Nazi and a racial theorist. He took numerous pictures of Dalit and Indigenous individuals from Kerala and their lives, so I, too, was trying into these archives and consciously selecting the lifetime of oppressed individuals, after which foregrounding that into this time and house.”
One other room within the gallery shows works on thick rubber sheets. That is yet one more endeavour of history-making for Mani, whose dad and mom had been rubber tappers. “Rubber is a vital medium for me. My childhood recollections are stuffed with the odor, the elasticity of rubber”, he says.
In line with Anahita Tanjea, the co-founder of Shrine Empire, “Sajan’s distinctive use of pure rubber sheets comes from his household working within the rubber plantations. The usage of the medium can be a approach to join again to his roots and household historical past, together with utilizing it as a metaphor and it turning into a witness to historical past and its individuals”.
For the present, Mani has additionally transferred pages from the primary dictionary manuscript written in Malayalam, which he sourced from the Tübingen College archives in Germany. “I’m rejecting the so-called established post-colonial research and theories which usually, in India, was about kings and princes, and the Kohinoor,” he says. “It was by no means concerning the individuals who made these”. He makes use of these very archives in his works to rewrite the erased or the lacking elements.
The exhibition opened with a public efficiency by Mani within the gallery house wherein he made marks on the wall and ground. Throughout the efficiency, the artist moved his physique with fluidity, in reference to a river—he was born and grew up in a village on the banks of a river in Kannur.
The motif of water additionally speaks to the environmental issues entangled on this work. Mani explains: “The river additionally creates an unlimited space of muddy land. Kallen Pokkudan, a Dalit environmental activist in Kerala who held Indigenous information, planted mangroves all around the shores of the river. I carry these themes in my work. Local weather justice shouldn’t be solely surrounded by Western questions and the polar bears or the glaciers alone.”
Though the efficiency has been extensively documented for reference, the marks on the wall within the gallery stay via the length of the present for future guests to expertise. “The residue on the ground and the odor of the soot proceed to linger, giving a glimpse into the efficiency all through the present”, says Shefali Somani, the co-founder of Shrine Empire.
Mani’s previous performances have additionally referenced a ritual dance type known as theyyam, which carries with it a historical past of resistance. It’s mentioned that through the ritual, lower-caste individuals embody gods. Contributors predominantly use colors resembling pink and black. Some theyyam songs include explicitly anti-caste and revolutionary parts. And the mark making on the partitions as a part of the efficiency is an intertwined act of drawing as writing and writing as drawing. “I felt like a collective physique slightly than a single physique”, he says.
• A number of Legs of a Traditionally Wing-Chopped Chicken, Shrine Empire, New Delhi, till 22 January 2025
