My name is "Gayatri Gamuz"
Gayatri was the name that was chosen for Gamuz's first child, if it were to be a girl. When she and her husband discovered that it was a boy, Gamuz says that Ananda began calling her Gayatri. She says she never really changed her name; she is still called Inma in Spain. But to her it was the start to a connection with India and its people, a link which drew her into its depths. Inma and Gayatri, a woman of two lands; one might think she is two halves which have merged, or blended to form one whole, like the world she envisages, with all its beauty. . She paints freely from her subconscious, and her beliefs lay in the merger of the two worlds she knows. Many a time, her paintings hope to pave the path to this unique reality, the “oneness” , and whilst creating this path, she expresses the pain that she undergoes on recognizing the veil that covers human understanding. Her new body of works is titled 'My name is Gayatri Gamuz' and is a retrospect of a life lived, both as a Spaniard and as an Indian.
"My Name is Gayatri Gamuz'' is a collection of works which speaks about identity and location. It is the culmination of a long journey which started in Spain and transcended to India. These paintings narrate the real and the imaginary, the life and its dreams and the meeting of past and present, all of which have a link to Gamuz's personal life. It speaks of the illusion of possession, closeness, familiarity, similitude and difference. This illusion-Gayatri says- is a maya which moves effortlessly into seamless energy. Gamuz's works depict an understanding of this; the things which formed her and things which continue to form her. Yet they are all illusion, nothing is real, only consciousness is real.
The work "My relatives, myself” came forth after a trip to Kerala, her husband's homeland. Here, she entered an antique shop where she discovered a pile of vintage photographs on a shelf, placed at the back of the shop. She spent much time going through each of them, till she was lured to one of a little girl. The photograph was in black and white, on hard old- fashioned photographic paper. Gamuz says the girl must be a woman the same age as her today, and almost immediately, as she glanced at it, there was a flash of her as a small girl from her memory, posing for a similar picture. Purchasing the photograph, she returned to Thiruvannmalai. A few days later she contacted her family, asking for the photograph which she remembered to be in an aunt's album. When the photograph arrived via email, she began working on the diptych 'My relatives, myself'. The painting is of two meditative girls from two different continents, with stark differences and strong similarities; attributes which come from two human beings from two vastly different lands and cultures. There is, Gamuz says, a distinctly similar adjective in the lives of these two girls, which is beyond cultures, lands, languages, costumes, skin, eyes and hair-colour. This painting is about the essence of human nature.
In the work titled "My Bull", there is the juxtaposition of her two worlds - India and Spain. Dressed in flowing attire, Gamuz paints a surreal image of herself. In the painting, she is with her cow, which represents her close link to India and the rural life she has chosen to lead. It is interesting to note that her back is what faces the viewer; we do not see her face as she caresses her cow and at the same time she watches the bull, a symbol of Spain, at a distance. The presence of her motherland in her life is accentuated in the very dominant picture of the bull, the painting being set in a typical Spanish landscape with a highway. Although the setting is in Spain, the surrealistic image of herself provides the effect of the dreamy existence of her life, one which is close to India and where her cow plays a very significant role. She has added tropical birds in a Spanish background; birds she evidently loves and those which symbolize the strength of a free and full life. It is interesting to note that the image of the bull is one that was often seen on billboards across Spain. Although these billboards do not advertised anymore the continuing presence of the gigantic images of these bulls in Spain today accentuates the presence of power, and is a memory of the past and the present.
Gamuz’s work "My Cow" is of her cow Nalini, with whom she has a close relationship. As in most rural Indian households, the cow holds a very significant position. It is sacred, and is a provider of food. The cow adds strength, calmness and beauty to the land, and has an uncanny instinct of returning to the family even when lost. Nalini plays an important role in Gamuz's life. To the artist, the coming of Nalini to her home began an association with the animal world in a deeper sense. It highlights the beliefs she holds close to her; about nature and animals - Nalini is the new teacher in her life, the cow in the painting which looks straight at the viewer while its horns are connected to the Spanish bull in the background with thin, long strings.
The work "My Tropical Birds" is a painting of a woman resting. The image of the woman occupies most of the canvas, a woman draped in red against a background of black. To Gamuz, the birds play a significant role in this work - they tell of the deep relationship with nature that humans have. Perched on the body of the resting woman, it helps one understand the calmness which Gamuz realizes through these tropical birds, in a tropical country. The stones represent the solidity of the present; the solidity of reality. These stones border the woman's body, it makes one feel that the truth of realities cannot be ignored, that even in a surrealistic, dreamy world the actualities of life are bound to create boundaries in one's existence.
'My Sky' is a painting of Thiruvannamalai where she lives. In the painting she finds solace in a home, with its large blue sky and a landscape true to the region. Gamuz's inner turmoil of ‘home’ come forth in this painting, for often the artist is torn between her two countries. The presence of this tug-of-war is almost natural to human nature, not just to a person attached to two different lands. The existence of the dilemma of belonging is vividly portrayed in this work, to which the artist finds rest, in the painting. The depiction of a large sky offers the sense of freedom, beauty and largeness- qualities that Gamuz would like her life to espouse. It speaks of a woman physically belonging to two different cultures, yet recognizes she belongs to the collective consciousness of the human race. There is no one space one can call home; or one culture to which one may belong. She sees herself as part of something larger than a country, with no boundaries or frontiers.
In her works it is interesting to note that Gamuz uses metaphors to express what she is feeling. Like the dots in her work "My Cow" is her representation of Spain, where the red dots are a common print on the dress of a flamenco dancer. The large, disproportioned ribbon she depicts in her works, tied on the head of the woman in her paintings, represents two ideas: One, where it is the intention to domesticate the wild and the other when the ribbon is to decorate or repair those which are irreparable, like the after effects of war or deforestation. She says that the superficial beautification is a metaphor for the artificialities we adopt to survive in this world; a world which demands decorated realities in order to handle the loss of the 'lost paradise'. The dreamy, surreal approach is always depicted in bright colours and a loose, free garb. Like in a dream state, Gamuz speaks in a poetic fashion, where her paintings hide a multitude of ideas. In each work is a message that stems from the desire of a peaceful, loving world. Gamuz's paintings live her ideologies. And in this living, she embarks upon a journey which bridges differences of all kinds. To her, all is one and one is all. Just like her name suggests and the title of this show "My Name is Gayatri Gamuz".
Tanya Abraham - 2013
The branch where we sit on
The American professor of ecology, Paul Ehrlich once wrote of our modern relations with nature that "we are sawing off the branch that we are sitting on".
James Lovelock, the British scientist who discovered the hole in the ozone layer and popularized the "Gaia Theory" (which sees the whole world as a living organism) put it even more graphically. He said that what we're doing to nature is as if the brain were to decide it was the most important organ in the body and started mining the liver.
How are we to change relations with our mother the Earth back to one of honoring and respect? It doesn't appear that merely hearing "the facts" will help much: any educated person now has more than enough facts and though these may change our ideas, they don't seem to change values or behavior.
Enter the artist, the poet, the musician whose job since prehistorically times has included reaching past the mind and into the heart and the very soul of their tribe to touch places that facts can never reach. This is the lineage of Gayatri Gamuz whose paintings utter an eloquent plea for empathy with the non-human world that connects her (via nature painters of every age) with the painters who, more than 10,000 years ago, depicted the bison and other animals on which their lives depended on the cave walls of Altamira in Spain.
The philosophy of deep ecology reminds us that the world is not a pyramid with human beings on top but rather it is a web. We humans are but one strand in that web and as we destroy the other strands we destroy ourselves. Is this what the bird is whispering in the sleeping mans' ear in "Tapas" There¹s a story about a time when Jerry Brown was Governor of California in the 1970¹s and Gary Snyder (the Pulitzer Prize- winning eco-poet )was working in his administration. One day Brown, exasperated, exclaimed "Gary, why is it that, whatever the issue, you are always going against the flow." To which Gary replied: "Jerry what you call "the flow¹ is just a 16,000 year eddy, I'm going with the actual flow!"
Gayatri Gamuz's paintings help us break free from the hypnosis of the historical eddy (which leaves everything, from ducks to hippos stranded in a plastic bucket) and feel within ourselves once again the roots of ancient cycles of partnership between humanity and the more-than-human world.
We humans are but one leaf on the tree of life; the other leaves are the myriad species who are our kin. If we allow them to be destroyed we will die of a great loneliness of spirit.
Now the animals have moved off the cave walls, have lost their habitat and stumble, disoriented around our human world. The ice is melting and the penguin sits on a chair while the polar bear lies disconsolate and inconsolable in a zoo.
But all is not lost: the child supports a nest of eggs on its shoulder while the goat supports two children on its broad back; the ficus religiosa sapling and the meditating man support each other. And the artist emerges from the chrysalis with gorgeous wings of imagination which can surely fly us beyond the chaos and into a shining future.
Essay by John Seed 2008 (Published in “of the same matter” catalogue , Kashi art gallery)
John seed is an sculptor and environmental activist from Australia and works on the philosophy of Deep Ecology.
A maze of machines
I live in a city, a city deprived of nature, of trees, of rivers, of birds…
Last January, I felt suddenly like in a maze of machines. I was restless, so I decided to travel to Thiruvannamalai, the place of the lord Shiva, at the feet of the holy mountain of Arunachala , to just roam around in the night and to sleep under the starry night with unknown people, birds and ants.
When I packed my bag with bed sheets and a small pillow I never imagined that I was going to meet Gayatri. I enjoyed her paintings and I enjoyed Thiruvannamalai , both made me think about myself, my people, and the hell city where I work for my life.
The painting “when something covers my eyes I can see better inside” reminds me of my mother. If my memory is correct, we happened to shift houses twenty four times in twelve years. Whenever we shifted, we had to carry nearly sixty plants with us. My father always scolded her; it was a big job to transport so many pots from house to house. Now my mother has her own house and a big garden. Last year, while we were watching National Geographic, she told me that she wanted to see a real forest. Now I realize that my mother had created all through her life a pseudo-forest in our balcony.
Trough Gayatri’s paintings and my three days in Thiruvannamalai I feel more part of nature, but I cannot escape from the city, I have to live here. Is it my fate? What can I do? To get rid of the sun from the window, I cover my face with a book and make plans for a garden in my home.
Ramasubramaniyam - 2006
Extract from the essay written by Ramsubramaniyam (Scripter and film director), for the catalogue “in reverse I tell so you understand me”
Cry Freedom
The animation movie ‘Madagascar 2” opens with the scene of a lion cub learning some skills from his father. The father teaches him to jump at the preys. But the cub does not want to learn that, instead he wants to dance. Suddenly hunters from the city appear there and capture the cub and take him away. We listen to a deep and poignant cry from caged cub, ‘Father….” You feel like crying and the moment of his capture haunts you for a long time. Gayatri Gamuz’s paintings impart this feeling of empathy; the feeling of being captured and kidnapped from wherever you really belong.
The images in Gayatri’s paintings do not refer to the world of animation movies. However, they share the deep feelings of animals that play the surrogate roles of dispossessed children all over the world. Her paintings are deeply political in this metaphorical sense and at the same time they show the artist’s sincere concerns for the environmental imbalance caused by various agencies in the world. However, it is pertinent to look at Gayatri’s present suite of paintings as a political critique rather than an individual’s silent wailings on environmental issues.
A polar bear captured and kept in a zoo in Budapest is the pivotal imagery that Gayatri uses to build up this suite of paintings. Titled ‘Life Got Complicated-Polar Bear in Budapest Zoo’, this painting shows a polar bear in a contemplative mood. There is a sense of desperation in its hidden face also one could hear the silent calls of the terrains that it had to leave behind. The confined life, which entertains the visitors, just does not make him happy. He is lost and tired. To any passionate and caring eyes, this image of polar bear should appear as poignant and telling as the great works, ‘Pieta’ (Michel Angelo) and ‘Thinker’ (Rodin). Pain and contemplation linger through out the flaccid body of the bear. He suddenly looks like a child, a dispossessed and violated child from all the afflicted zones of the world.
Gayatri does not make any deliberate effort to juxtapose the image of a child with that of an animal. On the contrary she plays up the ideological connection between animals and children through a dynamic symbolism. In ‘I am Confused’ and ‘I am Confused too’ she paints the image of a penguin and a goat respectively. They stand on a wooden chair in a precarious position. Their broken dreams are suggested by a grassy patch or shards of sky painted on the seat of the chair. They are as lost and confused as the kids in the war zones. In ‘Teddy Bear in South India’ (Part I and II), Gayatri makes this ideological connection a bit more obvious by playing up the human being’s desire to cuddle wild animals and his innate desire for self dependency through surrogate means.
Teddy bears are a cultural import as far as a distant land like South India is concerned. But these surrogate animals are co-opted to/by a different culture through native attributions like dresses and cradles. What Gayatri emphasizes in these paintings is the irony of mutual captivity; on the one hand the human beings alienate the animals from their own environs and on the other, they try to naturalize them through surrogate possessions (like toys). In ‘Chinese Doll in South India’, Gayatri directly comments on how the materialistic culture has paved way for a culture of dummies, where a human kid is converted (the same way a polar bear is made into a teddy bear) into a life-like doll.
Detachment of feelings, attribution of qualities to an externalized object and convenient use of empathy are the three political strategies used by any hegemonic forces in order to justify their attacks on the innocent human beings (like children all over the world). This is a cover up operation. And Gayatri uses her painterly imagination for critiquing these covert strategies by giving iconic status to the familiar symbols created by the very same vandalizing forces. To make her political stance clear and her critique direct and pertinent, she paints her self portrait along with the larger portrait of a monkey. She and the monkey share some kind of sisterhood and she suggests it through the black moles that they have on their left cheeks. By calling it ‘Gayatri in South India’, the artist plays up her adopted location in order to generate an auto-critique on her identity as a Spaniard, an artist and above all, as a human being.
II
There is something global always in the local and vice versa. The specificities of location, its history, mythology and present-ness, in which an artist finds herself positioned, are very important in understanding the works of an artist like Gayatri Gamuz. She addresses the global from a chosen ‘locale’. This locale, Thiruvannamalai, the abode of the Saint Ramana is very pivotal in the formation of Gayatri’s images. For her this location is a meeting point of two oppositional forces; the sylvan rural and the globalizing urban. As far as the globalization process is concerned, it has always been facing an opposition from the ‘rural’. However, ideologically speaking, there is always a mutual demand in finding identical forces within these two spheres of social existence. In this sense, we can see the ‘global’ always finding an inclination towards the rural facilities and the locales always looking forward to have urban infrastructure. This mutuality is very visible in authorized urban planning and the progressive policies on rural infrastructure development by local and central governments. It is from these spaces of sharing Gayatri Gamuz articulates her humanitarian ideas with poignancy and sharpness.
Gayatri, in her works is not judgmental about these spaces. Her global outlook as an artist anchors her to the realities of changing life patterns. Had she been a romantic who overlooks the aspects of globalization, she would certainly have indulged in painting romantic landscapes and metaphysical portraits in tune with the ambience of her location. But she assumes the role of an enlightened personality who could flag out issues and show the directions that the debates pertaining to them could take. Painting of a polar bear from the Budapest Zoo appears to be natural in Gayatri’s work because of her deliberate positioning as an enlightened personality at the meeting point of oppositional forces. Her images are stark and direct, and she does not show any sentimental inclination to any of the issues that she likes to discuss in her works. Her detachment should be seen as an intellectual and creative detachment, devoid of breast beating enthusiasm. While identifying with the attributes of a South Indian child, she does not give any special aura to them for just being ‘South Indian’. The emphasis is always on the issue that has potentially given birth to a particular image that she chooses to paint.
Each image in Gayatri’s works plays the role of a pointer, which has the symbolic values of a photographic image removed from its space, time and authorship. The symbolism of Gayatri’s works recounts the history, mythology and present-ness of a specific location, which I mentioned earlier. The specific history, mythology and present-ness of a place, with the viewers’ intervention, get transcended to become the pointers of globalizing phenomenon that paves way for satisfaction through surrogate ‘objects’ and general environmental depletion. Here the innocence of history, mythology and present-ness of a place (irrespective of its status as urban or rural) is opened up for debate and through this visual debate one comes to know that any claim on innocence and power of accusation stands on a fragile ground. Like the artist, the viewer too is asked to share the responsibility of changes in social patterns.
Seen in a larger perspective, this sharing of social responsibility facilitates horizontal linkages between people and ideas throughout the world. If globalization, through capitalist market is a way of vertical progress, overlooking the demands of the people surrounding this vertical shaft, visual interventions like Gayatri’s could address the issues of people horizontally. This horizontal linking is undoubtedly the most powerful way to solve the negative side effects created by the fast growing globalizing process. The moment people all over the world are horizontally connected, the articulations from Thiruvannamalai do not just look like articulations from a rural retreat, it would rather look like a familiar history/mythology/present-ness recounted for generating immediate kinship. Through this kinship, as the economists and the well-meaning planners of world governance say, the positive fruits of globalization could be distributed amongst the world population. Gayatri’s works, for any keen onlooker, contain this dynamics for horizontal linkages.
If critiquing the pleasure of surrogate objects (surrogate pleasure is always a way to deflect the human attention from the vital issues and the hegemonic forces all over the world time and again use this technique of deflection to keep people under perpetual sedation through television programs, popular entertainments and talk on impending war and terrorism) is the main theme in Gayatri’s works, a subtle critique on environmental depletion caused by human intervention also substantiates the aesthetical as well as the critical intensity of her works. The predominant plastic images obliquely focus on the menace of inorganic substances in human lives. By juxtaposing the organic and inorganic images in her works, Gayatri has been forwarding critiques on environmental issues for the last few years.
The images of toys have an ideological function in Gayatri’s works. The toys made of plastic and inorganic materials are the by products of a cultural globalization. If we go by the observations of Roland Barthes, toys are ideological vehicles. The hegemonic/imperial forces that always look out of world supremacy produce toys as ideological weapons, which could shape the thinking process of human beings in childhood itself. The surrogate toys teach the children to be caring and gender conscious (as in the case of Barbie Dolls). At the same time toys impart the lessons of aggression and conquering (as in replicas of both primitive and sophisticated weapons, and the war/kill/competition based video games). Read against this ideological backdrop, the very toys represented by Gayatri look helpless pawns in the hands of certain global powers that demand human subjection as the finest price. In fact, a deeper look at Gayatri’s work reveals that it is not the toy, which is surrogate of the actual but the human beings are the actual surrogates of ideological machinations. Gayatri reveals these maneuverings through her aesthetical interventions and her works gain universal importance thanks to this subtle but influential intervention.
Jhony ML - January 2009, New Delhi.
(Jhony ML is a New Delhi based art critic and curator.)
Two lands and two spaces
I met Gayatri Gamuz at Kashi Art Cafe, many years ago. At that time, I had just begun writing on art. Young, serene and beautiful, she spoke slowly and articulately - first about herself, and then about her paintings. She was living in Mattancherry, in a charming heritage building. Since then our association has been one of unspoken mutual appreciation and an implicit understanding. For me, the understanding of a woman who came to India and made it her home; for her, I would think, the perspective of an Indian woman in an Indian society.
Either way, it was obvious we were two women intervening in society with our ideas and thinking, she through her paintings and I through my writing. I would not call her work feminist or ‘female oriented’, but from a woman’s point of view soothing and understanding, which seems so exquisitely feminine. Gayatri’s uncanny knack to convey her thoughts, beliefs and desires are in a manner which is luring, motherly yet childlike and comforting. It emerges in a society which is immersed in its own practices and deeply self-centered, oblivious to the larger picture. It comes silently yet strongly; beckoning, imploring, asking and finally demanding. It comes for the good of mankind.
Today, Gamuz lives by Thiruvannamalai, in Tamil Nadu, in a land surrounded by trees, in mud and thatch huts which she and her husband have built. She lives in the bosom of nature, as if held close by its soothing arms. She is earth herself - the mud, roots and leaves; they form the soul of who Gamuz is. Yet she does not disassociate herself from mankind, man is the centre of her concern. She trembles at the thought of his disintegration, both spiritually and physically, and thus through her canvas, hopes to bring alive the truth that she believes in - that Man and nature are one and that the whole universe is one spirit.
Gamuz repeats time and again that we are all made of the same matter, and that we come forth from the same energy source, to which we return in death. She, through this understanding, recognizes that the man-made divisions which arise from religion or nationalism are nothing but a tragedy. That this tragedy extends to a hypocritical life that humans choose to live. It involves death in spiritual terms as humans distinguishes themselves from other living beings, giving little consideration to other life forms which are a distinct part of our lives. The need for a communion with nature plays over and over again in her paintings, sometimes to such depth that it fiercely nudges at our conscience. Using animals, both literally and as metaphors, she explicitly tells of lives led by the human world. One such work "Life got complicated -Polar Bear in Budapest Zoo'' is of a polar bear at rest and in a contemplative position. She, through this very catching work, speaks of Man's desire to capture and dominate the terrain that the bear has been displaced from and the violations of life in its free sense.
This idea is further projected in her work ''I am Confused '' and ''I am Confused too’’; a penguin and a goat, stand respectively on two wooden chairs. Confused, perplexed and lost, their splintered dreams are hinted by shards of ice next to the goat and a grassy patch next to the penguin.
''In Chinese Doll in South India” she talks of how materialistic humans have become, where dolls in human form have taken the position of the warmth of a comforting bosom. It is interesting to note that Gamuz has depicted the doll [made in China] as a South Indian baby seen with the quintessential black spot painted on the cheeks of little children to ward off evil. The doll is transformed to become Indian, but she says that the essence of a culture steeped in deep family ties and free expression is being replaced gradually with inanimate objects.
This is also seen in Works like reflections on beauty where her ideas are juxtaposed into one whole-of a world of plastic dolls, the need for exaggerated beauty and finally the inner-self which meditates on the true essence of life. Consequently, she translates this idea to her own life- she as the human and she as the victim.
The work titled '' The Painter’’ is a portrait of an imaginary painter [the model is a friend of the artist]. It is washed in intense calm and carries the essence of Gamuz's life. It is an autobiography in a way; stories of a woman and an artist depicted in the hue of peace and understanding. In her work ''Gayatri in South India'' Gamuz tells of her life as a woman from Spain living in South India. The complexity that may arise from such a situation is of all that the artist has been speaking of - identity, dislocation and existence. The painting is shared with a monkey and they both bear moles on their cheeks, a connection which cannot be severed, whether animal or man, whether Spaniard or Indian.
Gayatri Gamuz came first to India in 1989. At the time she had no particular perception of the country or any expectations. However, she understood later on that India had left in her an indelible mark; a mark that was stuck to her being, which could not be peeled off. In 1991 she came back to India, and stayed on. Gamuz calls it destiny - for there was no decision to stay or not to stay. It was, as if, she was called to begin a new life. Here, she met her husband Ananda, and here is where she raises her two children Aditya [19 years] and Aruna [11 years]. She says the transition was not so difficult. As a child, her father's job took them from one city to another, and her earliest memories are of packing and unpacking of boxes. It was thus easy to adapt to a new environment; to fit in and become part of it. India was one such, but, where she remained and has lived for the last twenty two years. Yet, her links to the land of her origin remains strong. Spain is her motherland, the country where she was born and raised, where she first experienced and learnt art. It remains in her, a part of herself. The other part is India, where her professional life began - her close proximity to a diverse life, to a [different] world of art and artists and to cultures that fascinate her.
This mélange of experiences, both in Spain and India, is what is seen in Gamuz's work. It is from here that her paintings began to depict the rural and the urban. Thiruvannamalai, with its serenity and simplicity has influenced her thoughts. We sense the peace she finds in the rural, it's bonding to nature. Yet, the globalized, urban world is seen and understood as she tries to speak about the malpractices which may arise from such development. Being who she is, a link between a country such as Spain and one such as India, she calls for the need for responsibility and social amiability. Gamuz's life is an example of the merger of two different cultures and social settings - two lands and two spaces, which come together to present the diversity in the world.
Tanya Abraham - 2013