If the saying "eating like a bird" ever needed a heart-wrenching dramatisation on canvas, Anjan Modak's latest watercolour could serve as an example. In 'Dream of Reality-1', the Kolkata-based painter shows a large female figure stuck in a small house which barely covers her torso. She's fed a morsel of roti (flatbread) from the finger-like beak of a bird, while she holds on to the feet of her feathered friend. There is a small, grey roti floating at the edge of the canvas like a bitter, burning moon on a full night.
During lockdown, when Modak saw media images of rotis scattered on a railway track in Aurangabad when a goods train mowed down 16 migrant workers on their way home on foot, he expressed his despair in the only way he knew how. He set about painting his hurt and rage. The fruits of his labour are now part of an online exhibition ‘Fragmented Life’, hosted by Emami Art.
In a series of dream images, Modak charts the emotional landscape of migrant workers in light of their mass exodus for safety and security in the middle of a global pandemic. He does not glorify their physical toil, but explores their complex psychological cosmos marked by a sense of subordination, anxiety and uncertainty. Affected by their sheer helplessness, Modak has painted a series of small size, circular-format paintings to convey the dismalness of their situation precipitated by an unplanned national lockdown on 24 March. "It is the first time that I have chosen a circular format. I was thinking about how when we find a glaring error in need of a correction or something wrong, we circle it with a red pen," says Modak whose large body of work represents the life of the working class, the struggles and tribulations of migrant workers in big Indian cities. The 40-year-old's work has been featured in many group exhibitions, including Tamarind Art Gallery in New York, CIMA Gallery in Kolkata, Jaipur Art Fair, Mumbai Art Fair, Emami Art, Kolkata, and the India Art Fair in Delhi.
"When my own parents moved to Delhi from Kolkata when I was a child, they began work as construction labourers. It was not the most ideal way to make a living but they worked hard to rise above their circumstances." says Modak on the phone from Kolkata where he lives and works. "They had street theatre and poetry sessions every evening. They created awareness about the trials of informal labour. Their friends would come to our house in the evening to practice songs of workers' rights and that is how I learnt of problems they faced in their homes," he says, attributing the stylistic and narrative content of his paintings to his childhood milieu and upbringing.
In ‘Fragmented Life’, he draws on diverse visual traditions, from surrealism and puppetry to biology textbook illustrations to convey the complexity of the subaltern experience from having lived it.
But even in the midst of despair, he can glimpse hope and revival. In one of his paintings in the series, a woman hangs from her waist on a hangar made of bone. The hangar itself dangles from an opaque white cloud. With her face slightly swollen, the woman wears a resigned expression and holds a glass house with a tree growing inside. But the leaves on the tree are her almond-shaped eyes. They still keep a vigil even though she's left the house.
‘Fragmented Life’ is on view till August 31 at Emami Art website.
