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Artist's protest at war
By K. Kannan
When Austrian artist Herwig Steiner saw photographs of people jumping down from the twin towers in New York on September 11 to escape the inferno, something stirred inside him. Art, he felt, should not remain mute spectator, but must protest against this senseless killing of innocent victims in New York, Washington and Afghanistan.
Presently concentrating on the art of computer-generated print collages, Herwig had already committed an exhibition at the Academy of Fine Arts and Literature here almost a year ago. ``I had originally planned to put up this exhibition as pin-ups on the wall, but after the September 11 incident, I decided to lay it all on the floor,'' he says.
The floor installation, which was inaugurated here on December 4, presents an altogether different experience for viewers. ``It has been an Indian tradition that if you protest against something, you sit on the floor. Art has been pressed down due to the war in Afghanistan and I have represented it symbolically,'' explains Herwig.
Largely dealing with text and its judicious juxta-position in a manner so as to provoke the thinker in each one of us, the exhibition is as much Herwig's personal quest for meaning as it is an attempt to make sense of contradictory experiences all over the globe. ``Two works have been especially prepared for this exhibition and give a glimpse of the Western view of India throughout history,'' he points out.
First, an antique text on ``Alexander the Great'' which shows how India was considered a strange country by the Greeks. ``Everything beyond the Indus river was considered India,'' says Herwig. Another text from Christopher Columbus makes interesting reading if only for the misconception about India he carried in his mind.
Contrast this with contemporary author Salman Rushdie's way of looking at the West. In his latest novel, ``Fury'', Rushdie berates American culture through his hero, Mr. Moles.``New York in this time of plenty had become the object and goal of the world's concupiscence and lust, and the `insult' made the rest of the planet more desirous than ever.''
The Kashmir problem, for the artist, brings to memory a painful experience. ``I was visiting Amarnath in 1995 when I heard that four Westerners abducted by militants had been killed. A few sentences from newspapers of that time can be found in the exhibition as a memory to these innocent victims.''
At one level, the exhibition is indeed very philosophical. ``There are texts by two famous German philosophers, Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche. Schopenhauer derived inspiration from Indian philosophical texts though he developed it into a western rational system,'' Herwig says, adding : ``While working on this exhibition, I realised there are two types of Westerners interested in India -- one, conquerors and merchants and two, intellectuals and romantics deeply influenced by Indian thought''.
Himself belonging to the second group and having visited India umpteen number of times, Herwig admits his art has undergone a transformation from being more expressive to an internal reflection of the purpose of life. ``I have always been interested in language and philosophy and also in the dynamics of interaction of the mind with art,'' he says.
Two other prints reveal his thinking and perception about India. One is that of a British author dealing with what he calls the mapping of India. ``The British could not understand the real India. For them, everything was a mass of land,'' he says. The other text deals with violence in the land of Mahatma Gandhi. ``This is interspersed with names of temples and holy places here.''
The exhibition, which will be on till December 19, is an invitation to ask uncomfortable questions and to come to terms with the deeper spiritual dimension by appreciating the dynamic interplay of contradictory forces masquerading as words, language and meaning....
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