SCORPION IN A ROSE GARDEN

(Written for The Times Of India Crest Edition)

Gipin Verghese likes chaos theory, where minute initial movements affect the entire phenomenon, he says. And like moss spreading on walls, he likes his art to blend into his surroundings. It does, until you look closer…and then the horror surfaces

There is life all around, forest cover, animals, people, everything and everyone going about their own business quite happily. No one interrupts, except to unroll the works and look at them more carefully, examining the scenes depicted in fine lines of acrylic on handmade paper and canvas. And there is joy in the verdant green, the leaves rustling as some small creature runs through the undergrowth, the trees swaying in the gentle breeze as a villager walks past, the dinosaur hiding in the brush…dinosaur? Perhaps not that, but something that looks like a large lizard. You look again, seeking something you can easily understand and you see elephants, lots of elephants, three elephants, seemingly frolicking in the dense green. The only good non human is a dead non human, the caption reads. Look more closely and you see the elephants in attitudes of pain, suffering, death, their heads severed from their wracked bodies. Where did that come from? Which reality created it?

Inspiration for his work comes from “thoughts about the endless pain and struggles of those who were neglected in the history of life forms”, says the artist responsible for the works, Gipin Verghese. “The structural inspiration comes from all forms of human expression which have a formal quality of organic patterns, like murals, miniatures, graffiti, hand-written texts, manuscripts, illuminations, fractals, etc. We know facts, but not aware of the reality. It is is a complex existence we all have. Each and every change we make has irreversible effects on the future. We have to be more conscious in our actions; we have to be more ecocentric. Even a single act is important.”

There are many more than just single acts in Verghese’s work. It has gentle colours, sepia tones, pale greens, greys, ochres, yellows, the edges of the handmade paper in the smaller works charred, aged, as if the paintings were discovered at some future time. There is a deliberation in the images used, but the reality they depict is alien. There are elements not easily recognized – apart from the strange lizard-like creatures, there are dodo birds, baobab trees, kangaroos (is that what they are?) and more. According to Verghese, “If you are seeing them as victims in the game of power, they can be recognised easily. The works (from 2010) are about genocide, forced relocation and extinction of species, all of which has had a greater impact on existing life forms. It is presented like in virtual reality, so that you can’t neglect it as a news splash.”

Some works are less animal-focussed, more human. There are people getting shot, people climbing walls, people being sprayed with something from planes flying above their forest dwellings. Wait…those people are not normal, are they? They have twisted limbs, deformed backs, strangely shaped heads. What is wrong with them? The writing on the canvas explains it all. Agent Orange, the code name for the herbicides and defoliants, unfortunately contaminated with lethal dioxins, used in the Vietnam war to clear the area so that US troops could see the ‘enemy’, not only destroyed vegetation, but human lives too. Verghese may not have experienced that horror first-hand, but he shows it, with a certain cartoon-ish helplessness about the bodies and the sickening effects of chemical poisoning, perhaps inspired by his reading of Silent Spring, the Rachel Carson book that detailed the negative effects of pesticides on the environment. 

Verghese spent the first five years of his life, “by a wild river side, surrounded by hills and forests near the border of Kerala and Karnataka. I still remember the `luxuries' that I experienced in those days. During my school days, I was a member of an ecological club in Payyannur named SEEK.” He read voraciously, mostly about the environment, and found opportunities to interact with “many famous visiting wildlife photographers, bird watchers, butterfly specialists, ecologists, spending time at camps in forests, all of which shaped my mind and made me a good observer of the unseen structures and systems of the nature.”

More of the mind behind the works is explained by the artist’s reading habits – “books that reveal the politics behind events, such as One Straw Revolution and The Road Back to Nature by Masanobu Fukuoka, Carson’s significant writings and Discipline and Punishment: The birth of the prison by Michel Foucault”, he details. Escape from imprisonment – of the mind, of the body, of the soul – is a particular point of focus for Verghese. The prison is not in an urban setting, but in an open environment, one that leads to fields and forests, freedom that could, in a dreamscape, be more than just a temporary measure. He explains that “The works done in 2011 are not based on a particular incident. They are about prison and modern agriculture - how these two are becoming the tools for appropriating people and nature, as per the wishes of the authority, those in positions of power.” In fact, he says that he dreams of creating a farm by following and implementing Fukuoka’s philosophy, applying his theory of ‘doing nothing’ and allowing nature to decide and for the plants to grow by themselves, “where everything and everybody is equal and on the same plane. I have incorporated this philosophy in my work where all are on a single plane and are dissolving into the same setting.”

Where there is such lush green, where there is escape, where there is a window into a future that does not necessarily have pain and suffering colouring it, why all the anguish? Verghese admits that his work is about pain, all influenced by “the poets, artists, who record pain, the eco-spiritual activists. It must be the way of my seeing things, In normal ‘seeing’, the world doesn’t have any problems. It’s quite fine. Everything is balanced. We don’t have the chance to interrupt; we can go on with our work. But a curious second look helps to brings forth inequalities. It gives the feel of a scorpion in a rose garden.”

Gipin Verghese
May 4-25, Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai