Prutha Talekar
Last summer I interned under Shreyas Karle and Hemali Bhuta, artists and founders of
CONA foundation, in Divar, Goa. We came across their practice closely during an elective Shreyas took up at SEA during electives in 2023. We worked around his ongoing show at the time and discussed ideas of curation and what capturing a shifting environment means to oneself and in what form it can manifest. This span of two months revolved around the artists' practice of the domestic and way of life that resonates with art itself. They look at curation as their everyday and everyday as the art.
Divar Island itself becomes a strong anchor for the artists to locate their practice and for us to place ourselves within it. Divar is embraced by the Mandovi from all sides. The only route to move in and out of Divar is the ferry rides from three of its jetties. At intervals of 5, 15, and 30 minutes the ferries make you pause, just at the edge, waiting, thinking, observing the constant flow of the river, and thus regulating the flow of your work from here on. It takes 3 minutes to be exact for the ferry to move from one bank to the other, I timed. The change in its trajectory depended upon the wind and the flow of Mandovi that day, and to an extent the traffic inside the ferry as well. I have noticed myself keeping an exact change of 7rs, the fare for the ride, many times after returning to Bombay as well. Within the island is a community of people wanting distance from what has become of Goa and the city's image. Colorful bungalows, verandahs extending towards the road, coconut vados, shops shut past noon, ringing cycles swifting by, and carols from a distance, are what forms the character of Divar for me. Embedded here is Cona, a space for practitioners. Shreyas and Hemali with their 9-year-old, talk about the practice as not different from themselves, and almost as an extension to their home. The act of selecting fruits, the way they are washed, the specificity of cuts made, and the plates chosen to lay them are smaller nuisances to the expression of laying fruits as an invite to eat. Anything is the way you do everything.
We set up a practice of singing as a collective every day post-lunch. Songs of Sufi saints,
Kabir, Meerabai, Chokhamela. Songs speaking of the nirgun or the formless. Formless yet evident of yourself where the body becomes the vessel. Finding one's individuality in a collective became an anchor for these singing sessions. Analyzing lyrics, and analyzing poems of Arun Kolatkar was an everyday inquiry I took up for myself that later translated into drawings and illustrations of objects around the house from different places finding relation with each other and in conversation. Short extracts and prose of these conversations layered on top of these drawings reflect my everyday schedule at Cona.
The thought one puts into such inquiries reflects the larger scheme of work one associates with. A simple act of setting up a workshop space brings attention from bigger tools to miniature nails and pieces of scrap as well. Segregating these elements, finding their apt position such that the space functions in a sync also becomes a fundamental for the act of curation. Then, what do these movements talk about? What language do they speak when they exist in your subconscious but reflect in the physical? Questions of why a particular way and how many ways are root questions I found myself encountering here. Multiple such practices of everyday life get incorporated consciously and unconsciously and the sensitivity of dealing with those dictates the sensitivity of the other things one takes up. Anything is the way you do everything.
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