The destruction of the landscape in the littoral is close to the concept of life and
death, as ecosystems get impacted it has a psychological and a biological impact on
the lives of the inhabitants of India’s villages. The Bone Flower is a metaphorical title
that narrates stories that arrive from history. ‘The Bone Flower’ to Virendra is the
emaciated immigrant body that even though abused is by the weight of the load, the
tonsure of heat and humiliations they face – is beautiful for he is amongst them, they
are his brothers. This is not an exhibition about migrants, migration and or
alienation. It is an exhibition about two artists Virendra Maurya and Upendra Ram
observing the landscape and arresting the nihilism of their people as they inhabit the
wasteland.
Figures in Virendra’s work emerge from a dark background as if holding the
spontaneity of his brush and greet you with humour. The landscape is surreal and
cramped but allows you a dreamy escape. The monumentality arrests you with
ease. The colours are spread close even on such a large canvas. There has never
been a better painting depicting the nihilism of the Gangetic plains where people
have suffered continuously since the first War of Independence in 1857.
Suffering has been ever present in a society that has its pillars rooted over many
millennia in caste discrimination. Caste was never a division of rural labour but a
division amongst labourers so that they would be enslaved to their professions
according to DR BR Ambedkar. Caste would be the buffer for the elite during times of
pandemics and famines. Upendra Ram makes a monumental sculpture of labourers
taking sacks of grain up the stairs of the iconic granary in Patna – called the Gol Ghar.
To build a gigantic structure in Bihar – a state named after the ‘ Buddhist Vihara’ – the
only indigenous know-how was to build it in the shape of a stupa. Upendra, a
Buddhist, etches out workers carrying grain into the granary. Another ceramic
sculpture depicts the Buddha and an Apsara to speak of the juxtaposition of
detachment and desire.
In his free time Upendra fashions ceramics that hold his deep observations of a life
which has been one where the structure of our society has only brought him pain.
Unable to access water from the village well, his grandfather’s built a long well that
was thin and narrow near their home to fetch water. He remembers his mother
storing water in long earthen jars from which they could drink. In his adulthood this
well was buried when the land mafia displaced them from this land by force and
violence. But it remains alive in his tall vases, vases that he is able to sculpt by his skill
at throwing clay on the potter’s wheel. It reminds him of a time when he was not
considered human. Upendra fashions ceramics that hold his deep observations of a
life which has been one where the structure of our society has only brought him pain.
Much like how Anselm Kiefer paints the death that permeates the landscape of
Germany many decades after the Holocaust, Virendra Maurya puts out the dispositif
of how we have failed the environment – the elite which has led to the alienation of
millions in India, Africa and South America. People crossing seas to drown under
waves are escaping the deluge of poverty that had been scripted during
colonisation. This history is the layers of paint he puts on the canvas. Upendra Ram
scratches the surface of his ceramics to record the othering of his people. How his
history is never told and why folk tales from the village amongst a child playing with a
dragonfly cannot be a recorded in history. For does the child know that this idyllic
moment and time will give way to a time when he will be exploited for his labour
turning his body into the ‘ Bone Flower’.
Sumesh Manoj Sharma
Athens, Greece, 2024
Virendra Maurya (1993) is from Dadra Pahadi, Mirzapur, Uttar Pradesh. He is a multi-faceted visual
artist, whose practise ranges from luminism, installation, material, to paintings, prints, etc. He
completed his BFA (2016) from Benaras Hindu University followed by his MFA (2018) from Hyderabad
Central University. He was part of the Khoj Peers Residency in 2018 where he created a space
inspired from Khirki village to convey his thoughts on the barriers both mental and physical that are
created due to societal norms. Virendra has participated at the Birla Academy in 2018 and been
sponsored at National Camp of Kerala by Kerala Lalitha Kala Academy. He has also exhibited a solo
show Enchanting Illusion, 2019 at DHI Art Space Gallery, Hyderabad and was part of a group show in
2018 at the same gallery. Virendra is interested in public projects and has worked with Hyderabad
Central University, Telangana Police Academy, etc, giving himself the opportunity to explore and
work on bigger projects. He currently resides in Banaras continuing his exploratory art practice.
Upendra Ram (1987) Siwan, Bihar is a ceramicist based out of Nagpur. He graduated with an MFA in
Pottery & Ceramics from Banaras Hindu University in 2013. He practices ceramics as a conceptual
medium using narratives that form puns on human existence. He has been a resident at Artshila
Foundation, Siwan, in Orissa and in Chattishgarh, and at Uttarayan Art Foundation, Baroda. He is the
resident ceramicist at Studio Pottery, Nagpur currently. He has had a dual solo ‘ Object Making
Exercises’ with Mayuri Chari at the India Art Fair, New Delhi in 2023, ‘People Painting’ in 2024 at the
Strangers House Gallery, Bombay and a dual solo with Prof. Prakash Bhise at the Gallery Art & Soul in
2021 which was curated by Prabhakar Kamble.
