How do neighbourhoods inform aesthetic practices of a city? Golpitha, in the neighbourhood of Kamathipura becomes the constituency of poetry for the Dalit Panther Namdeo Dhasal. A district far beyond our pretensions but in the centre of Mumbai’s imaginary as an urban space, it’s proximity to our moral lives defines the hypocrisies of human existence. Prakash Bhise, a retired professor of painting at the LS Raheja College of Arts, and a friend of Dhasal makes grey blackboards illustrating Dhasal’s opus ‘Golpitha’ bringing alive a geographic settlement that is as intellectually and culturally relevant in the 1970s to Bombay, as was the Harlem Renaissance to New York.

How does the space between two arms author the shape of a ceramic object? Jean ARP called his ceramic sculptures concrete propositions rather than abstract forms because they occupy physical space and germinate as manifestations in our mind. Upendra Ram allows the space that forms between two arms to be diagrams of experiments for his jars. They are at times topped by a human head or etched by swaying human torsos conversing with the intent of Dhasal’s poetry that dealt with the human condition.

Upendra Ram depicts himself chased by a dog; these are memories of a childhood that informs his practice today. As a toddler he would make dolls using the clay from the banks of the village pond much to the chagrin of his mother who saw it as a feminine preoccupation. Until his uncle living in Patna relented because he had seen artists being respected there. A string tied to a dragonfly reminds us of aspirations to fly – an emotion held by most kids who see planes only as part of visual fiction in Rural India. A slaughtered sow and a weeping woman narrates the rituals and dichotomies of village faith and the context of sacrifice. The structures relate to the mounds used as totems to village gods that Upendra Ram’s family was expected to fashion out of clay and colour for the village’s privileged castes. The illustrative narrative is Upendra Ram’s distinct contribution to Indian ceramics as he changes tracks of aesthetic evolution away from the decorative and the need for utility in the objects. Rather it is sculptural, conceptual and steeped in the experiment of forms and narration.

Upendra Ram comes from Siwan, Bihar and has studied art in Benaras, eastern Uttar Pradesh or Purvanchal. Across this region on the gates of villages long limbed horses and elephants greet travellers, installed in devotion of Raja Salhes, Goraiya Baba, Shokha Baba, Bandi Devi and Veer Chuharmal. These are indigenous Gods who are village deities and are called Gramdevtas and are made of clay mounds which may look abstract but concrete in their intent to vanquish inequality, discrimination and abject sadness. At times they are terracotta and, in some villages, unfired clay. Upendra Ram’s sophisticated beautiful renderings in ceramic gives a nod to the traditions of communities using beautiful manifestations as forms of dissent. Ceramic has always been an elite arena, what differentiates a ceramic object than the fired clay utensils from a potter’s wheel. In parts of north India taboos disallow the re- use of terracotta chai cups as a marker of caste untouchability. Upendra Ram recalibrates this relationship. Dhasal in his peons of praise raises the residents of abject and a red light district into the deities of a city who hold character by living the truth in its face unbridled by society or its morality.

Prakash Bhise’s drawings in ode to Namdeo Dhasal do not depict the poet rather they depict the subjects of Dhasal’s opus. You see women organising themselves, at work and leisure. You see them manifest near the statue of Ambedkar and you see the district come alive through an interplay of work and quotidien life. Prakash Bhise’s nephew Vikrant Bhise draws the portrait of Dhasal in the show and the famous portraitist Pramodbabu Ramteke makes a portrait of Prakash Bhise. Portraits were the first forms that rejected the abstract forms that allowed ambiguity in thought and action. Ambedkar was introduced to art by Dattoba Salvi who was the court portraitist at Shahu Maharaj’s palace in Kolhapur. Bhise makes portraits of the subjects of Dhasal’s poems continuing a tradition. An edition of serigraphs of Dhasal’s drawings that accompanied his publication Golpitha along with his writings flanks the opening wall of the exhibition.

During the pandemic of 2020, Bhise draws moving migrants and female sanitary workers who risk their lives by continuing to clean the metropolis city of Mumbai. He draws the migrants who began leaving their villages escaping caste and poverty in the nineteenth century finding jobs and homes in Bombay. Their 21st century reverse migration is captured in his drawings. During the Spanish Flu of the early 20th century migrants in Bombay fled to their villages and Bhise’s family lost many members. His grandfather one night buried 5 bodies, when he returned home his wife asked him to go retrieve the silver chain left on the neck of one of the girls who was a toddler. It was needed to fund food. The pandemic was accompanied by shortages of foods and it was followed by successive famines. Bhise draws this scene alongside his pandemic drawings relating to a personal history of loss. His drawings of ‘Golpitha’ are sensitive, an art artist cannot forget, for in times of existential life, empathy is the only connection we share as humans.

Buddhism deals with the human at the centre of its philosophical discourse, it plays to erect a way of life concerned by one’s personal logic rather than a philosophical exercise, aesthetics that follow the human way help us context, contest and repair dichotomous realities of the world. In celebration of Namdeo Dhasal’s life and work visual memoriam ensues towards new vehicles of change.

Prabhakar Kamble (1986), Shendur is a Mumbai based artist, curator and cultural activist who works with the notions of Equality in his practice dealing with social realities stemming from existential conditionings and Ambedkarite consciousness. He has co-curated ‘Broken Foot-Unfolding Inequalities’ a COVID-19 fundraiser of 60 artists, at Mojarto.com and NDTV India, 2021, ‘Heard- Unheard’ India Art Fair 2019. He curated ‘Working Practices’, at the Showroom, London, 2017, which was a significant curation with a cross disciplinary format in conjunction with Clark House Initiative. The curation drew from the connections between British Black Arts movement and artists whose practices concerned with Dalit politics within the Indian contemporary art. He works in the grassroots as a cultural activist and is the convenor of the Secular Art Movement. His solo shows as an artist include ‘Existential’. 2017, Clark House Initiative and a debut solo at the Jehangir Art Gallery – ‘Agitation of a restless Mind’ in 2016. He has written more than 60 essays on fellow artists.