User:Hochiminph

WOMANSPEAK

IN AN angst-ridden world, artists exist vicariously through the emotional content of their protagonists. In a suite of paintings and sculptures titled Sthree Parwam a young artist from Kottayam dissects the sensibilities of women, and lays them bare as it were. Even when you feel you've felt it all, the protestations continue.

The lives of the women who inhabit Hochimin P H's canvases are singularly wretched, where the institution of marriage only accentuates their bondage. Through his art Hochimin seeks a way out of this repression; pessimistically concluding that "women can soar only when freed of their bangles and anklets."

The Narmada is an account of the controversy that surrounds the Sardar Sarovar project; the river takes on the form of a woman, as rivers in India are wont to do. The figure hovers and floats above; the tricolour is turned upside down, denoting that the entire project is anti-national and against the interests of the people. The tampering has left the area barren and desert-like; a vivid orange replaces the greenery. The drawing is staccato but the artist is a gifted colourist. He succeeds in applying broad areas of flat colours, juxtaposing strident blues and inky blacks to get bold, clashing effects of base colours. He says the tonal variation enables him to use the space more effectively.

His works are highly symbolic. In a sculptural piece titled `Ottal,' Hochimin likens the femme vulnerability to that of fish. `Ottal' is a commonly used fishing device used in and around his hometown. Just as the fish meekly surrender to the fisherman's bait, women too fall prey to the machinations and brutalities of the men who control them. Even in his sculpture he remains true to his colouring style; turquoise and ochre are juxtaposed to get a stunning effect. Hochimin isn't still decided how he wants to portray his central character. He vacillates; more often than not she is a study of despair and resignation as in `Erittunu Mulakodukkunnaval.' But in Ajin Bibi he does a volte face where she is described as powerful, drawing her strength from an inner resource.

So how does he define his woman, beaten and used or heroic in the aftermath of abuse? You come away wondering

SUNANDA KHANNA

REHEARSING THE DRAMA OF HORNS: HOCHIMIN’S RECENT WORKS BENOY.P.J One of the aspects central to many strands of populism is the constant evocation of a generalized consensus to the detriment of all dissenting/ different voices. The nation, in such an imaginary, figures as a plurality that seeks recourse to homogeneity so as to function more efficiently. Hochimin’s work refuses to take to heart such a short-circuiting of culture and instead attempts to create ‘Solitary Monologues’ which are necessarily musings from the midst of life that foreground the possibility of putting out new sprouts into an arid zone. Though the structure of the emerging globular protrusion from the ground reminds one of the works of Jyoti Basu, here it starts to signify differently. In the paintings ‘The solitary monologue’ and ‘The ins and outs’ while this protuberance appear in all singularity and calls forth a concentrated attention, in ‘The Attendant’ the plurality of their presence adds to the narrative an added dimension. The Babel like towers/ forts in the background play with the logic of aspirations while their simultaneous occurrence subverts the narrative of singularity in terms of emancipatory ideals/ visual strategies. The lion on top of the globe in ‘Solitary monologues’ parodies the aspirations to power of the individual while at the same time drawing out the possibility of multi-centered strategies towards politics wherein different subordinated groups can articulate their particularistic demands and also form equivalential chains along which the question of hegemony can be addressed. REHEARSING THE DRAMA OF HORNS What happens when a man is all horn, so much so that the head disappears altogether and is replaced by horns in its place? Is it the mere disappearance of the head- or is there something that goes beyond it? Maybe a head that makes itself into a horn. Who then, will sound this horn? Is the head irretrievably lost? Or is there a music in which all that is lost is regained? To Hochimin the drama of horns is something that he has been rehearsing for a long time now. Is it the strange way in which the common man’s body (marked red) is transmuted by the workings of power that is alluded to in these works?. While it is common enough for paternalistic movements to have intellectual leadership coming from the elite strata, the common man recurrently figures as a mindless and senseless brute who need to be coached in the civilized language of the elite to act in a meaningful manner at all. Intellectuals coming from minor communities are derided as stooges of the State/ imperialism or the ruling class, or of patriarchy, while the elaborate ties/arrangements maintained by the caste-hindu elite leaderships with regard to Power are seldom submitted to close scrutiny. It is perhaps this ambivalence that a painting like ‘The Attendant’ attempts to address. The reduction of subordinated people into mere objects, bodies and so on, without any active part in the reconstruction of their own fates is a common enough racist fantasy, Hochimin, in a simultaneous move exposes/ problematizes this working of the ‘majoritarian’ imaginary and point towards other modes of minor becomings which destabilizes or undermines Power. In ‘The ins and outs’ again plays with the globular presence, this time closer and more immediate, but the almost classical figure in the foreground with its headphone is almost unaware of the goings on, immersed in its own favorite music on the one hand and in a red cavity (catacomb ?) on the other. The top portion here is an ambiguous space which could well be the ocean or the sky or maybe an indefinite continuum of these. In his earlier drawings like ‘The horseman’ and ‘My name is….’ (alluding perhaps to the controversial hindi film.) Hochimin’s work constantly examines political strategies that fail to touch core problems (glove and the microphone; caste hegemony and the reduction of the subaltern to a headless beast) even while aspiring towards populist goals. However the addresses to the popular are not singularly negativistic here, since the work sets out to dwelve within the popular in such a way that the strategies of power inherent in the working of hegemony are exposed so that other perspectives could start playing significant roles.