Dhanaraj Keezhara
P Sudhakaran
Loneliness can be seductive, even though it is painful. It can also be like a cactus that can pierce you all over. When we see the paintings of American artist Edward Hopper, who encapsulated the unban loneliness in American life, we experience both these extremes. He was a painter who portrayed the seclusion of humanity even when they are not alone. When he was asked about this recurrent loneliness in his works, his answer was very sharp, “I’m after ME”. Human beings can be utterly lonely even when they socialize, and that was what Hopper visualized with his lonely beings.
However, that was not the kind of loneliness we experienced in the recent times, when Covid-19 pandemic brought our real life to a grinding halt, taking us to the possibilities of a virtual life, which is not all that fascinating in real terms. Thus, in this time of turbulent loneliness, me and you ‘re-invented’ the social media, to which we are already addicted, and we also ‘rediscovered’ ourselves with the selfies, as if we are deeply narcissistic. We kept on watching and re-watching all the social media platforms, pretending ourselves to be cheerful beings! Thus we learnt to tell lies to ourselves!
It is from that virtual prison of loneliness that Dhanaraj Keezhara discovered a new direction in his creative pursuits – portraying the lonely beings, as if they are seeing themselves in a mirror –at times as singular beings, at times as multiples of self. But they are all in a world of loneliness. At the same time, this is a reflection and exploration, where he sees himself, and through that image the world around him, gripped in silence of solitude.
Here, in this series, ‘Of Solitude and Selfies’, the artist is not portraying himself, but seeing the world through himself as an icon. Here the human figure is a metaphor of humanity caught up in turmoil from within and outside.
Silence has always been the trait of Dhanaraj’s world of creativity. When we see some of his older paintings such as the lonely theyyam artist looking at the mirror, we experience this. This silence is expressive and it says a lot. But this time, it is more audible, as if in Edward Munch’s, ‘The Scream’, which screams in silence.
The inspiration, or rather the provocation, to do these paintings was the thought as to how could he mark this time, which is not at all familiar to us, says the artist. “In these turbulent days, I observed that people go deep into themselves and ‘selfie’ has become the expression of our times. So, naturally, I felt I should use it to portray our times through me only,” he shares how it all happened. But, socially and politically this selfie is not ‘me’; it’s not ‘you’ either. It’s a world comprising ‘you’, ‘me’, ‘we’ and the life around us. But we are all passing through loneliness that is not as creative as solitude. The selfie is the mode for us to mark ourselves intimately – our life, time and the environs where we wait inordinately, in the hope that one day everything will open and we find the meaning of ourselves.
At times we are like Vladimir (Didi) and Estragon (Gogo), the two characters who keep on wasting their time waiting for the non-existent savior in Samuel Beckett’s play, ‘Waiting for Godot’. While Didi and Gogo were inordinately waiting for that divine spirit, here the waiting is for a brighter world, free from the pandemic blues, the confinement. Those were the days when we realized how painful our existence is and how fragile is our identity. In these paintings, Dhanaraj’s effort was to recount the state of mind that he passed through during the days of the pandemic – personal, emotional and social reflections and also the concerns about health. These are the tales of the fragile existence of humanity. They also reflect the same stillness in ‘Waiting for Godot’: “Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it’s awful!” However, unlike the life of the two tramps, here we experience some hope for sure.
In this frail stage of existence, we tried to overcome the fear and anxiety by loving ourselves more deeply. This is a state of mind that one cannot express in words, and the feeling within would differ from person to person. “Here I tried to express myself what I passed through, and this is my effort to overcome the sense of solitude, fear and loneliness,” he adds.
At the same time, when the artist transfers himself into the canvas, the image becomes powerful and potent, at times reminding a lonely warrior or an acrobatic dancer. At times he is like a forlorn oracle and the sprouts from the ground become his sword. But these are not the divine ones for sure, they are vicious instead. Even the flora and fauna are like the weapons of extermination here in this unidentified landscape. There is a momentum, a fighting spirit in these paintings, which are meditative at the same time.
While he was confined to the
four walls of his urban dwelling, he realized what loneliness is, says the
artist. “I experienced its hues (and darkness) when I was left alone. On one
hand, it was an implosion of beauty and on the other it was the fearful
pressure of being cut off from the world, even the immediate one. I am sure in
the last few months the most powerful feeling that we all experienced was fear.
No doubt, the fear of death gripped most of us when we lost many dear ones,” he
shares the angst he faced those days and how he found an escape route by
vigorously doing paintings.
While reading about the departure of the dear ones who succumbed to the deadly virus, the fear that ‘tomorrow it could be me’ was engraved in the minds of everyone so deeply that they became an island of fear and seclusion. And, it is from that feeling of being thrown away to loneliness that Dhanaraj ignited his creative thinking in a new direction.
The motives of the self that reflect a turbulent period in history is a new statement by Dhanaraj. But this is a continuation of his major works in the first stage of the spread of the pandemic, ‘Episodes of Exodus’. Some of those elements reincarnate here as well. However, here the pain is much more intense, and the silent cries echo in every canvas, while the artist tries to emancipate himself from the clutches of the solitude.
