Photograph Album

I had started this project of working with stains by photographing the marks in my tea-cup and then getting them digitally printed onto fabric. Suddenly, about a month ago, it struck me that I wanted to work with photos and not have them printed on fabric. I wanted to use photographs from an album and embroider them. I went to the photo album of stains on my computer, edited some images – posterized them and played around on with the little photoshop stuff I had picked up over the years.

 

 There was a sense of urgency to the whole process. I was excited and wanted to see what would emerge, as much as the need to work through  a very stressful phase where I wasn’t getting the usual time to exercise, meditate and write in my journal – dealing with all that came up with the kind of careful scrutiny and analysis I have used to deal with the emotional build-up. I was quite stressed and didn’t have the patience to work with the hand so I used the sewing machine. Actually it was next to impossible to really get much done with hand sewing. Photo paper is thick and the stitches were large and gangly and didn’t really do much to alleviate or express the frazzled state.

 

I hadn’t really used the machine much since my last lesson; the experience of which I shared in a recent post. I didn’t have a clue as to how the machine would respond to photographic paper but some exploration and experimentation revealed that the machine is really quite amenable. If I had any problem it was with the paper, which tore easily. But that was resolved by using fabric beneath and above the paper. Yes, this did sort of create a veil and softened the stains, which made me want to add another element. And that was when I decided to burn the photos.

Armed with candles, some I burned with the fabric already stitched. And some were set alight before I put them under the scrutiny of the needle. As the photos of the stains, that I had recorded some time in 2009, burned, I realised that I was in some sense burning the stains – those marks that symbolized embarrassment, guilt and shame. I felt my frazzled nerves calm down almost as if I was off-loading emotional baggage - catharsis was taking place and without the usual ritual of conversations.

 

 

Burning photos, I found, was different to burning ordinary paper.  I didn’t want to really burn them to ashes so I kept a close watch over the photos as they burned and noticed a few things. They burned slowly. And instead of shrivelling up with a bundle of soft and feathery ash beneath them, like regular paper did, the ink smoulders, the paper melts and cracks. The ash is not soft and papery and in some sense purified by the fire, like paper being reduced to ashes – it has a kind of ugly quality.  It is not even ash, the photos crackle into a kind of putrid, thick and almost sticky, black substance. Photographs being burned created the oddest sensation which I encapsulated in a poem.

Flame
Yellow Orange
Ice-blue
within the burning red  

sets ablaze
photos

Ink smoulders
Paper melts
smokes
crackles into putrid ash

After the ritual of burning I sewed into the layers of photo-paper and fabric. It was a very intense process. Controlling the machine - to go round and round the marks, as I do by hand, is easier said than done. Especially with a novice like me trying to do it, but I had such fun. I wasn’t interested in making a piece of work that spoke of fine craftsmanship but wanted to explore the idea of erasing marks in the mind – memories that mark us. Going round and around the marks allows for tracing those marks – like going over the conversations or experience and putting them into perspective.

As I worked with the machine and then the hand - sewing in those odd details that only the hand can do, I realized that the stains or marks of experience that one may try and ‘burn’, are never really erased from memory. They can be buried in time, warped through its seconds and minutes, months and years, but what the mind may feel is forgotten becomes embedded in the body. The body doesn’t forget.
 

Those cells which supposedly renew themselves, they seem to retain the nature of our experiences in a way that our minds seem to have forgotten. I mean, think about it: if we have truly erased, forgiven and forgotten, then what accounts for the countless diseases that abound? 

As a healer I am all too familiar with the idea of stuff being buried under the carpet which shows up as dis-ease and therefore I think it is more about pushing things out of our minds, which often  may seem as if we have forgotten.  It’s worth pondering on why some people are healthier than others – especially those who are more cantankerous, miserable and vocal about their woes.

Memories
sewn as thought 
fade

These marks
buried in time

warped through weft   

the body
doesn't forget

The Emerging State of Restlessness

A couple of Thursdays ago, I decided to do some more burning and took some videos. The silk fabric smouldered its way into gaping holes while the cotton muslin raged a fire. It was the bright orange and yellow flames, sullying and consuming the pristine muslin, which I found empathy with. Strangely, this amused me. Later in the evening as I was embroidering, I listened to Beethoven’s violin concerto. It’s one of my all-time favourite pieces of music and hearing it for the nth time - feeling the rousing music, empathizing with its anguished melody, feeling it in my own body, I was reminded of the empathy I’d had with that raging fire in the morning.

 

I watched the video again and again. Looking at the embers dance across the edges of the fabric, I felt mesmerized, as if in awe of its rage. A mixture of black and red marks kept moving along the threads, creating an odd shape that now looks almost like that of an undiscovered country or the newly demarcated borders of an emerging one. But, it was the roaring fire that I felt excited by. Regrettably, it flared up for just a short time before fear got the better of me and I jumped upon it with glass paper weights, which I use to control the lines consumed by fire. Thak thak I went with the glass ball on the board and the fire was snuffed out.
 

Yes, I have started another train of thought. Restive as I am, I have no idea where it is going.  I feel  anxiety welling up. I want to reach that point of peacefulness and do some painstaking, repetitive and meditative embroidery. I know I cannot push it. Sometimes one has to accept the negative emotions before they can be transcended and rushing it only creates stress.  But I am not appeased. I hate this feeling of wretchedness that has enveloped me. I cannot remember ever being so restless and irritated with myself.

 

But at this point, there is just so much going on that I do not know where to put my mind. I focus on bills to be paid, feel relieved in paying them when another two are presented and my throat constricts because it means tightening the belt a bit more. Then there was the fracas with my cook.  Sometimes I wish I had been born with a less sensitive nature, less alert mind, slower memory and less discipline, so that I could be easier on those around me. We have not been talking to each for over a month. I thought I would broach the subject today, but she was not amenable to what I had to say and I cannot deal with insubordination so its status quo again. The domestic shenanigans are endless and these days I no longer think it a boon to work from home.
 

That Thursday morning [19^th September] my attention was also caught by a newspaper story of the young boy who died under mysterious circumstances while at a party in South Delhi. The new version of the mishap has been going through my mind all day, albeit in between paying bills, handling domestic issues and more. I kept wondering who to believe. One day he’s been hit on the head with a blow that ostensibly killed him. And then a journalist, from a high profile news magazine, later says that he was witness to the whole thing: that the boy was never hit upon the head and that the police took way too long taking him to the hospital so they should be questioned about this curious delay, implying that something amiss took place within this unaccounted time span. Boy, it now seems that the police goofed up, yet again!

 

Everyday someone is mysteriously killed or dies in a mishap; is raped or there are riots and the media is  hysterical about everything. They ridiculously play up most innocuous of events. And one day I noted that party officers leaving for Rajnath’s house for the final decision on Modi’s nomination, as the BJP candidate for Prime Minister in the next elections, was cited as ‘Breaking News’. Unbelievable!

 

There is so much that is going on all the time. How does anyone keep up? When things are awry, where does one even begin to take a stand? How many petitions one has signed but to what avail? And studying that raging fire, I could feel again, all these thoughts burning inside of me, seeing them reflected in the flames. It was cleansing, I was appeased a bit, but is there no better solution? Are we all going to set ablaze something to cleanse the anger we  feel?

I do not like to  rave and rant about the abysmal state of the nation and find such drawing-room conversations counterproductive. When I ask those who talk of little else what they are doing about it, I am met with an awkward  silence. But, this is short-lived, like pausing for breath, after which the practised tirade against the government continues. My philosophy is: what can I do in my capacity as an individual, within my sphere of influence, to help change the attitude/situation? As an artist, teacher, citizen, woman and all the other hats that one does wear in life, there are countless ways of doing things to make that difference. I believe that real change actually happens through these seemingly insignificant roles and our daily interactions, rather than the protest marches that have become so popular.

 

There is such chaos everywhere. While  doing my embroidery, I watched my thoughts as they tumbled out, in that relative quietude. There’s so much disharmony and pain everywhere, it is really hard to find a moment when one feels at peace with oneself. It’s hard to find clarity in this chaos. And to top it all the local Mandir blares its daily Puja, in the most dissonant voice, three times a day, needlessly adding to the cacophony. Everyone else here, is afraid to raise a voice against them so I fight my lone battle against this.

 

Yes there is a fire raging within - it’s unstoppable.  And yes, another country seems to be emerging.  Articulating its state of restlessness through delicately burnt contours of indented, curvaceous bays and oddly protruding isthmuses.  Asserting its existence against the ephemeral back-drop of a translucent, white organza: Its manifesto yet to be declared. That is, if it’s here to stay.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Painting With Fire

Earlier when I worked with stains, I was observing stains made by tea leaf residue in my cup. I took lots of photos and then got some digitally printed onto fabric. I would then trace these marks with a kantha or running stitch and sometimes finish the edges with a border, using cross stitch. There was something very peaceful about looking at stains this way. I had not created them. They did not speak of the stains in my own mind but, were leading me to look at those marks through which I judged myself, the way many of us do. This process allowed me to examine the marks in an objective way, lending confidence to look at the real stuff that filled my mind.  

 

The advertisement for a popular detergent which says “daag acche hai” [i] caught my attention with the idea that in doing something good for others, if the garb gets soiled, the stains could not seen merely as dirt to be washed off. We do unwittingly bring home dirt in an attempt at playing the Good Samaritan, but if we stand back we can see  the ‘good’ in the experience. For me this objectivity is gained by going over and over the same thoughts and sometimes, I need to express fully what I feel, before I can stand back and see things without the rancour of an emotional state.

 

Going over the photographed marks again and again, finding the courage to look into the dark lanes, I moved away from the printed images to create my own stains, which I have been working on for a few months now. It’s not a comforting process. Sometimes I think, or rather I hope that I have reached a point where I can just sit and amble along the marks with the running stitch I so love, but then I look at the piece and it does not have that raw emotion I want to present.

When something gnaws at you, it has the power to consume you and that was what I wanted to speak of. So I brought ‘burning’ back into the process and started painting with fire.
 

I used the fabrics that I had stained with tea and other stuff in the kitchen. I created a collage of sorts, using some shibori that I had done too, along with some white net. This looked really fabulous and gave a kind of ethereal effect. I like to think of it as grace that descends when the fire of any emotion, not just anger but even love - when the passion has burnt itself out.

For a while I was quite happy with the burning process. I loved watching the embers dance along the edge of the fabric and then die out as the fabric shrivelled into a grey ash. But it was also quite a draining process. My eyes would smart and I would feel really tired in a very short while and could not quite understand why. Saba Hasan, a painter, who also has played with fire, says she thinks it is the process, but I think it has a lot to do with the toxic fumes that I breathed in which the lungs do not appreciate. At least not after I have spent the morning doing pranayama!

 

 

 

 

I burned what I wanted to and then took the fabric back to the stitching course. But, then again after a few days of forming those concentric circles with kantha, where I pucker the fabric and create a raised effect- something I usually delight in doing, I found there was no charm in doing this kantha work anymore. It was stifling the piece, so one Sunday I just took the fabrics I had painstakingly stitched together and embellished with kantha and cut it in up in places, ripped it apart in others, tearing at the threads with pointed instruments I keep just for this purpose, and then proceeded to torch it with the naked flame of a candle till it burnt though the multiple and complex layers.

It was an aggressive process and quite cathartic too. But it didn’t end there. I did feel able to return to sewing for a while and had a couple of days that were quite ethereal and graceful with the needle slipping in and out of the layers of stains, now charred in places and ripped in others; taking her thread, sewing, repairing and decorating with textures and colour- adding life to the fragile fragments. And then again discontent was stirred: I felt that none of this was really evocative enough. I thought I would bring some cross stitch into the piece. Something just seemed to be missing. I wanted to do something different,  but was not certain what this could or should be.

I cut up some matte to place behind the piece with its gaping burnt holes and was thinking how I would approach the uniform cross-stitch with this ungainly, raw, burnt texture and form, when I decided that I did not feel patient enough to do all that needle work. I just wanted some colour in there so what was wrong with some red fabric? I wanted a flamboyant red, to complement the burned, brown edges, which now seemed so forlorn and uninteresting, with its bloody hue.

 

 I only had some organza in my cupboard and that did not look quite right, so the next day I went to the local market and got some poplin and voile that had been commercially dyed. Now, about a week or so of having stitched the fabric and burned the edges of the red fabrics and put it all together, I have to admit that I want to go back a few stages and leave the fabric without this backing and let the gaping holes speak for themselves. This means that I have to undo all that stitching I have done. Do I need the bloody-red or is it overbearing?   I rather think it is, but these days the muse is fickle.....

 

 

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[i] Stains are good

[ii] Tie-dye