HIEROGLYPHS
NEEL PAWAN BARUA: A RELENTLESS NIZORA OF INVENTIVE VERVE
Neel Pawan Barua is the most revered name in the art world of Assam and the rest of North East too. The younger generation respects ‘Neel da’ as a painter, a teacher, a cultural activist and above all a mentor to many of them. He is a recipient of numerous prestigious awards and honours in the realm of art and is also the founder of Assam Fine Arts & Crafts Society. Despite the status he enjoys and the large body of work that he has produced, he is not a celebrated name in the contemporary art scenario obviously because he has never shown his work in the galleries outside his state barring a couple of group shows. He leads a Spartan life with his wife Deepali Borthakur, the most illustrious Assamese singer of yesteryears, away from the crowds and works incessantly. Very few get an access to the corpus of work that is carelessly piled up in his studio. This is why, Hieroglyphs, the present show curated by Ganesh Gohain, his ardent admire, is very significant. It is not exactly a retrospective of Neel Pawan Barua’s work but it certainly showcases a significant section of it that betrays the early initiatives towards the inauguration of Modernism in the north eastern states of India.
Neel da’s total corpus of work can baffle the onlooker not only because of its volume but also due to the stylistic, lingual and technical divergence discernible through it and most importantly, sans any trace of dilettantism which, otherwise could be at the root of such inconsistency. He worked in clay, ceramics, oils, acrylic and papier mache but his most remarkable work is found on the flimsy surfaces like news papers, cigarette packets and match boxes. Neel da is a chain smoker and consumes a number of cigarette packets every day. All those packets and the match boxes he emptied till date have found place in his creative pursuit. The news papers he painted may run into several hundred meters if arranged in a row and the piles of papier mache reliefs which he believes are inspired by Somnath Hore’s ‘wounds’ could reach the ceiling of his studio. Neel da resorts to different renditions while exploring the possibilities of these media but the imagery that he employs almost remains unchanged. Elephants, Griffins, Garuda, Vyalas keep appearing in his work, whatever may be the form or phase of it. I learnt from Ganesh Gohain that Neel da belongs to a family of littérateurs. His father, Binanda chandra Barua was a well known poet admired for his phonetically fanciful compositions. Neel da was introduced to literary works like Chitra Bhagwat and other Vaishnava manuscripts in his childhood. He also used to participate in embellishing the chariots and palanquins of Gods to be used in the processions during the Holi festival. Neel da quips that he never thought that it is going to be his life time occupation while flaunting his draftsmanly skills to the village crowds. The decorative architectural and textile patterns and the design sensibility that prevailed in this hilly region however, seem to have contributed significantly in formulating his pictorial idiom. Ornamentation is integral to it.
He had his formal education in art from Shantiniketan and feels sincerely indebted to the institute as well as to his teachers but his work seldom reveals that lineage for it was a conscious choice that he made after returning to Assam to revive the visual world and culture that he lived in as a child in his art. Ganesh vividly remembers Neelda’s preoccupation and affinity towards the Philosophy of Shankardeva, the medieval rebel saint that keeps surfacing in Neel da’s discourses. The cultural legacy preserved in the ‘Satra’s in the form of architecture, votive objects, textiles has enriched Neel Pawan Barua’s imagery. He also thinks that the long scrolls that Neel da painted on news papers are inspired by the Vrindavani vastra, the illustrated textile that spreads through 180’x 90’ and he aspires to produce a painting that may rival the Vrindavani vastra in size, beauty and complexity. It is an attempt to reinterpret the imagery that always was close to the heart of Assamese, in the contemporary context to propagate the new possibilities of art making to the budding artists of his state.
For various personal reasons Neel da is confined to his home town since decades. It is almost a self imposed incarceration but he keeps updating himself on matters of art. The large collection of books that he has is like a window to him to peep into the contemporary art world, the Klimts, the Munchs, the Bacons and the Van Dongens perhaps crept into his work through the same passage or perhaps were ushered into it to be introduced to the young art enthusiasts around him. While talking to Ganesh he once compared himself with a mountain brook- a nizora in his own language, which tows everything along that comes its way and keeps flowing relentlessly. The metaphor not only explains his prolificacy but also elucidates his humble but apt self analysis. It divulges his zealous kuntswollen – his creative urge that provided him with the energy to produce persistently in absence of the commonly known driving force called ambition.
Neel da did not reveal any inclination towards abstraction in his early work except a brief stint with it during his student days. His painting, as observed earlier, always had references to representational imagery but since three-four years, his work is divulging some abstracting tendencies. The oft recurring and de contextualized appearance of the traditional motifs in his parole eventually seems to have granted them a gravity of pictographic characters. These motifs get even more simplified in his recent most work that resemble with the Chinese calligraphy. Similar strokes appear in his earlier work too but they are in white unlike the recent ones which are in dirty red like blood stains. In the former instance, they superimpose and destroy the pre existing painted picture, in the latter the overlapping strokes themselves become a picture that may distantly appear like the action painting but the strong undercurrent of nihilism in his abstract work cannot be overlooked.
The material he chose for his recent work is almost like a fodder to his unending craving for articulation, which he goes on doing irrespective of the time, locale and medium. The surface that is available to him wherever he goes and at any moment of the day is the cigarette case and the match box he carries. With a pen in his pocket he can satiate his addiction anywhere anytime! Ganesh finds it almost like the contemporary performative acts. In fact they are quite like the jottings in a diary – very personal, spontaneous still pertinent.
