Source: Performance Art Report at Khoj

Sushil Kumar

Sushil Kumar is a maverick artist whose practice shows a conscious resistance to institutionalised art practice. His work directly and indirectly questions notions of beauty, of appreciation, of creativity and even goes so far as to question the audience and what it means to view an art work.

“My ideas comes from everydayness. When you see my work, you should come away thinking, ‘even I can do this’! Engagement with the everyday is very important for me. After all that is what links art with life.”

The point of departure, for Sushil Kumar, lies in extending the everyday and ‘expending’ it into an evocation of nation and memory. Thus, in a work like Bootwala, the artist re- enacts the familiar punishment doled out to students, that of being made to assume the pose of a ‘Murga’, and subjecting himself to a considerable amount of exertion and pain, crawls, hops and trudges along a crowded street in Khirkee Village, before reaching the doorstep of Khoj. The re-enactment here becomes a critique of a recognised punishment at one level, the prolonged exhibition of which allows for its cruelty to come to the surface. But the performance, by entering the public realm, performed as it was in front of a live audience, becomes a critique of society as well, of how we view such acts, with indifference, with amusement or even with pleasure. The artist broods further on the multiple meanings of the act through which it becomes possible to view the concept of ‘lesson’ as “learning, teaching as well as violence” at the same time.

“My performance is an axis-mundi that can open up to a number of entry points. The effort, at all times, is to break out of my conditionality- to break free from the shackles.”

Another performance piece, titled ‘Habeas Corpus’, sees the artist trace the contours of his own body, as he lies naked inside a house with visitors looking on. On conclusion of this act, the marked space is then filled up with shoes, with names of people written on them as well as business and identity cards scattered all over the footwear. While the performance includes the artist reading out a poem towards the end, just this simple act becomes a powerful critique of identities that become objectified and are drowned within the hysteria of war and strife. The body remains a mere trace, its phenomenological existence forgotten within the created chaos.

The artist has much to say on the issue of activism. “I dislike this talk about art and activism, it’s a matter of convenience for the critic. Life, for me is nothing without activism”. But at the same time, he doesn’t wish to shout about it from the rooftops. The connotation that he’d much rather use is cultural practice, which he considers to be about empowerment rather than politics that “is always about power”.

The appeal of performance, for Sushil Kumar, lies in its directness. It allows the artist to make a human intervention through his/her body, something that takes place “in real time and space”. “You can engage with a person totally. The audience cannot be passive in a live performance. And participation and intervention on the part of the audience is very important for me.”

A parting remark serves to explain the nature of Sushil Kumar’s artistic proposition when he says, “my creation is a suggestion, you can react any which way.”