Art Interpretation India & Letter INDIA 2011 & THE LETTER TO OTTAWA

It's hard not to connect with the commonality of these two pieces: they are both comments and complaints. They each reflect what could be but what is not; perhaps what used to be but is no longer. It is difficult to tell if they reflect anger or disappointment or are just a call to make sure things get better. There is no doubt that each reflects some reach out for action.

INDIA 2011

The story of my experiment with truth. Erik Olsen tells me of his uncertainty of the results of this piece alongside the ways that he presents the perfect, the medicinal, the successful and the ideal. Yet the way he does it is with a presentation of opposites of a sort in a way that it cannot really be clear what he thinks. It is an experiment, and one lives with the results of an experiment instead of proclaiming excitement about its findings. Doing otherwise might suggest that the investigative artist had a plan for the outcome, which seems unscientific, lacking in objectivity, untrue in this instance.

There are several parts of this work that go together. He identifies his comments on death and destruction. He makes connections with modern capitalism and shows how it has good and bad results. Then he idealizes what is commanding about a piece of the land and a visionary person who is at the least Faking It.

Death and destruction is what the beast walks upon. Fire curls up his legs, fallen trees, trash; the leftover from all that someone or something else has done to the place and the spaces. The elephant did not do it even with his or her powerful influence. Oil perhaps. The taking of things for sure. "It's all up from here" he says...

There are people always coming. More and more people steadily adding to the actual size of a population that is getting larger. They have something to do with this. Faith has something to do with it, though I cannot tell whether it is good faith through religion or bad faith because of religion.
Commercialism runs rampant. WOW. American made perhaps. New. Full Power. 24 hours. 50 Rupee buys what? It's hard to know where some comments belong. Mass Slums. Shanty. Are they death and destruction or the wonders of the actual size of the nation and its opportunities, some better clearly than others? We think of the ugliness of the waste of these places, but the artist sees Hero Bikes. Take what you will of this. Horn Please.

What I find most interesting in a way is the artists use of two iconic representations of a person and a place. Modern Amrita She Gil is the person. Kantakumari (Kanyakumari?) the place.

The place is a district on the extreme southern end of the country. Interestingly, it is a place on the sea where three bodies come together as one, the waters of the Arabian Sea, the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean. What this means exactly isn't clear, but the Gods seemed to favor the location as a place of healing. In Hindu legend the piece of land was dropped from above and would become the place in the hills where the medicine lives. Today it is also a popular tourist site where one can watch all that is going right or wrong with India. The painter must know this.

Modern Amrita Sher Gil is a recognized artist who carries a great deal of Indian legend in her own right. She was very famous and her works made people much money. Interesting, like…