My approach to this place-based learning and exploration results in a main focus on personal experience. I aimed to recreate, what I consider, an artistic experience at the Khwaja Bande Nawaz Dargah, the shrine of the famous Sufi saint, Khwaja Bande Nawaz in Gulbarga, Karnataka. It is a cultural hotspot for both, Hindus and Muslims and a popular site amongst tourists and locals.
With the rise and fall of the Bahmani dynasty in the Gulbarga region, several Persian-Indo influences have remained as inheritance from the bygone era. Roses are one such example of Persian influence on Indian culture and are found to reappear in several places in a variety of forms today.
The name ‘Gulbarga’ itself stands witness to the bygone era, wherein ‘gul’ means ‘rose’ and ‘barga’ means ‘garden’ in Persian. Looking at roses, specifically, as a living heritage of Gulbarga, I went about the city identifying the rose in its various forms in order to de-construct various meanings. It was noticed that roses, what were once an object of prestige have now wordlessly seeped into the local environment and have established an important position in the system of the ‘daily’.
Gulbarga's most flourishing economy was that of roses. Thus, in order to delve deeper into the process, I payed a a visit to the rose fields in Azadpur, a nearby village. This was mainly for the purpose of understanding the logistics of where the roses came from and where they went on. In collaboration with a fellow student, we mapped out the entire trajectory of the rose in Gulbarga.
The dargah of Khwaja Bande Nawaz is the biggest stakeholder in the rose economy of Gulbarga. The production of roses and the sustainence of the dargah are interdependent in order to maintain economic profit. In other words, the production of roses depends on the high consumption of roses of roses at the dargah, and vice versa.
During one of the field research days at the dargah, I witnessed the space around the entrance go from silence to an uproar of shouting voices, within split-seconds. This was when the phulaars (flower merchants) that flanked the 50 metre street leading to the dargah stairway began swinging heavy bunches of garlands towards the crowd that entered the gates of the premises. They screamed at the top of their voices, in competition with the neighbouring phulaars, luring customers towards their stalls to purchase flowers for offering. Frozen and engrossed in this spectacle, the artist felt the strong urge to translate and communicate this one, most mesmerising experience to an audience that may or may not have experienced the same.
Acrylic on canvas: 6 x 3 feet
I felt that a painting is much too static to fully make an audience experience what I did. My challenge was "How do I show the vigorously repetitive action of the swinging and swooshing garlands? The strong smell that came along with every swoosh? The complete pandemonium that surrounded you?
Grad Expo at Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology.
