The Body as a Site of Art Practise

The female body is located as a site for the exercise of masculinity, where its contestation can begin, whether passively, in the space to be photographed, or in earnest in the act of representation itself. The male body is unavoidably present, whether physically or spectrally. However, the idea of masculinity slowly extends itself beyond the male body to include the space it is framed in.

Feminist discourse constructed masculinity as the other of the feminine. The relocation of masculinities was shaped by feminist interventions against the patriarchal order. This contestation located masculinity within the paradigm of manliness, muscularity, domination, and power, institutionalised within the ideologies of patriarchy. Masculinities as a social practice is determined by the intersection of race, religion, class, caste and gender. In the context of social reconfigurations, masculinity is a constantly shifting space, with the multiple masculinities, locked in a conflict ridden, hierarchical power relations.
The social positioning of masculinities often takes place through bodily articulations.

It is through articulation or performance that the body enters into the social domain, and is inscribed with its experiences. The body is articulated as a tool of domination/ subordination, and also becomes, as Foucault asserts, the ‘site’ in which all forms of repression are ultimately registered. The construction of masculinity through bodily performance means that its power is vulnerable if the performance cannot be sustained.

Central to this articulation is the gaze. The politics of seeing is related to the politics of being, and masculinity is caught between being and becoming. Masculinity is thus fluid and interchangeable, and a more potent question than, what is masculinity? would be, when does something become masculine?
Much of the work exhibited here overtly or obliquely deals with the body, questioning the positioning of masculinity within the body. Sunil Gupta, for instance, interposes the image of his own body between the popular and the marginal. Sheba Chhachhi counterposes an anonymous torso, with fragments of a popular hegemonic body impinging on it, and the bust of the Buddha. Kriti Arora explores the female body in relation to the male and the masculine institution. Rameshwar Broota’s work is located in the body or parts of it, in lingering detail. Atul Bhalla documents it as the location of an act, a ritual. BV Suresh refers to the body as witness or agent of violence. Masculinity is a quality that is ubiquitous, yet unaccountable. As an object of knowledge, it is always ‘masculinity-in-relation’; framed by the spaces it inhabits.
Mohd. Ahmad Sabih / Rahul Dev / Srinayani /T. Sanathanan