At 6:30 am on June 7, award winning artist Subodh Kerkar gathered a group of 40 fishermen on
the shores of Morjim beach to film a moving homage to the sea. The fishermen
linked hands and moved in a wave in tandem with the sea, the human chain
flowing backward and forward with the waves, following Kerkar’s instruction to
toe the surf line. To amplify the sense of movement, their action was filmed by
expert drone photographer and videographer Sankalp Malik, who added an entirely
new perspective to the performance-based artwork.
Conceptualised by Kerkar, the work brings together his abiding
interests in history and the ocean and is a continuation of his artistic
exploration of both these themes. The date of June 7 is significant for this
particular artwork in that it was the last date of low tide at that time before
the onset of the monsoon, explains the artist. “You get a huge chunk of wet
sand at zero tide and the sky is reflected so beautifully at that time. That’s
what we wanted to capture in the performance.”
“A lot of my work is based on the tides,” says Kerkar, who
refers to himself as “a samundarwala artist” (much like the Parsee tradition of
basing names on professions for eg Bandukwalla, Batliwala, etc). And so the
artist is always checking up on tide timings and observing the movement of the
sea at different times of day, “not just for art but also my walks.”
The sea has been a perpetual source of inspiration for Subodh,
deeply fascinated by how it has shaped civilisations, for what it has brought
and taken and for it in itself – as a powerful entity always in motion,
sometimes wild, at others serene.
In previous series, Kerkar has photographed fishermen in
different compositions. In ‘The Wave’, he experiments with video for the first
time in collaboration with Malik, with whom he hopes to collaborate further on
more artworks. Malik’s pulled back aerial footage captures the sense of awe the
majestic ocean inspires, effectively articulating and magnifying Kerkar’s
thematic exploration of the complex history human beings share with the ocean.
The performance piece replicates the motion of the ocean – the waves come in,
the waves recede. The ocean heaves and on shore the motley group of fishermen
respond, their flow echoing and paying homage to the sea – their source of
livelihood. And while the work has been filmed on Goa’s coastline, it
underlines the idea that in art the regional becomes the universal.
“Human civilisation has been determined by the sea,” says
Kerkar. “Life on all shores of all cultures is written by the ocean.”
To
take a look at the video, follow Subodh Kerkar’s page on Instagram, where he
speaks about The Wave and other works.
