BENGALURU: When belief turns to faith ‘GOD *conditions apply’ revolves around the idea of God and human body and the politics of beliefs in perceiving these two elements as one, psychological and morphological phenomena. The videos by Bharathesh G D are part of a series focussed on the image of God perceived by people. “I am screening a few videos from this series for this exhibition,” he says. The videos show life of Lakshmi born with extra limbs and how the village perceived her to be an incarnation of Hindu Goddess Lakshmi, Lali born with two faces had hundreds of visitors who believed she was an incarnation of a Hindu Goddess Durga and of bullet baba. “Local taxi drivers, motorists and bus drivers, almost everyone travelling on this national highway road, near Jodhpur, stops at the temple or honk when they pass by to pay their respects. According to Vedas, there are about 33 crore Gods and Goddesses.
Now, a million more would be existing. People create new rituals at the new temples and follow them. Under certain situations, their belief converts to faith,” says Bharathesh. He says he began working on this series in 2009 when he saw a broken picture of a God under a tree. That got him thinking on how the picture that was once in a pooja room of a house got under a tree. “When the picture breaks, it suddenly stops working for them but idea of God still persists. I am trying to explore these nuances,” he adds.
Finding your identity in a new place
Madhuri Rao’s video-portrait attempts to capture emotions of the people in a new place. Madhuri says this was one of her first videos she shot while she moved to Scotland for higher studies. “I was conscious about what people would think about me in an unfamiliar place. I shared a flat with a person whom I did not know well. There was a certain amount of nervousness between the two of us.” The video is a raw footage with no editing.
“It is something similar to the video I made previously where I showed me getting drenched in water. My each video carries forward the next video,” she says. Madhuri studied fine art at the Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath in Bengaluru and the Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland, specialising in painting. “I get ideas when I do drawings. They start gaining momentum,” says the artist who focuses on identity, memory and interpretation.
Artists Madhuri Rao and Bharathesh G D are screening their videos at Montage an exhibition at Art Houz open till today
— Akhila Damodaran