BENGALURU: Osheen Gupta has often deviated from making her art practice a subject of reality, but instead, has continuously tried to negotiate itself to become a model by which the art work is often merged with her day-to-day living.
After having successfully convinced her PG landlady to allow her to host her own private show in October 2016, Osheen opened the show up to neighbours and friends. She then continued to persuade spaces of commerce like a wholesale charcoal shop in Shivajinagar to lend her the space for a three hour drawing session with the same pieces of charcoal from the shop where it is sold to big hotels for BBQ purposes. The manager of the shop later did find it troublesome to convince his orthodox businessman of a father to keep those live drawings made that afternoon hanging in the shop for display. Nevertheless, it was another feather in the cap of the young artist who succeeded in coaxing yet another business into lending her space to extend her practice.
On another occasion, after being encouraged by her friends for her vocation, she persuaded a beauty parlour in Sheshadripuram in June 2017, to allow her to have a reading session inside while the salon was tending to customers coming in for services. Accompanied by her friends, she read excerpts from The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvior - an acclaimed work on feminism by the existentialist French writer - while the group of young women and two men, were host to the reading. Her friends Mahima and Noora were quick to translate the reading into languages of convenience for the customers that then became the audience on encounter, and the accessibility of text helped keep everyone in the room on the same page.
Some excerpts read scientifically questioned the inception of gender at it’s microscopic origin and then related the politics of its construction in the day-to-day, ritual to ritual routine of a domestic life, in a space like this beauty parlour where the beholder dictates the norms of beauty and proceeds to manicure this construction of gender stereotypes. Obviously the accompanying men had to occasionally step out whenever an uncomfortable client raised concern and later the entire group was asked to leave the parlour upon making a series of customers upset over hours.
Having surpassed the goal, this group wanted to continue the reading session and managed to negotiate with the proprietor of an interior decorator studio and immersed in dialogue over gender roles with the man, who then related it with his ties with his wife and daughter. The night ended on a high, as many such readings were schemed.
In such manner, Osheen is often interested in creating a sociable economy of dialogue rather than exhibiting passive objects in the hope that viewers will connect. Practices such as these are less likely to take a physical form, but upon engagement, it creates dialogue dominoes that give every participant a chance to exist as much as an ‘artwork’ would’ve on a pedestal gleamed on by spotlights.
Such an exercise enables her to derive insights for creating commodifiable pieces of art work, which continue to support her. One such example is her Mural on Dhanvantari Road. The piece is juxtaposed with an old piece where two men seem to be practicing Kalaripayattu; a popular martial art form from Kerala. The camel toe as a response, is a female coequal of the manspreading, or the ‘bulge’ which is to be seen in the previous imagery where two fierce men playing the sport, are to be seen.”What does she do once she completes her current commissions? Throws a party to bring in her ‘Rahu Kal’ with her friends, continuing to create discourses out of situations, wordly and astrological spaces.