CHENNAI: The rape and murder of a trainee doctor at the RG Kar Memorial Hospital set the country, and in particular Kolkata, roiling in August, and since. At the time of this writing, the key accused, Sanjoy Roy, has just been charged by the CBI. In the meanwhile, junior doctors at the institution unveiled a sculpture, Asit Sain’s “Cry of the Hour”, on its premises last week. It is in the memory of their deceased colleague, but it is certainly not in her honour.
Made of black fibreglass, the sculpture is a bust of a howling woman, her head thrown back and her eyes and mouth hollow. It is lurid, a literal pedestalisation of pain. The sculpture has upset many public commentators, and its existence raises more pertinent questions about just how sensitised the medical industry is to sexual assault.
That the incident happened at all says much about the misogynistic underbelly of the profession, but that the institution — and even her colleagues, who may be grieving — thought a work like this was appropriate is shocking. As for the sculptor and how much creative license he was given and what the creative brief was, we do not know — but by no means is the artistic world exempt from severe ethical issues. Media reports do not quote him directly, but paraphrase that the bust is intended “to depict the victim’s horror during her final moments”. Which is to say: it memorialises her pain, not her.
“Cry of the Hour” is one of the most straightforward, virtually un-debateable recent examples of “trauma porn” in the arts. It’s a tone-deaf piece that’s pitch-perfect as a teachable object.
The term “trauma porn” is sometimes used unfairly, because many contentious works do inspire thought and discourse through provocation and ensuing difference of opinion. For instance, I personally find that photo reportage that captures anguished people in the immediate aftermath of tragedy to be intrusive and vile. Others disagree and, feeling that such documentation is necessary.
On the other hand, I see nothing wrong with poetry as an immediate response, as witness-bearing that goes beyond reportage. Others disagree, finding it gauche, if not vulture-like, to create in the aftermath of events that affect other people. Debate can be enlivening too, like what happened with Maggi Hambling’s sculpture “Mary On The Green”, which commemorates the author Mary Wollstonecraft. It found both applause and aggravation (I joined the latter camp). But aesthetic discord differs from ethical concerns.
Sculptures that memorialise tragedies can and have been done tastefully. Take the examples of three which are related to genocides and mass killings: New York City’s 9/11 memorial (a white oak grove and waterfalls, as well as bronze parapets with victims’ names), Berlin’s Holocaust memorial (thousands of stelae and walking paths between them) and Jaffna University’s small, destroyed-and-reconstructed Mullivaikkal monument (hands and arms rising out of concrete representing water, in front of which a torch can be lit).
They all provide reflective spaces or interesting symbols that do not dehumanise victims or those who survive them. There’s plenty of good precedence, and therefore no excuse for the lack of compassion and elegance in “Cry of the Hour”.