Subodh Kerkar, like any other ethos aware artist, is in search of answers. Gandhi could be one. Before the pandemic started its rampage, the Goan installation maestro had been exploring the theme, and has spoken on Gandhi at many forums— his recent session at the Kerala Literature Festival in Kozikode was ‘Mahatma through the Arts’.
"Gandhi has helped me understand the situation in the country and cope with it. I’ve begun to propagate his ideas which, I believe, have a great role in educating people," says Kerkar. Before COVID-19 put a spanner in his works, he was on the brink of starting a year-long residential programme for students in Goa and mulling a corporate art programme to educate leaders in collecting and collating art.
A full-time artist for the past 30 years since he abandoned a career in medicine at Calangute Hospital to become a water colourist, Kerkar has founded art galleries, exhibited in India and overseas and spoken at prestigious venues such as Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum.
His first art lessons were from his father, whose palette he used to clean. By the time he was 10, he could weild a mean watercolour brush. He says, “When I was 18-year-old, I wanted to be everybody except a priest, soldier, mafia don and shopkeeper.” Now, he calls himself an ‘ocean artist’, because the sea, beside which he was born, lives, sleeps and creates “is my master and my muse”.
Ever since 2004, when a half-kilometre long line of installations along Miramar beach brought him acclaim, the muse has never left him. Mediums challenge and delight him— sand, shells, truck tires, coconut shells, boats, bones, palm leaves, laterite stones and of course discarded plastic bottles.
For example, one of his critically acclaimed recent works, the ‘Carpet of Joy’ used almost 100,000 plastic bottles—the bane of beaches. “I wanted to spread awareness about littering because it’s an act of violence against Mother Nature and against yourself,” he says.
Kerkar’s work resonates with current concerns. "An artist is like a receptor and transmitter of ideas of an age," he says. His current mission is popularising contemporary art in India through the Museum of Goa (MOG) he started four years ago. "I realised that in this country of 1.3 billion people not more than 100,000 people can connect with contemporary art. Most galleries are in five-star spaces. I want to democratise art," he explains.
He sold houses to get funds to start his first gallery. A doyen of installations, Kerkar’s works have different meanings at different levels—political, social and otherwise. Once while passing by a beef shop he was struck by the translucent quality of bull intestines, which are used to make Goan chorizos. From Gandhi to chorizo, Kerkar continues to wield art as an instrument of conscience.