"Vamona Navelcar (1929-2021): A Canvas across Three Continents" in SCROLL (19 October 2021)

Co-written with Vishvesh Prabhakar Kandolkar

Goan artist Vamona Ananta Sinai Navelcar was born in the small coastal village of Pormburpa on 5 May, 1929. Despite his nascence in this tiny place, his career spanned seven decades and three continents. This legacy notwithstanding, Navelcar is little known in his homeland. For many Goan artists who were contemporaries of Navelcar, such as the Modernists Ângela Trindade (1909-1980), V. S. Gaitonde (1924-2001), and F. N. Souza (1924-2002), their contributions to art were only brought to public knowledge posthumously. Even the recent demise of Laxman Pai (1926-2021) makes it apparent that Goan artists live in Goa in obscurity, their contributions underacknowledged as living testaments to Goa’s heritage. What sets Navelcar apart from his esteemed contemporaries is that his canvas served as a chronicle of key moments in Goan, Portuguese, and Mozambiquan histories. Known as an artist of three continents, Navelcar’s works – even in the last years of his life – attest to how the time he spent in these disparate yet colonially connected lands informed his aesthetic. Navelcar saw himself as a product of these three lands, but his art itself is birthed of displacement. And yet this is all the more reason to recognize Navelcar’s artistry as being uniquely Goan, for the circumstances that caused his dislocations are equally of the history that have made Goa the place it is today.

The story of how Navelcar came to receive his formal art education in Lisbon is the stuff of legend. While a young man in 1950s’ Portuguese Goa, Navelcar was granted a scholarship by António de Oliveira Salazar himself, the then-Prime Minister of Portugal. Reluctant to leave his homeland, Navelcar nonetheless made the journey to Lisbon where he exceled at his studies. But these were the years of decolonization, and as Goa was transferred between Portugal and India, Navelcar found himself unwittingly embroiled in the political instability of the time.

In a 2017 interview with the late novelist Margaret Mascarenhas, Navelcar recalled for her how the Indian takeover of Goa in 1961, which brought to a close 451 years of Portuguese occupation, resulted in his being “blacklisted.” Art historian Savia Viegas, who also interviewed Navelcar about the episode in 2017, further details that

a fellow Goan named António Fonseca …  demand[ed] that [he] sign … [a] document decr[ying] Jawaharlal Nehru as an aggressor and Goans as victims of his tyranny. Navelcar shrugged off involvement, saying he was apolitical ... “Hanv pintorist” (I am a painter).

While Navelcar claimed political apathy (in Portuguese-inflected Konkani), preferring instead to align himself with the realm of his talent, the patronage under which the artist came to his education and, thereupon, the repeated troubles in the different continents he called home, suggest that the artist’s life (and artistry) were never divorced from the political.

The politically motivated blacklisting proved such a detriment to Navelcar in Portugal that he was forced to seek employment on another continent. Feeling he had no other choice, the artist journeyed to Mozambique (still a Portuguese colony at the time) to teach. But that country, too, soon found itself on the verge of decolonization in the 1970s. Despite various incidents of discrimination, Portuguese Mozambique became an adopted country, a place the artist fondly called home. Covertly, Navelcar lent his artistic talents to pro-African anti-colonial efforts. In response to requests for art to accompany protest posters against colonial rule, Navelcar acquiesced and took pains to avoid detection by the Portuguese authorities, as Anne Ketteringham documents in the biography Vamona Navelcar: An Artist of Three Continents (2013).

Ironically, it was only after Mozambique’s independence in 1974 that Navelcar was to find himself in political trouble. An ordinary man impacted by the weight of historical transformation, Navelcar was again entangled in political machinations; only this time, he could not leave. Rather, he was incarcerated along with his students in a remote camp in the wilderness of Imala for three months on a trumped-up charge.

There could have been a myriad number of reasons for which Navelcar found himself afoul of the postcolonial administration. In his conversation with Mascarenhas, Navelcar referenced the incident which he believed might have landed him, and his students, in a concentration camp in 1975:

[T]he students of the 12th year Lyceum had a party and invited their teachers. I had a drink and danced with two white students. … A few days later, I began packing my things to leave Mozambique for good. But suddenly one of my colleagues met me and said that everyone who had attended the student party was required at the police station ...  [There,] students were crying and [their] parents were desperate. It appeared that because alcohol had been consumed at the party, everyone in attendance would be arrested.  

The lack of clarity as to why Navelcar and his students were rounded up and sent off to a hard labour camp is not an aberration in how Frente de Libertação de Moçambique (FRELIMO) dealt with the transition to postcolonialism. Scholar of Mozambiquan political history, Victor Igreja, deciphers that although the new government sought to “[eradicate] alleged enemies from society and [impose] a national revolutionary consciousness…[,] sometimes violence was enacted without purpose, and this created a serious moral conundrum” between power and justice.

Upon his release, the heartbroken artist decided to leave Mozambique. His destination was once again Portugal. The artist made it to his journey’s end, but his suitcase did not. In it were over a thousand pieces of art that were never to be recovered. His caché lost, Navelcar found it difficult to sustain a living as an artist in Portugal, having arrived at a time when the country was still recovering from The Carnation Revolution of 1974. It was then that the artist decided it best to return to his native Goa. However, the Goa he came back to in the 1980s, after having spent his most productive years in other locations, was unfamiliar with this artist’s oeuvre.

One must recognize the deep irony of the notion of “return” in Navelcar’s art, given the recurrent exilic experiences he has endured at multiple times and locations. Navelcar’s practice engaged ideas of return, movement, loss of home, and displacement as they are informed by personal circumstances and historical forces. Navelcar lived and worked in three continental locations, which makes it important to think about the artist and his life’s work as part of a global historical terrain. His is a story that others of his generation share in their journeys across the Lusophone world while still being connected to Goa; simultaneously, Goa itself received the cultural influences of these locations, making it the distinctive place it is.

Efforts to give the nonagenarian artist his due in his native land, in the hope of securing his legacy while
he was still alive, have been for naught. In having become a part of India since 1961, Goa could not situate this artist of three continents within a nationalist art history. Especially being a postcolonial nationalism borne out of British colonialism, it had no room for an artist whose trajectory included the Lusophonic world – its metropole and colonies in the Indian Ocean.

At the same time as Navelcar’s story is Asian, European, and African, it is distinctly Goan. Navelcar’s art not only makes visible a Goa connected to other points on the globe, but a Goa that has many worlds within it. With Navelcar’s death on 18 October, 2021, an entire legacy seems to be on the verge of disappearing and, yet, his canvasses are a record of that heritage, an act of resistance. Through them, Navelcar will continue to teach viewers of the global complexities of his native land. But only if his art is given the true recognition it deserves.

 

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With excerpts from Goa/Portugal/Mozambique: The Many Lives of Vamona Navelcar (Fundação Oriente, 2017), edited by R. Benedito Ferrão. Thanks are due to the Navelcar family for permission to reproduce the art seen here.

From Scroll.

"'This is Not the Basilica' explores how an Iconic Goan Monument became a Victim of its Own Fame" in SCROLL (26 September 2021)

Look up most advertising content about Goa, and it will predictably have some assemblage of the words “sun,” “sand,” and “sea.” But, really, such verbiage could feature in just about any description of a coastal tourism location. Accordingly, in a newly opened art exhibition at Sunaparanta Goa Center for the Arts, Vishvesh Kandolkar suggests that Goa has been set apart from the usual clichés of palm trees, surf, and other seaside imagery due to a visual culture that has incorporated an iconic Goan structure – the Basilica of Bom Jesus. Visible in everything, from tourism promos, souvenirs, and Republic Day parade floats, Kandolkar – an architectural historian and professor at Goa’s College of Architecture – culls such evidence of the widespread representational use of the sixteenth century church in his artistic debut, This is Not the Basilica! Through his research-based installations, Kandolkar demonstrates how the Portuguese-era church, famous for holding the relics of St. Francis Xavier (1506-1552), has come to stand in for Goa’s historical and regional difference in South Asia while becoming a victim of its own fame.

Viewable from September 2021 and part of the group exhibition Goa: A Time that Was, curated by Leandré D’Souza, Kandolkar’s works aim to showcase the long-standing Basilica as a living part of Goa rather than only an emblem of its past or a curiosity consumed by visiting tourists. The title of Kandolkar’s installation series is a nod to that most famous of René Magritte’s surrealist works: La trahison des images (The Treachery of Images), also known as Ceci n’est pas une pipe (This is not a Pipe) (1929). As this indicates, Kandolkar’s intent is to destabilize the usual representations of Goa as India’s pleasure periphery (its preferred holiday destination and real estate market for second homes). Simultaneously, Kandolkar’s installations draw attention to the eponymous subject of his exhibition – the Basilica of Bom Jesus – and, more specifically, the plight of the early modern monument that has served as an archetypal icon of Goa while suffering the vagaries of time, colonial politics, and climate change.

Upon entering the gallery where Kandolkar’s installations are placed, visitors are immediately greeted by the curious sight of suspended, backlit latticed palm leaves that cast dramatic shadows on the wall, which forms the title piece in the exhibition: This is Not the Basilica! But a closer look reveals that the interwoven fronds are obscuring a large image that can only be properly viewed by navigating around the leafy screen. Forced to peer through the network of leaves, visitors will catch sight of a digitally manipulated image of one of the Basilica’s red laterite walls, lashed by rain and with some of its windows surrounded by lime plaster. The stark whitewash around the casements is an embellishment not visible in the actual building, but what remains true to life in the photograph are perceptible signs of the laterite wall crumbling. In fact, the pediment over one of the windows in the photograph has completely vanished. The patchwork lime render and the enmeshed palm leaves a mystery, the clue to this installation’s meaning lies in the long history of Bom Jesus. 

As the curator’s note highlights, the Basilica “is one of the few surviving monuments from the fabled period of Old Goa and an emblem of Indo-Portuguese aesthetics.” Capital of the Estado da Índia from the early-1500s, the colonial Portuguese seat of government in Old Goa, for a time, oversaw an empire that encompassed regions as far apart as Africa and eastern Asia, as well as various locales in South Asia. With construction beginning in 1594, the history of the Basilica of Bom Jesus ran almost parallel to that of the duration of Portuguese India, now even having outlived it with the 1961 annexation of Goa by India. Yet, although the church may have been built during the period of Portuguese rule, its aesthetic is definitively Goan while demonstrating what Kandolkar identifies as “the flowering of Baroque style architecture in Goa.”

Although the legend of the Basilica was sealed when it became the final resting place of the Basque Jesuit missionary saint Xavier in the seventeenth century, the edifice’s architectural legacy is also important. In Whitewash, Red Stone: A History of Church Architecture in Goa (2011), Paulo Varela Gomes recounts the church’s discernibly European influences. Yet, these were remade in Goa, by Goan artisans, according to local taste, bringing together such disparate features as “Flemish ornament, Serlian mouldings, round windows, and French Serlian window frames” in the building’s constitution. In turn, these elements of localized baroque found their way into the design of other churches of the day, Varela Gomes maintains. Likely, this was also true of non-church architecture in the period. Indeed, when people come to Goa in search of so-called “Portuguese houses,” (this also being indicative of much misinformation about Goa and its people’s own hand in their heritage-making) what they are actually seeking to acquire are structures of historically Goan creative provenance.

As further evidence of the built form in Portuguese Goa bearing testament to local inventiveness, consider how the façade of the Basilica of Bom Jesus melded European and South Asian design. This look was achieved through the use of basalt quarried from Bassein, while other external parts of the church were built in the now ever-emblematic red laterite that is native to Goa. With one massive difference – the laterite was rendered invisible. Coated as it was with lime plaster, the Basilica once looked like so many other whitewashed churches that dot Goa’s landscape of red hills and green palms. It was not until the 1950s that the Basilica gained the look it wears now, deliberately denuded of its white lime render by political design. 

Researcher Joaquim Rodrigues dos Santos chronicles how Portuguese architect Baltazar da Silva Castro was tasked in the mid-twentieth century with restoring Goan monuments, including the Basilica, by then-Portuguese Prime Minister António de Oliveira Salazar. “Restoring” is really not the appropriate term, for Castro had been instructed to age such early modern Portuguese Goan relics as the Basilica. The intention was for these historical structures to appear even older than they really were. In the wake of the decolonization of adjoining British India in 1947, Salazar sought to demonstrate Portugal’s longstanding influence on Goa and its culture. As part of his propaganda to justify the continued presence of Portugal in its overseas territories in South Asia, Salazar believed that architecturally fabricating the antiquity of the Portuguese presence in its erstwhile capital of Old Goa was a viable tactic. The avenue through which this was to be achieved was by giving famous sites, tied to the early modern Portuguese empire, a reverse facelift.

In the case of the Basilica of Bom Jesus, this meant that it was entirely stripped of its protective white plaster barrier. No doubt, this achieved the required result of making the already historic building appear even older. What resulted was the quintessential look the monument bears now, immortalized over and again in such advertisements and tourism-related paraphernalia as can be seen in Kandolkar’s second installation, (T)here is the Basilica. Comprised of everything from video loops of the appearance of the Basilica on Goa’s floats in various Republic Day parades to three-dimensional models of the church available for sale online, the recurring image across the multimedia exhibit is of an imposing (now browned-with-age) laterite building. Certainly, an entire generation of Goans will have only known the Basilica in its present form, entirely devoid of its once highly contrasting white plaster surfaces. And why should this be a problem? The lime cast which was removed during Castro’s renovation was not meant to merely serve as a decorative element, its presence on the walls functioning as prophylaxis against rain damage. Laterite rock is naturally water-permeable, its constitution deteriorating with extended exposure to rainfall. 

Debates have raged about maintaining the Basilica’s current look, especially so as not to upset the sentiments of Goans who have grown accustomed to seeing, and worshiping at, the unplastered church, which happens to be one of the most popular in the region because of the presence of Xavier’s relics. But things came to a head in April 2020 when it became apparent that drastic measures needed to be taken to conserve the building – the rain had found its way into the church. The press picked up the story when the Basilica’s rector. Fr. Patricio Fernandes, wrote a letter to the Archeological Survey of India, accusing them of being negligent of the care of the monument, which falls under their purview. While the furore resulted in expedited repairs of the church’s leaking roof, the question about whether the Basilica will once again be plastered – its best defense against the torrential rains Goa experiences – still remains unresolved.

As Kandolkar explained in a talk earlier this year, Bom Jesus “continues to remain unplastered because people have been fed a particular (mis)representation of the monument’s appearance in the contemporary moment.” In fact, what might help Goans come around to seeing the Basilica differently is a re-engagement with a visual culture that sidesteps contemporary representations of the edifice and provides a longer look at the church in its earlier form. With this in mind, Kandolkar’s third installation, Weather the Basilica?, employs a timeline that starkly shows the difference between the short period during which the church has been unplastered and the significantly longer duration of its having been protected by a coat of lime mortar. 

To visually represent the contrast, this installation is composed of untreated laterite bricks and rubble, sourced from Old Goa, that stand in a vitrine balanced atop a tall whitewashed pedestal. What becomes clear from the timeline matched with the dimensions of the exhibit is that it is the most recent period (represented by the raw laterite) that has borne witness to the most damage sustained by the Basilica. This coincides with the removal of the lime layer, a rise in monsoonal rainfall, and planetwide climate change.

Once commonplace in Goa, the craft of enmeshing palm fronds to create a protective barrier around built structures, especially during the monsoons, is a vanishing skill. Instead, mass produced plastic tarpaulins have come to stand in for mollem, as handwoven palm leaf sheaths are known in Konkani. While on the one hand a statement about the passage of time and changes in technology, that mollem have given way to the less eco-friendly plastic coverings also parallels the evolution of the walls of Bom Jesus, transformations inflected by politics and history.

For This is Not the Basilica!, Kandolkar sought the help of Pingal Prakash Mashelkar, a caretaker at Sunaparanta, to fashion the mollem used in his installation. By incorporating this re-enlivened tradition of defending architecture against the monsoons, Kandolkar’s exhibit invites visitors to rethink how one views architectural history and aesthetics and, indeed, the art of looking itself. Barely visible through the mesh of leaves from Goa’s ubiquitous coconut trees, the image of the Basilica of Bom Jesus that Kandolkar offers is less obscured than it is renewed. It is a glimpse through the past to see what the future could hold for this magnificent but endangered building.   

 From Scroll.