"Visions of Ourselves" in THE GOAN EVERYDAY (11 February 2017)

Exhibitions in the cities of Panjim and Paris prove the need for art curation that heeds history and Goans themselves.

In The Rape of Europa (2006), a documentary about World War II-era efforts to protect European art from the looting Nazis, there is a striking segment about St. Mary’s Basilica in Kraków, Poland. Its storied altarpiece had been dismantled and taken to Nuremberg by the Germans. This loss was not only that of an artistic legacy, but that of the community’s heritage. When sculptor Veit Stoss’ Gothic masterpiece was unveiled in the fifteenth century, the Polish were awestruck. But it was not religious wonderment they experienced as much as a sense of familiarity. The icons that constituted the altar looked like them, ordinary Poles. Stoss had used his neighbours as the models for his creation.

In December 2016, for the first time in my life, I entered the Palácio Idalcão, recently thrown open to Goans after years of having been off-limits due to renovations. Beautifully restored, the nearly half-millennium old building overlooking the Mandovi river in Panjim, was the site of an exhibition that constituted the Serendipity Arts Festival 2016. As in Kraków, ordinary folk in Goa would have been able to see people who looked like themselves in an artistic setting. On exhibit was a set of vintage photographs titled “The Way we Were”. Curated from the archive of Souza & Paul, a studio still in existence in Panjim and whose origins date back to the late nineteenth century, many of the images were on view publicly for the first time.

While art and exhibitions of it delimit viewership by class and social status, the situation of these historic photographs in the iconic building in the capital city of Goa denotes the importance of creating public spaces in which Goans can appreciate their own artistic heritage. There has been talk for some time now of the Palácio serving as a permanent museum of specifically Goan art, but one wonders why it took an effort from outside Goa to create the exhibition being discussed here. A museum at the Palácio would go a long way in bolstering art appreciation and education in Goa, but it would also re-enliven engagement with Goa’s history. When I asked the person that gave me a ride to the exhibition to drop me off at the Adil Shah Palace, he looked at me quizzically. “Old Secretariat”, I clarified. 

Certainly, the Palácio’s function as the former site of the Goa Assembly is one that is far more recent than its having been the viceregal residence during the Portuguese era, or Adil Shah’s summer palace until his ouster by the Portuguese in 1510. Yet, the erasure of the edifice’s erstwhile name from public memory, and the absence of any prominent signage to mark the building’s originary title, evidences the ongoing amnesia around and deliberate eclipsing of Goa’s Islamicate heritage. The ability of museums to serve as public spaces through which to propagate such learning was made apparent at an exhibition I visited at Paris’ L’Institut du Monde Arabe, or the Arab World Institute (AWI).

The AWI exhibition “Ocean Explorers from Sinbad to Marco Polo” (15 November, 2016 to 26 February, 2017) puts on display objects associated with the history of medieval and early modern seafaring. Prominent among these are elements specific to Goa and Iberian history as they relate to the Islamicate world. As one of the exhibition notes explains, the European search for oceanic routes to the Indies was largely predicated upon undermining the centuries-old “sea trade between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean [which] was controlled by the Muslims … Right at the end of the 15^th century, the Portuguese began to sail in the Indian Ocean…” Consequently, there was a rise of exports from such places as “Goa and Iznik [Turkey], [where craftspeople] began to work in a semi-industrial way to produce the goods destined exclusively for external markets. This … established new dynamics, laying the foundations for the first phenomenon of globalisation”.

Items such as an ornate late-seventeenth century chest with inlay work, exported from Goa, serve as proof of the region’s involvement in this global circuit. Simultaneously, the influence of Goa’s contact with other parts of the world is to be seen in various artefacts. Chief among these is a sixteenth century marble tombstone from Goa (on loan to the AWI from Lisbon’s Society of Geography Museum), which bears inscriptions in Roman and Arabic scripts in addition to calligraphic design. It struck me that one had to come to Paris to see such instructive examples of Goa’s past.

Part of the educational experience was the level of detail in the curation, something which was sorely lacking at Serendipity. For instance, many of the Souza & Paul images were presented sans dates and with dubious information about the subjects. “Christian Man” a note would say, as if the subject’s ‘Western’ garb would be enough to derive such information. As Goan art historian Savia Viegas demonstrated in “Moments, Memory, Memorabilia: An Exhibition of old Goan Photographs”, which she curated at the Xavier Centre of Historical Research in December 2015, even Catholic subjects would sometimes affect ‘Hindu’ style in order to demarcate their caste standing. The curators at Serendipity, it would seem, needed to have done a little more homework.

When Stoss’ altarpiece was rescued from Nuremberg, it was returned to its rightful owners, the people of Kraków whose likeness the sculptor had captured. Likewise, the Idalcão belongs to the people of Goa. That it could serve as the site of preservation and propagation of Goan art can only be a vision fulfilled if it also involves those whom that art represents.  

From The Goan.

 

"Ivy-Covered Canvas" - THE GOAN: I'm Not Here (17 October 2015)

When I heard of Ivy Muriel da Fonseca’s demise on 1 September, 2015, it struck me how little I knew of her. The Goan edition of The Times of India delivered notice of her passing with the introductory words that she was the “widow of the late Indian Christian Cultural Renaissance artiste Angelo da Fonseca…” (6 September 2015). The article then goes on to report how the artist “was virtually hounded out of Goa following severe criticism for painting Christian themes with Indian settings,” and most notably “the Virgin Mary with a kunbi sari.” It is only then that we are told of Ivy da Fonseca’s education and professional life as a teacher, before the piece ends just as it had begun by returning to her artist-husband in whom “there has been a renewed interest … with exhibitions both in India and abroad.” While it would be easy to underscore how the article does little to shed light on da Fonseca’s life outside of casting her as the mate of her more famous husband, it is more useful to consider how the obituary is actually quite indicative of the Goan relationship to art.

Writing about the recent record-breaking sales of paintings by Francisco Newton Souza and Vasudeo Gaitonde, an article by Arti Das in The Navhind Times (26 September 2015) notes how it is only external recognition that brings local awareness to art by Goans. And, yet, while tellingly titled “Valued the World Over, Forgotten at Home – Goa’s most Prized Bardezkars”, Das’ piece about the two deceased painters, who are worthy of all the attention they get, leaves out that other still living artist of Bardez, Lisbon, and Maputo, Vamona Ananta Sinai Navelcar. A few months ago, I had the opportunity to meet with Navelcar at his home in Pomburpa. An octogenarian, the painter’s recall of the past is remarkable. I asked him about the details of his life as recorded in Anne Ketteringham’s biography Vamona Navelcar: An Artist of Three Continents (2013), and was told of his times in the geographies alluded to in the book’s title: Asia, Europe, and Africa. “I should have never come back to Goa”, Navelcar confided. “It was my biggest mistake…”

These stinging words stayed with me, and I shared them a few days later with the Aldona artist Conrad Pinto. “He would feel that way”, Pinto mused, alluding to the lack of infrastructure in Goa for art appreciation. This sentiment is echoed by the late journalist Joel D’Souza who, in an important Goa Today article titled “Goans’ Art Grandeur” (December 2012), traces contemporary Goan art history and the unique trajectories of Goan style, only to come to the conclusion that, in Goa, art is “the pleasure of the art lover’s alone” (p. 24). With this, D’Souza points to the lack of institutional support for Goan artists; even so, he also highlights the need for the enjoyment of art to be a community practice that is not solely in the purview of those classes that frequent galleries or have the monetary ability to own art that is displayed in the exclusive confines of their homes. 

And this is precisely where Ivy da Fonseca’s contribution is forgotten.

From my conversations with art historian, painter, and writer Savia Viegas, I learned of da Fonseca’s championing of her husband’s legacy. The one thing that the aforementioned TOI article does get right is that da Fonseca was formidable, “an iron lady” the piece calls her. Art critics note that it was after his wife that Angelo da Fonseca modelled his brown Madonna, to borrow Viegas’ term (Himal Southasian, August 2010), but had it not been for her sheer audacity in reclaiming her husband’s works, many of the canvases that are now available for public viewership in Goa might not have readily been part of the public domain. As much as she was “in” da Fonseca’s canvas – his inspiration – she was also the woman who continued to keep his work in the public eye long after he had passed away. 

The brilliance of da Fonseca’s work lies not just in his depiction of biblical themes in South Asian hues, but in bringing together the sacred with the ordinary in likening the Madonna to his earthly wife. It was because of his plebeian browning of the Madonna’s skin that da Fonseca courted ire. da Fonseca chose to represent his own community in his art, and so it is only fitting that his works be enjoyed in Goa for it is part of our heritage. Ivy da Fonseca’s role in making this happen should aid the recognition that she was not merely muse nor just the artist’s wife, but a purveyor of culture and an individual in her own right.    

From The Goan.

"The Illustrated Goan" - THE GOAN: I'm Not Here (Goa - 13 April 2013)

“What should compel me to read these comic books?” asked a middle-aged participant during a session on graphic novels at the most recent Goa Arts and Literary Festival. While one might quibble with this person’s lumping of the two genres together, what cannot be escaped is the intent to relegate the illustrated form, of any literary variety, to the domain of childhood and, therefore, childishness. What the festival participant’s question implies is that adult reading must do only with words. This attempt to empty words of their inherent magic to conjure images also indicates a failure of the imagination. Illustrated books do not simply combine script and graphics, but allow for a slippage between them, as much also of time between generations, human geographies, and within a lifetime.

Take the first block-printed evidence of Konkani. The Hortus Malabaricus, a seventeenth century treatise compiled collaboratively by the colonizing Dutch and local elites, chronicles the Malabar Coast’s flora. Its twelve volumes with descriptions in Latin, Malayalam, Arabic, and Konkanni were published between 1608 and 1703. The Konkanni contribution came from physicians Ranga Bhat, Vinayak Pandit, and Appu Bhat who worked on the project, evidencing linguistic connections between the Konkan and Malabar Coasts. Accompanying the Malabaricus’ text are drawings of plants, making it Devanagri Konkani’s first illustrated book. This February, German artist Wilhelm Bronner displayed his interpretation of illustrations from the Malabaricus in Goa, literally bridging past and present through pictures.

The present enquires of the past in the recent My Godri Anthology (2013). Written by Merle Almeida and illustrated by Nina Sabnani, the Bookworm publication may readily be taken as one for children alone. In it, a parent stitches together the saga of a storied quilt for a child. Needlework and textile patches beautifully match the theme as family histories are uncovered alongside Goa’s. The godri functions as graphic narrative, representing travelogue and legacies in need of revisiting. Goan quilting traditions, this book illustrates, are stories that require anthologizing as they range from one’s granny’s godri to, perhaps, the kawandi made by Karnataka’s Siddi women whose enslaved African ancestors were brought to Portuguese India.

Family lore is again the subject of another Bookworm production. Once Upon a Feast (2012), featuring art by Fatema Barot Mota, is inspired by an account from young writer Mia Marie Lourenc̹o’s mother’s youth. Tasked with dusting the statue of the church’s patron saint in preparation for the feast day, the little protagonist discovers too late that she’s made a mistake. Set in a South Goan village, the local narrative elevates the seemingly ordinary by interlacing dramatic development with stylised architectural and cartographic depictions, as well as rural earthiness. It is in the interstices of this pictorial storyline that the many-layered generations and interactions that constitute a community are made visible. Most emblematically, a child and parent speak to and through one another, as much within the text as outside of it, melding the authorial process with that of the readership.

Rural South Goa is also the partial geography of Savia Viegas’ graphic novellas published last year through the writer/artist’s own Saxtti imprint. Viegas’ outsider art aptly pairs with her evocative tales of characters at society’s margins. In Eddi and Diddi, named for the dogs the book is about, Viegas takes on urbanization; whereas, in Abha Nama, lecturer Abha Dias struggles with institutional hierarchy. Abha’s time in Bombay recalls Goa’s historic and diasporic connections with that city, but her name invokes religio-cultural origins not usually linked with Goa. Viegas’ visuals are both complementary and parallel to the stories, permitting the novellas to be read variedly. This exemplifies the ability of illustrated books to create multiple dimensions, beyond the limits of image or text – an adult appreciation with childlike sensibilities and vice versa.

 

The print version of this piece can be read here. For more on Bookworm, visit their site. Savia Viegas' website can be accessed here.

"The Sacred and the Subversive" - THE GOAN: Semana da Cultura (Goa - 20 October 2012)

As a child, I was told a story by a relative about the frescoes and statues that adorn those Goan churches of the Portuguese colonial era. Commissioned by the Church, these earthly renditions of heaven on high, I was informed, were meant to appear ethereal, radiant, and sacred. Instead, they looked Indian. The Indian workers employed to make manifest the European-tinted iconography of a Semitic-originated Christianity, could only interpret the divine in a corporeality they were familiar with. Their depictions of the godly looked less like the colonizers, who cast themselves as purveyors of the faith, and more like themselves, the colonial commoner.

I share this, perhaps, apocryphal tale from my childhood not to centre the role of sacred Christian art in the legacy of Portuguese influence in colonial and postcolonial Goa but, rather, to consider how art functions as a measure of such culture. Art, like other cultural production, encodes the impact of its time, both as the weight of authority and resistance to it. In this vein, I consider here the capacity of art, often deemed the purview of the elite, to evoke its originary circumstances and, thus, put into relief the everyday, the mundane, and its importance.

For example, as Savia Viegas points out, when Angelo da Fonseca (1902-1967) attempted “to give a new ‘visual lexicon’ to Christian art” in India, his “attempt to root Christian imagery in local culture and art traditions” was met with “[t]he Roman Catholic Church [taking] umbrage against his renderings of a brown-skinned Madonna and various saints ... Moreover, for the [Goan] Catholics, the classical Mary was a source of identity that connected [them] with ‘white society,’ and da Fonseca’s work was deemed threatening.”[1] So much for the egalitarian idea of being made in God’s image... 

What Viegas points to is not only the elitist intertwining of the charade of faith with Eurocentrism and phenotypic bias, but also the polarized deification of the figure of Mary. Robert Newman notes that “[a]lthough modern Europe has only pale memories of Greek, Scandinavian, and Celtic goddesses behind their patriarch-dominated religion imported from the Middle East, it was not always so,” implying the gendered difference between Semitic religious traditions, such as Christianity, and their counterparts which tend to revere a Mother Goddess figure rather than only a paternal icon.[2] In the missionising process of colonial Christianity in South Asia, “[m]any sites that had been sacred to the worship of goddesses ... were re-sacralized by making them important to the Virgin Mary,” Newman opines. He also adds that “[t]he Indian goddess ... is not an intercessor, like the [Europeanised] Virgin Mary, between people and a masculine deity, but a power in her own right.” In her Indianisation, Mary, like other South Asian Mother Goddesses is a deity unto herself – an independent manifestation of female divinity. Hence, while the Goan elite may have taken offence to da Fonseca’s brown Madonna because this had disconnected her from them, he had actually portrayed an icon who in appearance was closer to the masses that had adopted her as their own.

While artistic expressions of religious iconography speak to the identificatory processes of a people grappling with colonial legacies in their everyday lives, it is even in mundane objects that such historical influences reveal themselves. Known as kawandi, quilts created by Karnataka’s Siddi women are of import to an understanding of Indo-Portuguese history and its extant traces. These quilters are descended from Africans enslaved by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century and brought to Goa. Fleeing most notably during the Inquisition (1560-1812), the runaway slaves set up free communities in nearby Karnataka which still exist. Kawandi are not primarily created as art. Instead, pieced together from older garments, the use of brightly-coloured fabrics purposefully functions to brighten rural living spaces with little light. The recognition of the artistic talents of Siddi women has drawn attention to the community’s history where the quilts themselves bear hints of the past.[3]  Kawandi may contain crescent-shaped ornamentation to signify the maker as a Muslim while the works of Catholics utilize cross motifs, bearing testament to conversion. Common to all kawandi is a mark of completion in the form of a corner embellishment made of layered triangular pieces. These are called phula, which in Konkanni – spoken in Goa and Karnataka – means flowers. The adornment, incorporating the linguistic with the artistic, recalls the Siddi community’s past in Goa. In delivering the legacy of quilting from one generation to the next, Siddi women maintain cultural traditions, and also the community’s history as African Indians who defied colonial Portuguese authority to liberate themselves.

Fabric as art also evokes the Portuguese legacy in Goa beyond India’s borders. At the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles, California, John Nava’s “Communion of Saints” is a tapestry that features among its subjects a Goan missionary. The Blessed Joseph Vaz (1651-1711), an Indian priest with a Portuguese name, blends in with the tapestry’s other multicultural figures which also consists of unnamed people. This mélange represents the indecipherability between the holiness of everyday folk and the anointed. At the same time, Vaz’s inclusion in the artistic composition as one beatified, but not yet canonised, raises the question of what role race plays in the recognition of venerability. Again, what this summons is art’s interrogation of the complexities of cultural legacies. These legacies are represented in the sacred and the mundane and as a record of authority and resistance, where Portuguese and Goan heritage are imbricated in the complementary and clashing hues of art that does not simply choose to please the eye.

A version of this article appears in print as a supplement to The Goan and can be viewed online.

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[1] Savia Viegas, “Painting the Madonna Brown” in Himal Southasian (August 2010).

[2] Robert S. Newman, Of Umbrellas, Goddesses and Dreams: Essays on Goan Culture and Society (Mapusa: Other India Press, 2001).

[3] An organization called the Siddi Women’s Quilting Cooperative promotes and sells the quilters’ creations.