"Vamona Navelcar and the Art of Being Goan," Curatorial Talk at Fundação Oriente for GOA/PORTUGAL/MOZAMBIQUE: THE MANY LIVES OF VAMONA NAVELCAR (12 December 2017)

 

I was about to leave the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, when it caught my eye. 

Even before I turned around to see it in all its depth despite the signature monochromatism, I knew what it was. I was face to face with a painting by the Goan artist V. S. Gaitonde. My awe at seeing this canvas was only rivaled by the fact that I had to be this far away from Gaitonde’s homeland to view his work. Perhaps I will have the same reaction when I finally get to see one of F. N. Souza’s paintings. Perhaps like so many other Goans, I will never get to see one of F. N. Souza’s paintings on permanent display in a public place in Goa. 

Painting 4 (1962) by V. S. Gaitonde

A reporter asked me to relay a question to Vamona Navelcar in the lead up to this exhibition. She asked, “Mr. Navelcar, why is art important to you?” I want to ask this question of ourselves: “Why is art important to us?” And it is not that we do not hold art in high regard, but what is the art we know or don’t know, and why?

Chances are, if you were to hold up a copy of the Mona Lisa to the average student here in Goa, they would know the name of the painting, and even the name of its creator. Could we be confident that the same would be true were the exercise repeated with art by a Goan artist, living or dead? I want to dwell on the irony here of our evident awareness of a painting from the sixteenth century, but not of art of past or contemporary Goan provenance. 

Now, there is one exception to the lack of public knowledge of Goan artists, and that would be Mario de Miranda, the ubiquity of whose art is legend. 

And as much as I enjoy the late de Miranda’s art, one must ask what gives rise to its popularity? Is it because it produces and reinforces popular notions of Goa as a land of pleasure for the consumption of others? Equally, if Goans today are unaware of Goan art, is it because its appreciation is not accorded value in, among other things, the education system? It is no huge revelation to say that Goa’s place in the national imaginary is that of a pleasure periphery or a cinematic backdrop. And then there is the continued thrust of nationalist politics that narrowly define Goan and Indian identities. Accordingly, how does the public educational curriculum participate in such mainstream representations and ideologies to the detriment of the specificity of Goan art, history, literature, and other forms of local knowledge that are diverse and multifarious in their own right? Can Goan art have a place in the public imagination of and by Goans if the region itself is imagined, sometimes even by Goans themselves, as incapable of being anything more than a canvas of limited shades?

Enter Vamona Ananta Sinai Navelcar. 

Born in Pomburpa in the late 1920s, he was given a scholarship to study art in Lisbon during the time of the Estado Novo, while Goa was still an overseas territory of Portugal. As decolonization broke out the world over, affecting Goa as well, Vamona’s position as a Goan living in Portugal placed him in jeopardy. Around the time of the transfer of Goa between Portugal and India, Vamona decided to start life anew as an instructor in Mozambique where, again, the politics of decoloniality were to follow him, resulting in his incarceration. Upon his release, he returned to Portugal which in the 1970s was in the throes of the Carnation Revolution. The artist of three continents then finally made his way back to Goa in the 1980s, having lived here ever since.

You can read more about Vamona’s life in the book that accompanies this exhibition, and some of its contributors will share their work shortly. But even from this short description, what must become clear is not only the richness of this artist’s life, but how it has actually spanned, really, multiple lifetimes across the Lusophonic world and its connected histories. Yet, though the exhibition is titled Goa/Portugal/Mozambique: The Many Lives of Vamona Navelcar, its contents have not been displayed in order of creation to mark the regions of their origin, nor have they been laid out according to the cultural markers that might tie the art to specific places. On the one hand, what sets this exhibition apart from others that have showcased Vamona’s work is that it contains some of the oldest pieces in existence in Goa today by this artist and are from practically every decade since the 1950s. On the other hand, the exhibition hopes to highlight the cultural influences of Goa, Portugal, and Mozambique in the artist’s oeuvre as they appear at different points in his life – the figure of an African woman from his time in Goa or even a sari-clad mother cradling her child from when the artist lived in Lisbon. Or the influence of the Portuguese poet Pessoa, Vamona’s muse who was with him despite his departure from Portugal. 

This is something one can read about in the companion book, which follows a similar reasoning as the exhibition. In addition to a series of works by various contributors who were invited to reflect upon the artworks in the exhibition, the book also contains a graphic novella that uses Vamona’s art and the locations of his life. The book also brings together a few previously published essays on Vamona, working as a hybrid text that may serve as a reference to the artist’s life and legacy.

At the same time as Vamona’s story is Asian, European, and African, it is also distinctly Goan. In this, the artist’s story is that of so many other Goans who have made lives in other parts of the world, traveled back to Goa, and ferried cultural influences across the globe while at the same time being influenced by their own journeys. Vamona’s art not only makes visible a Goa connected to other points on the globe, but a Goa that has many worlds within it. We often forget that in addition to Goans living outside of Goa, the Lusophonic circuit also brought, and continues to bring, people from its other worlds to Goa.

In the sixteenth century, Goa was one of the sites on the slave route from Portuguese Africa, and the descendants of enslaved Black people continue to exist in our midst. And to this day Goans maintain their ties with Portugal as football fans, European transnationals, and job-seekers. For my own part, perhaps I was drawn to Vamona’s work because it spoke to my own family’s history. As a third-generation child of the Goan diaspora, it was only a few years ago that I was able to visit the last resting place of the grandmother I never met because she was buried in Africa. Several of you have similar pluri-continental stories. 

Assumption (1952) by Angelo da Fonseca

As Goans, why is the art that someone like Vamona creates important to us? It is not solely because it colors our imagination or broadens our horizons. It is more than just the work of a rich mind, it is a depiction of our realities. It does not just show us a world that was, but the many worlds that make Goa what it is. To this end, I will again cite the similar importance of Souza, Gaitonde, and add Angelo da Fonseca. I might also point out of this historic trinity, that it should not escape our attention that they are all men.

Yet, it was really the efforts of Ivy da Fonseca that returned Angelo da Fonseca’s work to Goa and made it available to the Goan public. The Xavier Trindade archive, which surrounds us now, was similarly secured. Many contemporary Goans artists, women and men, continue to shape how we see ourselves and our land. Anant Pai is present today. But I am pleased to say that were I to list all the names of artists presently working in Goa, we would be here all evening. Instead, I will name the few I have had the pleasure of meeting: Viraj Naik, Conrad Pinto, Karishma D’Souza, Yolanda D’souza, Angela Ferrão, Savia Viegas, Alexyz, and Vanessa de Sa. In naming these artists alongside Goa’s historic greats, and the living legend Vamona Navelcar, it is to ask us to take cognizance of the legacies we may have lost and those we can still maintain. If art allows us the possibility of seeing ourselves in our complex histories and ways of being, then it does so best by being part of our public dialogue, by being in our public spaces – and this can only happen through our support of the arts.

Vamona paints nearly every day. A remarkable feat for someone who is almost 90 years of age. That he does so despite the limited recognition that has come his way in his own homeland speaks to the importance this artist sees in the worlds he depicts, the stories he needs to tell. For us, it should serve as a reminder that art is not just a pleasing image or a vestment of value, but the very ways in which life is given its due. 

 

"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.