Sahar Zaman (Curator of the Dhiraj's show INNER EYE):
The work Throne Has Its Logic is a tall chair for all practical purpose but there’s nothing royal or majestic about it.

Dhiraj Singh: The Throne Has Its Logic perhaps owes its life to the phrase ‘power behind the throne’ where real power is attributed to a hidden authority. It was the mystery of this authority, this power that took me to explore the dynamics that form the back story of any temporal power.

S.Z.: Okay, but I would like to point out that it seems like a very grim take on the lust for power.

D.S.: I don’t see it as any more grim than say an ambition to scale the Everest or parajump from the edge of the universe or to make any sort of other pioneering effort and here I would stress on the effort and how it’s ridden by what can best be described as randomness of success. So in a sense what I am trying to say here is that there is a definite aspect of chance or mystery in the assumption of power and that it often defies logic or a linear progression of things.

Dhiraj Singh: Urban Shaman 1 came out of an attempt to extract stories that lay buried in our everyday experiences of the city. My early experience of both life and the city had been of frequent trips to the hospital for various tests and examinations because I fell sick very often.

So I used X-rays which are both extremely visual and extremely telling of our inner condition. I also like the textures that the X-ray creates. So for me Urban Shaman 1 became a narrative of the inner condition of the city dweller. How he navigates through life, how he copes with disappointments, his attachments, the extensions of his self.

Dhiraj Singh: Urban Shaman 2 is a sort of more intense version of Urban Shaman 1. Where US 1 has bull horns for a head, US 2 has a sieve so in a sense it is more enraptured by its experiences. It also has multiple hands, something that I borrowed from the popular depiction of gods and goddesses in India whose many attributes are shown through their many hands. That’s why I think US 2 is more intense. But at the same time it’s also more tranquil and at peace with its life which is how gods in India are shown. The intensity of the multiple attributes is almost never reflected on their faces that remain calm and detached.

Sahar Zaman: Trapped in Air is your first outdoor installation using X-rays. This must have been a challenge because X-rays look best when lit by artificial light indoors.

Dhiraj Singh: I am always eager to see how my works respond to light and scale. So this has been a great chance to show in an open area (of the Amber Fort in Rajasthan). The fort gets an amazing mix of visitors that includes local shoppers, domestic tourists, international tourists, artists, historians, journalists, designers and photographers. It’s the best mix of eyes that an artist can hope for. The kind of public engagement that this work receives will certainly be different from works that are displayed in a regular gallery space. Lighting the X-rays outdoors is a challenge. That’s why I decided that it’s best to let the viewers experience the work in natural light. It’s interesting for me as well to see how the X-rays look during the different positions of the sun through the day.

S.Z.: The red screens or jharokas are loose, intended to move freely with the wind. Why didn’t you choose to fix them up? And why have you left your X-rays ambiguous this time, pushed to the background and overpowered by the screen?

D.S.: The jharokas or windows in this work seek to breakdown the notion of fixity that is associated with them: how they need to be in a wall and how they need to be made of more permanent materials like stone or cement to make sense. The hanging windows sort of defy the notion of a fort, which is where this work is based. Through it I am trying to put to the viewer questions about history and permanence, how history is always fixated on the perspective of its teller and how there can be multiple versions of the same historical event. The X-rays on the jaali work are of different objects and body parts that seem stuck in the amber of space behind the windows and represent the perspectives of viewers both sides of the windows i.e. those who come to ‘see’ history as well those long departed who have lived it.

Sahar Zaman: Greening of Icarus is your take on the mythological Greek character Icarus who dared to fly too close to the sun with wings of feather and wax but had a fatal fall when all the wax melted. Are you amused by his arrogance or is this your take on when you try to take on something mightier than you?

Dhiraj Singh: I see the Iracus story as a love story. It is a love that is silent or unspoken but in the end it achieves its philosophical completeness. In my story Icarus is neither arrogant nor defiant of the order of things, he is simply on a journey of self-discovery. It is the journey of the soul that is often at odds with its human frailties. On the other side is the physical body that is enamoured of the soul that it sees as the epitome of perfection and bliss. These ideas of man’s essential division between body and soul, matter and spirit have been addressed through the ages by many mystical traditions including Plato’s. 

Why I call this work Greening of Icarus is because when Icarus falls down he is claimed by the earth, which is matter, and grass covers his body and all his memories and thoughts become part of this physical manifestation that is earth and his soul moves on carrying with it the thoughts and memories of his life on earth. Greening of Icarus shows how matter and spirit are held together with the glue of love, so yes it in its own strange way this work is a testament to love.

S.Z.: The work is a set of two windows, each mounted on a light box and covered with carpet grass. The windows are the wings but explain the X-rays on each pane of the windows. For example, there’s a foot tied with wire, a hand holding tea cups, key chains with ribs.

D.S.: Different panels show a different aspect of the ‘holding on’ that goes on between body and soul. So whether it is the act of bondage shown with tied feet, or the nourishment/stimulation provided by tea or the artificial feeding pipes on the ribs or the egg-like objects in the pelvis they’re all there to collaborate in creating a narrative of Icarus whose whole idea is a great example of a work has a complex kind of love. I think the literal is very often embedded in the abstract or the ambiguous one only has to immerse oneself in it to start seeing the patterns. I would imagine this is how early man became a reader of the skies.

Sahar Zaman: You’ve used your baby’s milk bottle for Kali! Inspiration surely comes from least expected quarters. So what’s the connection between Kali, the Goddess and the bottle?

Dhiraj Singh: True, ‘Kali’ happened at a time when Kazuo, my son, was born and suddenly I was inundated with images of baby things. The milk bottle however stood out because it was the most powerful symbol of a growing life apart from the baby himself. Power is also something that is associated with Kali because of her fearsomeness. But very often we don’t realize that as a concept Kali is an important link in the cycle of life. She necessitates reduction, paring down and de-fancifying things in a bid to make us truly understand the core of all existence. So it was easy for me to fuse these two essentialities into one work, both visually and aesthetically.

S.Z.: So was it difficult to shrink down the scale of your work to the size similar to just an A4 size page? Or is it easier to work on this small a scale?
 

D.S.: I wouldn’t say it was easy but the idea of Kali sort of necessitated a paring down. Also it helped that Kali is a well known goddess and her place in the Indian pantheon has been much elaborated upon particularly by the tantric school of thought so my work as the physical translation of an idea had the freedom to not have to explain itself too much. That’s also perhaps why I find it very important to give a name to my works.

Sahar Zaman:  You have tried to bring a subtle change in the X-rays with the use of colour. Devi and Beast is the first of this kind. Did you like the effect?

Dhiraj Singh: I did this work keeping in mind the idea of love. Introducing colour perhaps came from a desire to make the work less stark. I felt the grey scale of X-rays is too grim for such a theme.

S.Z.: This work is again a set of two light boxes. One with the skull which is the Beast and the second with the mask which is the Devi. But why is the skull of the Beast upside down with pipes jutting out? And Devi is looking away from the Beast, coldly staring at the viewer. It certainly is an odd couple!

D.S.: The work was inspired by Mahisasuramardini, the incarnation of Devi as the slayer of the beast. But in the violence of the act is also implicit a desire to restore order and sentience in the universe, especially one that is darkened not by ignorance but by the corruption of knowledge. The beast is in an upside down position because he represents a perversion of order and balance. Those extensions coming out of his head are his ‘mind feeders’ through which he spreads his hatred and anger. Devi’s love for him is not so much as a romantic kind of love but a kind of ‘curative’ love that women feel perhaps at a deeply intuitive level where they seek to bring order and balance to the lives of their family members and their loved ones.

Sahar Zaman (Curator of the Dhiraj's show INNER EYE):
Black Tide is a work that you made after your trip to Australia. You went there as a journalist when you heard of the alleged racist attacks on Indians in Melbourne and Sydney. But you learnt something else about the past. The local riots against Arab immigrants in a suburb called Cronulla. 

Dhiraj Singh: Yes, I went there as a curious journalist but when I returned I realized my personal experience in Australia needs to be expressed stronger through my art than my writing. I had a wonderful time in Australia, made some great friends, met some significant artists, writers, singers and filmmakers. One of their famous artists of the 1960’s, light sculptor Roger Foley-Fogg is a good friend. I was invited for his solo show called ‘Spirit of India’ in Sydney where I realized his profound love for India and the ancient Hindu philosophy of Vasudev Kutambakam which is about oneness in all creation.

So my personal experience was in absolute contrast to all the racism charges that Australia` has been accused of. I wanted to strike a balance between what I felt and what happened during the riots and alleged racist attacks.

S.Z.: So the work is a comment on Australia’s dark history and its struggle to rectify its wrong and move on? Is it like building a glorious present after a dark past?

D.S.: Yes it is comment on the white settlers who came to the continent perhaps with a lesser degree of hostility than those who came to the Americas but with the same biases towards what they perceived to be primitive cultures. What it also tries to show is the difference in concepts of ownership between the so-called advanced cultures and the so-called primitive cultures, where one is solipsistic the other takes a larger, sweeping view of life. Black Tide uses a popular symbol of Aussie life i.e. the surfboard that stands for fun and adventure-seeking and transposes it a long and somewhat forgotten history of subjugation that the white settlers carried out on the Aborigines. 

I had the fortune of seeing the recording of a corroboree that Roger did in the 1980s that had a deep impact on my ideas about civilization and spirituality. The corroboree told the story of a group of Aborigines who having never seen a cow, kill it and eat it only to realize that it ‘belonged’ to the white man. The story goes on to tell of how the white owner of the cow punishes them by making them pay with their lives. Interestingly the story doesn’t end there but continues to the point where the ‘dead’ Aborigines pay their surviving relatives a visit and warn them about the strange ways of the white man. I also like the Aborigine idea of an all-encompassing ‘dreaming’ that contains everything and everybody in its continuum of activity.

Currently on show at Venice, to view click  -   'India the Revealed Mysteries' at Venice