Where Do We Draw The Line?
“Untouchable Mountain” acrylic on canvas 141cm x 198 cm 2021/22, Image courtesy Mark Howe 2022
‘Where Do We Draw The Line?’
Imagine three uniformed police officers.
Imagine an exhibition. It is your work in a gallery, paintings in which you have invested hundreds of hours of labour, and all the attendant self-doubt and anguish. Your intention is to cause a stir, to draw attention to issues close to your heart.
You know the work is thought-provoking, provocative even, particularly within a culture sensitive to criticism, fiercely protective of its hierarchies – nests are feathered all over the world.
Now imagine, if you possibly can, a twenty-strong gang of extremists storming the gallery during your artist’s talk, threatening your life. The police officers try to arrest you so you run and take refuge in a safe-house provided by your tutor. The exhibition is closed, of course, because it has been deemed offensive and your career is at an end before it has even properly begun.
Manish’s early life was, shall we say, formative, and in so many ways. Poverty is abhorrent. No-one should have to bear such hardship, yet there remains something heart-warming and life-affirming when positive stories emerge. Manish’s surname ‘Harijan’ denotes his Dalit background, a family of the lowest caste. If extremists had killed him it would quickly be forgotten. Dalit have little recourse to justice. Much of his childhood was spent working as a farm-labourer, ploughing fields in order to afford to go to school for two days a week. Education opened his eyes to the injustice and he resolved to make his anger and frustration manifest, hoping to make a difference.
Art can be a voice for the voiceless, the many disempowered. This work is borne of the traumatic events of growing up in socio-political turmoil, surrounded by those who succumbed to existing in the margins.
Everything, every little thing in Manish’s work is presented to be deciphered, and set up for individual interpretation. They are clues to a meaning, and signposts to where we ought to at least consider going. The flatness, for example, of both the paint on the surface of the canvas and the modelling of form not only recalls the British Pop Art of Patrick Caulfield and Peter Phillips, but for those familiar with the genre, it brings to mind Thangka painting, gently leading us back to Nepal, which underpins this whole body of work. It is Manish’s ‘Thang-Su-Flat’, an adapted technique that acknowledges the influence of his heritage. The monotony of the skilled rendering is folded in to the meaning. There is no flashy brushwork to lead the viewer away from a straightforward exchange of information.
The imagery is an intoxicating cocktail of imagery juxtaposed and recontextualised. Like Joseph Beuys, Manish has developed a vocabulary of great personal significance. Relatively innocuous objects, such as a metallic kitchen bowl or ladder, become compelling symbols of lowly-paid toil, the ordinary becoming extraordinary. The careful placement of postage stamps is a device to introduce more layers of potential meaning – indexical of communication over distance, being away from home; the Queen of England in profile, worth £365m, smiling, beguiling. The use of Superman is intriguing – low culture, comic books and fantasy action movies, but also a distillation of complex issues that many assume simplistic. The powerful Hindu goddess Kali merges with Monroe, specifically Warhol’s Marilyn – not a portrait of Norma-Jean Baker – standing for super-stardom, inordinate celebrity and possibly her tragedy too. These unusual combinations, outside their immediate semiotic reference, can be quite poetic, like Christmas cake and Wensleydale cheese. The Rolling Stones appropriated Kali’s lolling tongue to enhance their anti-authoritarian brand, all cheeky rebellion and hot-lips sexuality. Everyone knows The Stones. But Kali’s tongue is more nuanced – it can be teasing, ironic or furious. Meaningful art can be challenging in some degree, embracing controversy. And for all those who decry it and celebrate its death, Painting can hold its own in this regard. Just ask Manet. Now there was someone who could draw a line.
Ultimately, the feeling is that this is Manish working through his history, both personal and a collective one of Nepalese Dalit. As he moves forward he absorbs and filters motifs and objects – some deeply personal, some politically pointed, some random, thus reflecting something about what it means to be an artist in a foreign land in the 21st Century, navigating all its craziness.
Texts by Sean William