Savi Savarkar’s Exhibition after a hiatus

Noted painter Savi Savarkar in exhibiting his recent works at New Delhi’s Lalit Kala Academy. The exhibiting title curiously Eyes re-cast is curated by Parul Dave Mukherji , Dean, School of Art and Aesthetics, JNU, New Delhi . This is Savarkar’s second major show after a long hiatus of almost a decade. the last major show was also organised at the Lalit Kala Academy by the then fledgling Art Konsult Gallery.

Like the previous exhibition, this one too is directed towards the Dalit cause but this time the works cover dialogues in the realm of sublime rather than simple representation. In the previous exhibition Savarkar had been mostly representative depicting his protagonists with dalit symbols and article used by the dalits particularly in Savarkar’s native Maharastra. But this time savarkar has given lesser importance to symbols and artefacts and tried to engae viewers more towards the underlying ideas that are starnge to Dalit consciousness thereby portraying the vast differnce between mainstream and Dalit world view. Savi Savarkar’s quest for a new linguistic idiom is an outcome of the recognition that most of the existing linguistic options are inadequate to communicate with the expressive needs of an oppressed but multicentered community and culture.

Savi Savarkar often uses the neo-Buddhist ideological positioning in his works, which is quite understandable as Dalit movement in India has largely accepted the Buddhist iconography and philosophy.  But what is interesting is that as the artist grows in time, his symbols are now becoming modern icons in the web-version of dalit movement. A host of web-sites in India today are openly putting Savarkar’s iconography in the context of describing Dalit concers.

The exhibition is thus important from the point of view of an index of Savi Savarkar’s growth. He had difficult time in the past. Even though he was teaching as lecturer at the Delhi’s College of Art, he was hardly much respected by the art world. His works sold much less than others who were his contemporaries. But today Savarkar is  major artist exhibiting his art accross the world, the recent most being held in USA.