I feel as though I have lived my life in exile— in exile from my family, from society and from mainstream culture. I feel rootless, nomadic like a gypsy. And this is reinforced by what I see and read around me. All information is fragmented. I seem to be on an odyssey— move from one class to another; there is no fixed point, no continuity.
NN Rimzon, The Artist in Exile (1990)
Rimzon's house is deep inside a squalid byline across the ghost river that used to be the Yamuna. It's a tiny two-room job with peeling plaster and a defunct loo. One room is just 10 feet by 12. The other is 10 by eight, and serves as a study cum living room dominated by a single bed. It reminds you of the gardener’s toolroom from colonial times. But even for a toolroom, this one is rather sparsely furnished. It's the home of an exile, a nomad ready to strike camp at short notice. There's really nothing to grab your attention— still you look at the wall.
Four curiously cradle-like objects hung from it, each holding varied artifacts. The first one has a couple of swollen terracotta pots fix it a vertical plane, coupled at their perforated ends. Two feet away in the next cradle rests a punching bag, the kind used to warm up before a spazzing mach. A pile of garments neatly stacked atop each other adorn the third.
But the most striking is the last. It contains a small thorned sculpture vaguely resembling a human skull, with a set of barber's clippers stuck on. A narrow strip of wood engraved with a chronological sequence of years beginning ‘84 subscribes this most recent of Rimzon's installations— which explains why it's still in his home. "How I'd love to have a proper studio to work in". Rimzon says softly at one point, one of the rare occasions that he allows himself to talk of the commercial aspect of his trade.
Rimzon's christened this In Between the Cradles, and to grasp the layers of meanings he's worked into this collection of seemingly innocuous objects is to understand the psyche of its creator. The cradles, "sourced from a hospital," also figured in an earlier work and stand for— besides the obvious reference to a newborn— conception itself. "The cradles also signify the past, the present and the future— the three modes of time-existence that, between them, hold everything together."
The pot has been a recurring image in Rimzon's installation, and is not just a vessel. Rather, it represents a complexity of attributes, foremost among which is the reference to Mother Earth. "From prehistoric times, the terracotta pot has been symbolic of the Mother Goddess," Rimzon explains.
There are unmistakable similarities between pots made today in Kutch and the remnants of those from the Indus Valley civilization, he says, attesting to the prehistoric roots of our terracotta tradition. Between the religious and secular functions, the pot is symbolic of the indestructible cycle of human life— it is created, used and then discarded, merging back with the earth— the original procreator.
But perhaps a more relevant significance of the pot is the parallel drawn with what Rimzon calls ‘your inner self.' "It represents the perpetual dichotomy between the inner and the outer worlds. On the other hand, the enclosed space is reminiscent of the womb, and at the same time your own inside— or to put it more succinctly, your own self."
Of equal significance is the unique texture Rimzon imparts to the surface of most of his sculptures. He often treats them with marble dust to assert a sense of skin, which in turn implies that which lies within. "This sense of the 'outside' and 'inside’— and the continual flow within the two, is suggestive of the immortal symbiosism that exists between the earth, the sky, the self."
Nothing illustrates Rimzon's beliefs more starkly than this passage from the preachings of Kabir— whose writings have influenced his work— that he cited in his catalogue entry for Prospect 1993, an international survey show in Frankfurt.
Within this vessel are the seven oceans
and the unnumbered stars.
The touchstone and the jewel-appraiser
are within;
and within this vessel the Eternal
Soundeth, and the spring wells up.
Kabir says: “Listen to me, my friend!
My beloved Lord is within.”
(Songs of Kabir translated by Rabindranath Tagore, 1915)
However, it isn’t tranquility and peace that inform Between the Cradles but rather the horrific events of 1984 beginning with Ms Gandhi's assasination. Though I was far away from the epicentre here in Delhi in the years that followed, in the midst of my Masters programme at the Royal College of Art London, the degree of the tragedy continued to move me."
That's precisely what the punching bag signifies— mindless violence. There’s more to it, though— a Rimzon conception can’t escape being encapsulated in distinct layers of meaning. This one also happens to be a phallic symbol.
That's not too surprising, considering that Rimzon's sculptures are occasionally pervaded by a strong sexual energy. They possess a sensuality that could be inspired by traditional Indian sculpture as easily as by Eva Hesse.
In a work entitled The Virgin Pot featuring in Prospect 93, Rimzon coupled the structure of a white house with the swollen belly of a mammoth pot affixed to the wall. The house and the pot are metaphors for home— provider of protection, warmth and shelter. At the same time, the house could stand for a temple or any religious structure. So the house and the pot exist in surreal harmony. Like a man and a woman, they inextricably, if awkwardly, form a couple.
Interestingly, a recent installation quite similar to The Virgin Pot rests in the pitiably small space that forms Rimzon's front yard. His wife says it's called The House of Heaven and the molecule difference between this and The Virgin Pot besides an oval shaped object in the place of the pot, is in the presence of a startingly identical replica of wind shoved out of sight beneath the house.
“This separates the element of violence in the name of religious preachings. It sadly exists in almost all religious doctrine," explains Rimzon. The entire structure has a marble-like finish and only after you are prompted to knock on it does it dawn upon you that it’s really fiberglass. That, in fact, happens to be Rimzon's oeuvre. "In some of my early works I used a lot of mixed media, funnel objects. There were parts of crates, plaster, strings— all sorts of things. Poor makings, but I turned them into works of art. Never in my life have I worked with classical materials like marble and bronze. Now, I prefer fiberglass, which gives me lot of flexibility and room to improvise on my ideas."
Besides, Rimzon's works are huge— that's almost turned into his trademark. A classic instance of this is an installation last year. Far Away from Hundred and Eight Feet had a row of terracotta pots, checked with handmade brooms and lengths of rope, sprawling "rather like a centipede” over a grassy field. "One hundred and eight, a multiple of nine is auspicious," says Rimzon, making use of repetitiveness and the three elements— pot, broom and rope, conveys a host of meaning, the nature human labour, fertility that's regulated and detached at the same time, and a rootedness in the soil that's insurmountable.
But the prime reference of Rimzon's work is more mundane. "There was once a custom in Pune, untouchables were allowed into the city only if they wore small pots around their necks and carried brooms as identification of their lowly status. That's what I really had in mind."
Strangely enough, though, despite Rimzon's brilliance, he hasn't got the recognition his art deserves in his own country. Most of his work needs to be shipped to Europe to find a market. This partly owes to a chance acquaintance he struck up with Madame Schoen, Dutch Ambassador to India about a decade ago. "Schoen happened to visit a show of mine and liked my works immensely. Later she bought four or five.” After she returned to Amsterdam, she helped sell a substantial number of works.
Contrary to this is the stonewalling he faces at home. "The National Gallery of Modern Art took a piece initially if this reflects the internal political squabbles. What I do know is that when I went to see Satish Gujral, he flatly refused to buy any of my works."
The net result is that Rimzon now finds himself living off the few sketches and drawings he manages to hawk in the galleries in the capital. “I really don't know if the situation is going to improve, but I do know that I won't mind being able to lead a decent existence." The nomad, having sought a personal truth in his days in the desert, is ready to pitch camp for the last time. But the Indian marketplace still isn't ready for his trade goods.