CHEAU HO
Interview with Vedika Rampal
![Ondine Manfrin. I Pretend I Do Not See It But In Reality I Do [best of highlights compilation 2021]. 2021. 20 min apx. Video. Image by Kieran Butler courtesy of Kudos.](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/ec3bdee0e37ae49f505ecc82cfee286e41d8060433911f456142ccbfc016b52b/Ondine-low-quality.jpg)
Kudos Allstars
Featuring Lachlan Bell, Mika Benesh, Kate McGuinness, Vedika Rampal, Jack Poppert, Geirthana, Ondine Manfrin, Nolan Ho Wung Murphy, Imogen Ruberg, and Lisa Myeong-Joo.
Kudos Offsite exhibition at Goodspace
15 June, 2022
Cheau Ho (CH): What is art to you?
Vedika Rampal (VR): This is a very good question but it is also an extremely impossible one. What is art? I do not think I have the audacity to provide any philosophical or totalising definition — but I will say that I have always perceived art as something perpetually alive, perpetually flickering. For the past few decades or so, the question of the ‘end of art’ or ‘the death of art’ has no doubt been the source of anxiety for many great artists. Even in my personal experience, I have known a lot of aspiring artists who within the first year or so of practice became very quickly disillusioned with art, accepting the claim that art was dead for sure. And while I do empathise with their anxiousness, even relate to it at some level myself, I do not think art is dead. Rather, I think it is the one thing which is so immutably alive within our world.
CH: What influenced you to become an artist?
VR: I do not think that there is one particular defining moment or memory where I thought to myself that I must be an artist, or that art is something I must pursue. I just knew that to not pursue it further was never an option. Admittedly, as I went through the early stages of my life and schooling, my aspirations, like every other child, constantly changed. But for some reason, art remained constant. No matter what discipline I seemed to be flirting with at the time, the thought of leaving art, choosing something else over it, never occurred. So, when all those other pursuits arrived at their end, art was what remained. And will remain — I don’t think I’m entirely done exploring other fields, regardless of what seems to be the inevitable failure of those endeavors!
CH: Are there any artists who inspire you in your work?
VR: Gosh, this always changes. I am always so capricious about who I am drawn to! I guess in terms of art history, I have had the most ardent fascination with Caravaggio and Rothko, aesthetically speaking, of course. So, if you look closely enough at my work, you will always find some influence of theirs, whether it be in lighting or colour or composition. But in terms of contemporary art, I am moved by artists whose practice actively engages in decolonisation or investigates narratives of violence experienced by communities historically. So, Daniel Boyd’s name comes to mind first, Christian Boltanski, Anselm Kiefer, Kirtika Kain. These are just a few.
CH: What is your practice? What are your own most important symbols?
VR: I would say right now my practice is interested in histories that counter the hegemony of the Eurocentric metanarratives that still undeniably engulf museums and galleries today. Power and communal violence are recurring themes in my work, alongside a hyperawareness of the role gender plays. Pigment, scale and spectacle are formalist devices that will be found in work alongside residues of erasure and palimpsest. The marks left from the process of creation act as paramount symbols in my work.
CH: What is your preferred medium?
VR: While I am an interdisciplinary artist, experimenting with photography, installation and textiles, deep down I would say that I am a painter. Having said that, I do believe that each idea lends itself to a different medium, that there is no universal medium for all ideas. Sometimes I may even go beyond the visual form and write, it may be prose or poetry or in some oscillating place in-between both. I guess what I am trying to say is that the idea always becomes before the medium for me.
CH: Why did you want to create 'Colonial Reveries'? What did you want to bring to the audience?
VR: There is a conflict you will see in my practice between the personal and the impersonal. I seek more than catharsis, more than the autobiographical — I am interested always in a dialogue and there is nothing more than I desire than to find an interlocutor in my audience. The simple reason why I wanted to create ‘Colonial Reveries’ was to evoke acknowledgement and awareness about an event of the 20th century — which although would be seminal to the South Asian diaspora in Australia, is unknown to many people from other cultures. The year 1947 is unforgettable for people from my community, I think it is central in shaping our contemporary identities today. So, through my work I would hope to instigate a more inclusive conversation around it, which I think is relevant to the general climate today. Afterall, is a body of work depicting the aftermath of the colonial empire not appropriate to a country grappling with the demands for decolonisation?
CH: What was the creative process like? Were there any difficulties in the process?
VR: It was an interesting process. It started with memory, anecdotes, verbatim accounts from family members, survivors, witnesses — all of the intangible stuff, the stuff you wouldn’t find in history books. The second stage, of course, was to indeed move to the history books. Yasmin Khan’s The Great Partition, was an invaluable source in my research. The next step was the difficult part, the confronting part, which was to sift through archival photographs of the Partition. It was extremely… discomforting, especially when the numbers were so large, so unfathomable. When I saw them, I knew I had to use them somehow. So, these historical mementos acted as stencils, figures reduced to a painterly line on large blocks of colour, sometimes harmonious, at other times contrasting.
CH: I noticed that you have different blocks of colour in your work, what do they mean?
VR: Usually it is a question which commences a body of work for me. A question which I cannot use words to answer. For ‘Colonial Reveries’ the question simply was — how does art, an inherently aesthetic medium, reconcile with genocide? I think my use of colour is my attempt to respond to that question.
CH: What is your future direction? What do you want to achieve?
VR: I was reading the poetry of Ghalib last night. Your question reminds me of a couplet of his:
hazāroñ ḳhvāhisheñ aisī ki har ḳhvāhish pe dam nikle
bahut nikle mire armān lekin phir bhī kam nikle
I will translate it loosely as — ‘there are a thousand desires in my heart but none seem to be enough’. Perhaps I am being facetious here. To answer your question, I have a few exhibitions lined up this year, some group shows which I am very much so looking forwards to. There are also a series of blank canvases waiting patiently in my study. So far only the sunlight from my window has touched them. I am quite content with just observing them for now. Once that content dissipates — I am sure the world, in one way or another, will know.
