About Shibani Mitra: an interview
Dakshita Bishnoi and Trev Dube, Indian and South-African creatives at Project Synergy, co-write an interview about Shibani Mitra, a visual artist who explores her understanding of the world through experimental ideation.
© Shibani Mitra Photography. @lostartistclub
Scrolling past the visuals of artistic profiles sometime during the lockdown, I came across some photographs that had a very raw, earthy and organic touch to them. I felt drawn to the visuals. As I went on to explore Mitra's ‘visual experiments’, I noticed the pictures evoked a sense of intrigue. A creative story unravelled with every click.
Mitra is a visual artist who defines her work as a melange of exploration, ideation, experimentation and creation with photography and props.
I started following her work and she has inspired me a lot. I feel very fortunate to be a part of the creative group she created, where she brought people together from different backgrounds to a common virtual room for an art exchange and people randomly creating pieces of art for strangers which was a very rewarding and soulful experience where we were able to carve out a space for artists - amateurs and professionals, young and old, and a beautiful community was formed.
As we at Project Synergy always strive to forge connections and have created a platform for artistic expression and the exchange of ideas through collaboration, we invited Shibani for an interview where we talked about art, nature, creativity and much more, as we witnessed some frolicky appearances from her cats.
Dakshita: How do you define art? How artistic exploration through photography and visuals form a part of your life?
Shibani: I define my art and work as a process of capturing ideas that live in my head, an attempt to bring them to life. I grew up in a family that understood the importance of art and aesthetic education. I was very fortunate that visual literacy was imparted to me, unlike most families where there is an emphasis on imparting a particular type of education and specific subjects are given priority over others, a sliver which can generate tangible benefits. As a result, a lot of parents fail to teach their children about beauty, how to find it in little things like a leaf, and how to create art and embrace it without the confining labels of good or bad art. Whereas I, having been brought up in an artistically liberal environment, was able to develop a part of me which was attuned to finding beauty in everything around me. Art came naturally to me in the form of a visual understanding.
Dakshita: I really like how your family adopted the concept of open education and taught you to notice things that really matter, things helping one to make sense of life and live it to the fullest, making one sensible towards oneself and one’s surroundings.
You talked about visual understanding, and you describe your work with the phrase ‘Visual Experiments’. What do you mean by a visual experiment, and what does your creative process look like?
Shibani: I don’t think of my work as just photographs. I take a photograph which is an experiment captured aesthetically, and the moment I put it out there, it becomes visual.
It’s a documentation of the bizarre. My work is layered. Sometimes it’s serious, for example, I created a visual in Goa where I photographed a person mounted on a cliff, standing nude, portraying the relation of our bodies to the vast expanse of nature, and at other times, I mess around with ideas as I did with one of my series titled ‘Unwearable’. A lot of my work is performance art. I use my camera to bring my imagination to life using physical props i.e. Visual Experimentation.
My creative process includes watching a lot of good movies and reading interesting books. For instance, I've been exploring creative non-fiction. I recently read 'How To Be An Artist' by Jerry Saltz, and I'm currently reading 'Against Interpretation' by Susie Sontag. I would totally recommend reading these books. These activities help me to think about what I am doing and why. Initially, my work was tied to what the audience would love to see, but I grew out of that as I realised I was going down the slippery, treacherous den of content-making and was becoming an entertainer. So I took a break, I went through a depressive phase where I almost quit, but I consumed the right stuff during the break, and that became my anchor.
I realised that I want to create from a point of authenticity where I'm fighting for my own truth. We can see that the line between being an artist and an entertainer has been blurred with the emergence of social media platforms like Instagram. However, they are a great way to reach people and interact with them through your art if you curate your feed in such a way that it tells your truth above all, and you can just stumble upon many interesting works and artists randomly and meet like-minded people. That said, I try to be conscious of where my intention of creating comes from, I try to be honest with myself, and I want to grow slowly, enjoying what I am doing. I'm satisfied with the appreciation that comes from the right people who interact with my art, and that's enough there's no need for your work to be hailed as the epitome of art when it's sincere. Validation, satisfaction, and money do influence one's creative process, and at times, hinders the flow that I feel.
My process of creating improved a lot when I moved away from validation and closer to the purpose of making art. Interactions with people, the cinema and literature have been the base of this transformation.
Dakshita: I think it's a really interesting aspect of your artistic practice that you don't want to be confined to a particular label like that of a photographer, and that gives you more freedom to define your work. As you mentioned about an artist's need for validation on social media, do you feel that the audience inadvertently guides your artistic practice at times?
Shibani: No, I think there's a time when it did guide or influence my work. I do desire appreciation, but as I said, I try to create my work along the line of what I want to express rather than catering to what the audience would love.
Dakshita: I feel you have more autonomy in going deeper into your artistic journey this way. I've been following your work, and I have noticed your work lies at the intersection of nature and the human body, where you use the body as a kind of canvas, and you paint it wonderfully with natural elements. Can you elaborate on how this intersection plays out in the visuals you curate?
Shibani: I consumed a lot of art as a child, such as the Renaissance paintings and works of artists like Amedeo Clemente Modigliani, and the body was the central theme of a lot of these artworks. In art, I thought the body could be a desexualised object. For me, it's the material embodiment of human existence and what a person goes through. We all can relate to the human body across time, space and cultures. It ties us to our experiences. It's an amalgamation of our happiness, suffering, pain and other emotions. Body and nudity in art then become a link, something we can feel connected to. As my art revolves around the human body, I have, at times, received backlash from my community for the portrayal of naked bodies, and I feel that backlash is based on a shame-oriented culture. On the other side, there's this excessive sexualisation of the body in the media. I feel the naked body doesn't always have to be sexualised. In art, there are several nuances attached to the body.
For me, it's very natural that I want to incorporate the human body in my work.
Another thing that inspires and becomes a part of my work is Nature. My uncle would take me out for random nature walks in the forest, by the beach, or we'd go out on picnics and I developed this deep connection with nature which is reflected in my work.
Trev: I was wondering what kind of world you want people to travel to through your art and what sort of reality you want to expose people to, as Art, for me, is a window to another world, to another reality different from what we are currently experiencing.
Shibani: I think people are very complex, and there's no way that a work of art can take all the people to the same place because how you perceive an artwork depends upon where you come from, what you've been through and what you're experiencing at the moment. I try to be real with what I am experiencing, be it something bold or peaceful or bizarre, and I express that as clearly as possible. When you release your art out there, it's no longer yours in the sense that its interpretations or the life it's going to take are no longer under your control. We don't exist in a vacuum, we have shared and similar experiences, but we tailor them to suit our own context and stories. A piece of art can take on many different meanings for different people. Just as Andrei Tarkovsky puts it, "A book read by a thousand different people is a thousand different books".
Trev: I feel I can relate to that. It's just like having a word, and if you throw it into an ocean of words, a completely different context is created. Earlier, you mentioned your experiment with Ice Sandals, how did you come up with that idea?
Shibani: A friend of mine called me saying he was in Pondicherry, so we planned to meet up. We met, we talked, we had a croissant, and then we started drawing. We were taking turns drawing something or the other very fast, and we entered a state of mind where we weren't thinking much, and a lot of original, weird ideas were taking form through sketching. I was thinking about ice skating, and a thought crossed my mind- what if the sandal is made of ice? I thought it was very intriguing. I would describe myself as a very spontaneous person. I told my friend about the idea, and we decided to go for it. We went to the ice shop, got a big slab of ice and then we went to the fish market and started fiddling with the ice, trying to cut it into the shape of a sandal. The fisherwomen and other people around us were very curious as to what we were doing. They all came near us, and they helped us in cutting the ice slab into manageable chunks and assisted me in tying the ribbons. They were really into it. That's how the experiment came to be.
Most of my projects are extremely random. At times, they don't come out as I expect them to, and I keep them aside as failed experiments and my sister or my friends are like you should share this or that. When I do post them and get positive feedback, it makes me wonder if I was being too harsh on myself and if it's even possible to get something to work out the way you wanted. I started realising that maybe it's a blessing it didn't happen the way I desired because it will be a curse for an artist to succeed in the very first attempt, and after that, it will be a dead end. I accepted failure as a very helpful friend. It took a very long time, but once I did that, it gave me immense joy, hope and a carefree attitude.
Trev: Experimentation usually has a hypothesis in the beginning, and you start from, well, nothing in the beginning. How do you make sure that you nurture the space where spontaneous things can happen?
Shibani : That's an intriguing question, and I'm figuring it out as we speak. I think there's a very strong aspect of my personality which encourages me to imagine 'what if I do this' and explore 'where will it take me,' i.e. the impulsive trait. This can sometimes be a destructive trait because I am prone to experimenting with stuff which can be, at times, dangerous and somewhat selfish too. I guess it works well in the field of arts where there's room for this kind of spontaneity which wouldn't be there in other regular jobs, and that may be one of the reasons I haven't been able to get myself employed in those arenas and I wouldn't want to suffocate this part of me that keeps me active and motivated. I feed off of uncertainty, of not knowing and wanting to follow through with a certain idea, even when it seems impractical or stupid. There was a time when I got afraid of trying out these ideas and had the tendency to suppress the impulsive part. But gradually, the intrusive thoughts surrounding this idea will lead to getting the better of me, and I let myself go. It does end in some very interesting experimentation. Even when they didn't end how they were supposed to, I felt good because you can never catch up with a dream. It will always fall short of something or the other. One good thing is that no one is privy to those dreams apart from your own self. The people are aware of and acquainted with your final piece of work. They see your work for what it is, even when you considered it a failed attempt in comparison with your original idea. With time, I learnt to appreciate my work through their eyes, and that's very powerful. I can feel my confidence levels surging back up. I have been rethinking the notion of failing, I've been looking back at my archives and am feeling good about them.
Trev: That's really great. I saw this one photograph where someone is throwing water at you, and in the context of that, how do you see vulnerability in your art where there's the exposure of your body or intimacy is involved?
Shibani: There's a funny thing that I never really feel naked when my body is exposed in any way in art because it's not about me or anyone else involved in that piece of art. It has more to do with the human body rather than whose body it is. For instance, if I'm taking a photograph of a person, the artwork is about the curves, the lines, the complexion and the relationship between the body and nature. The emphasis in my work then is on the connection between different elements in the photograph.
© Shibani Mitra Photography. @lostartistclub
Dakshita: That's an interesting perspective. I have noticed that you give a title to every visual you create, and many of the words revolve around a particular emotion or feeling. How do you articulate and express the whole experiment through a single word or phrase?
Shibani: Whenever I shoot something, I try to understand the mood and then I give it a voice through words without premeditating about what I'm going to convey.
Dakshita: What role does the creative community play in your life and art?
Shibani: There are moments in an artist's life where one needs the stimulation of an artistic community and moments where one needs solitude. The unfiltered inflow and exposure to other artists’ work have been the source of my anxiety because I felt like an imposter and inadequate. There have been some depressive episodes in my life where I cut off all social media to allow myself to heal. When I opened myself up again, I was more meticulous and careful in the selection of the creative community I surrounded myself with. The creative community can both be a source of angst and inspiration but certainly a powerful and irreplaceable force in artistic life.
Trev: Do you feel there’s a dark side to artistic life?
Shibani: I have had personal challenges with my mind that destabilised my work and emotions. No, actually, I think my work benefits from my spontaneity and comfort with nudity. Sometimes I go too far with spontaneity, so I have to pay great attention to balancing my yin and yang, perhaps far more than others. This one time, on a rocky shore, I fell off this big rock while doing a photoshoot. Luckily, I got away with a few bruises and cuts, if I had fallen in the opposite direction, I would have found myself in the brutal hands of the colossal waves that would have crushed me onto the rock or, worse yet, broken my camera. I live with no regrets, I risk it all for a perfect shot time and time again, sometimes, I take it too far, but it’s all worth it.
Trev: Beautifully said. Most of your art is in nature with nature, what’s your relationship to nature?
Shibani: I had a nature-oriented childhood. Growing up, I would go cycling into the heart of the forest with my uncle, we would go harvesting, pick mangos, and flowers and swim in the ocean. As a result, I have a unique relationship with nature and adventure, not in a poetic way but in a literal sense and in the most intimate way possible. I like to be in nature, in its innermost depths, I like to get dirty in the mud, stand on top of rocks and mountains, and be completely immersed in the ocean.
Trev: Wow, incredible. I just fell in love with nature just listening to you. It breaks my heart knowing that we are collectively destroying nature at an unprecedented pace, what are your thoughts on this?
Shibani: My relationship with nature is not that of me protecting nature, nature is immeasurably more powerful and beautiful with and without our gaze or existence. Climate change is not the earth’s problem but our problem, we are the ones on the brink of great suffering and extinction. Nature will be fine, she was fine before us and will be fine in the post-human era.
Dakshita: That’s really sad and true. On a lighter note, what are the links you see between nature and fashion? What is the inspiration behind curating body coverings or ornamenting your body with the silhouette of natural components?
Shibani: I don’t know. I just like to stick things on my body, that sounds totally wrong, but I just want to see if I can do it. I like clothes, aesthetically, I find the idea of covering one’s body beautiful without dictating what is covering the body. So, I like to experiment with covering the body with different materials and elements. Exploring what it means to be human by using my body as a prop to play and experiment with non-conventional coverings or fashion. Lately, I have been experimenting with plants with the elements like water and ice.
Trev: You’re almost like a human lab of experimentation. What has this process of experimenting with the body taught you about yourself?
Shibani: The continual process of trial and error helps me know myself better. The process is very slow from project to project, so I can’t pinpoint the exact time and project, but I know that it takes place in the background. I have grown so much, learnt so much and questioned so much. I’ve learnt to be present at the moment and focus all my energy on being true and fully at the moment. I am not perfect at this, I have my own contradictions between my ideals and reality, but the key is to keep fighting to live out what you’ve learnt and understood.
There are times when I relapse into old unhealthy patterns of toxic self-talk, and I have to actively reject those thoughts and remind myself of what the sensation of joy feels like in my body. Anxiety manifests itself in the physical, one has to fight it by evoking joy and flooding the body with the sensation of joy.
Trev: I am really interested in trying this out, something that caught my eye on your Instagram feed was a video of you dancing on your bed. How does dance connect to your art?
Shibani: So I strongly believe that everyone has a dormant artist in them. The dance was the depiction of the artist that is trying to free themselves from the narrative that we are not artists. We are all artists, and dance is a movement that breaks the routine of the daily administrative movement of the body, just as art is a window to the other world. Most people confuse technique and art. For me, art is about what you say and how you say it – the truth with which you say it. For me, it’s like saying I am not a writer because my handwriting is sh*t. I’ve always had something to express, I just didn’t know how to express it before I got my artistic instruments and my element.
Dakshita: Are you working on something currently?
Shibani: I create a Wishlist of projects and ideas on my wall, and through seeing them every day, I’ll at some point start one, then the next and the next. The process is not that linear, though, due to financial constraints and also because I usually will start one project, then it leads me to something completely different that I hadn’t imagined yet. I’ll make it.
We believe you’ll make it. Thank you so much, Shibani!
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Dakshita Bishnoi and Trev Dube are long-standing members of the Project Synergy community.
Dakshita is a Visual Researcher from India. Her varied interests make her oscillate between research, writing, art and design with an interdisciplinary approach.
Trev is a writer and editor from South Africa.