The Rupee Ganesha Project: A currency collage and social sculpture
By C. K. Wilde and M.T. Karthik
with the help of M. Devanathan, K. Kabali, K. Murthy, A. Navanidam, S. Sekar
Date made: Monday, December 18, 2006 to Sunday, February 18, 2007
Location made: Periya Mudaliar Chavady, Tamil Nadu, India
Materials used: Indian Rupees, PVA Glue, Vegam Teak Wood, Matte Varnish
Size: One meter rondo
Abstract for the project
The artists created an atelier in a Tamil coastal village in South India, and produced there a culturally syncretic image of the Hindu Lord Ganesha made entirely from pieces of Indian Rupees in circulation: a currency collage. Cultural commitments to the location and its regional calendar were made a priori, to achieve harmony with the people living in the Tamil village while producing the work. Specific regional cultural practices informed the sculpture as it was being created. Certainly villagers attitudes toward Ganesha were embodied from currency collected in their village. The project directly engaged local artists and laborers to create a carved wooden frame for the collage: a two-inch thick, one meter rondo, cut from a single trunk of vengam wood and handcrafted. 16 Tamil villagers were employed by the project. The artists brought or shipped special materials and financed the project themselves. The Rupee Ganesha was completed at 7:00pm, Saturday, February 17, 2007 in the village of Periya Mudaliar Chavady, Tamil Nadu, India
Statement
The goal of the project is the creation of a currency collage of Ganesha, the Hindu God of the marketplace and compassion - an artwork emblematic of dialog between India and the west.The work was conceived jointly by artists M.T. Karthik and C.K. Wilde as an opportunity for, among other reasons, broadening cultural discourse between eastern and western practices of art.The artists created a new "development" model for this cross-cultural artifact establishing an atelier within an Indian village (the "heart" of India according to M.K.Gandhi) in which the services of local artists and craftspeople are engaged in the production of the artwork. Wrapped into the production of the artwork is the inherent mutual value of artistic exchange between cultures. The community has opportunity to cross-pollinate procedural dialects and methodologies in the "temporary autonomus zone" of the atelier.
Rather than a topdown development model, the model of the Rupee Ganesha Project is horizontal in nature, respectfully living within a South Indian community and engaging it through an egalitarian project. "It takes a village" to raise a child, so too this work of art required a community. The skein of relations that bind us and support us is generally overlooked in the western canon of art in service to the idea of singular authorship (like Karel Fabritius, known as Rembrandt's "assistant" rather than his collaborator). Antidotal to this perspective is the Hindu example of communal relations expressed over thousands of years in the villages of India.
The Hindu and Buddhist study of subject-object relations and causality have produced a philosophic substantiation of perspectives born from diligent observation and reflection of Indian village life. The perspective that life is a collaboration we all share responsibility for, that the self and mind are fluid and knowable, that our bodies are but a sleeve for the soul, that the energy we expend and produce is part of a closed system of relations, that "The Other" is in truth the same as the "Self", and that the differentiation of identity is a blessing or gift.
Freedom from this cycle of incarnation only happens through the discipline of personal responsibility for our actions or acts (karma). We engage and are engaged by this world of "maya" or illusion, and our acts have causal effect for oneself and the community at large.The creation of a sculpture of wood, paper, and glue therefore has another invisible sculpture hovering over it - in the skein of communal relations that produced it. So it is with the Rupee Ganesha. The person who cooks for the workers is as important as the artist in the production of the art.
- C.K.Wilde