[Reader-list] Reader List: bharti kher..a project on the matrimonials

[khergupta]

Dear reader list


After a long  silence about my project on matrimonials and proposed video work; 
' love , an absence of assignable cause"

I send this second posting somewhat reluctantly.....

Artist process (call it what you want...) somehow negates the process of discussion, until that is the work is made.

But some information for you to interpret : 
A matrimonial posted by a friend on a popular Indian website has already some 3000 hits in 2 weeks....
Describing herself as an independent, ambitious and fun loving woman who wants to meets like minded people...

her replies mostly consisted (about 85%) of already married men who were bored with their young families.
On a meeting with one such bored husband, he admitted that he preferred that his wife remained as she was. Urban middle class India story.

My friend's cousin has a PhD.  She lives in South Extension. her engagement has just been announced to her long time boyfriend. her parents still posted a matrimonial incase they chanced upon someone even better. She now eats only when he arrives to meet her, however late.

My brother in law flew from pillar to post in Bihar to get his daughter married. She is a class 3 teacher. Both he and her suffered what I would describe as humiliation as demands for dowry and all the usual politics of marriage came into play. I took some photos of her to show the proposed family...demure, homely setting and too much skin lightening foundation. Right hand placed over left. She was told that her teeth were not good enough and she is too short.
Dowry is prefixed:  IS officer: 20 lacs ; Government job (transfer officer): 10-15 lacs and for class2 or 3: 5lacs; Business man: 5\6 (depending on how much property he owns),  Even the Pan Wallah:1 lac and teacher: 3 lacs at least . Class and caste rules are strictly followed in the whole of Bihar, U.P, Rajasthan....

There is always someone in the family who enjoys making matches and like myself (for different reasons) reads the matrimonials. Men travel great distances to meet prospective alliances. The Indian Sweet industry greatly benefits from such alliances.

So as I sift through all the junk and paraphernalia of imagery and narrative that revolves around the great spectacle of Indian weddings, I'm wondering how the hell to put it all together without it being a documentary or a pastiche. The role of art is surely to move away from all that we know already and to present something that motivates an element of surprise, however small or profound. To present the image as one and turn the meaning into something else.

Perhaps that is the reason i resist talking about the actual work.

Any comments welcome.

Bharti Kher


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