Mindscapes: In the company of others is an art show that focuses on mental health

The installation, composed of scraps of embroidered crimson, marigold, fuchsia, emerald, azure, vermillion and rose cloth all patched together, is massive, nearly scraping the ceiling of the fifth floor of the Museum of Art and Photography (MAP), Bengaluru where it is located. When you shift the fabric puddling around its base, you will find a hollow large enough to crawl inside, housing a little nook into which is crammed a fabric bean-bag, a pair of gloves, and an audio set-up telling the stories of some of this artwork’s creators, related in their own voice. Despite its scale and brilliance, this artwork titled Nanna Langa (My skirt) and conceptualised by Bengaluru-based transdisciplinary artist Indu Antony in collaboration with women from the city’s Lingarajapuram locality, is intensely intimate, just like the sari petticoat it is modelled on.  

Nanna Langa, which is part of MAP’s recently opened exhibition, titled Mindscapes: In the company of others, evolved over a series of workshops conducted by Antony at the anganwadis of Lingarajapuram. The workshops conducted just before the second wave of the pandemic saw women gathering to learn how to embroider as well as share their life experiences and ponder questions of identity and well-being.

“I told them to stitch their stories, the most intimate ones that you cannot tell anyone,” says Antony, recalling how hard it was, at first, since many women did not want to share their stories. She kept encouraging this sharing process, until “suddenly it snowballed into something so huge,” she says, adding that today there are 546 stories, embroidered in multiple languages, all of which come together to form Nanna Langa.

Nanna Langa by artist Indu Antony
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

Indu Antony is the artist-in-residence at Mindscapes Bengaluru, part of the larger Mindscapes cultural programme focusing on mental health, an international initiative supported by the London-based Wellcome Trust. The four-city programme, held in partnership with the Brooklyn Museum in New York, the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, the Gropius Bau in Berlin, and the Museum of Art & Photography in Bengaluru, focuses on deepening the discourse around mental health through cultural and artistic interventions.

“Mental health is one of the biggest health challenges of contemporary times,” points out Arnika Ahldag, Chief Curator at MAP, adding that the Mindscapes initiative allowed the commissioning of several cultural projects bringing together communities to approach mental health through art, research, and policy. Art, she adds, can function as a safe and non-judgemental container to process thoughts and emotions, and lends itself malleable to any medium.

“There is growing evidence around the world to show that art-based interventions have a beneficial impact on mental health,” believes Ahldag. “As a museum that hosts a vast collection of evocative pieces and is connected to spaces in the city that create and support artistic practices, how can we propagate art as a tool that can help individuals and communities connect better with themselves?”

 Antony’s other works on display at MAP include a line of glazed ceramic pots titled Thanni illame eppadi raktham kaluvuthu? (Without water how will I wash the blood off?), 10 roughly hewn busts titled Us, an ode to women murdered in Lingarajapuram and an untitled salt paper print of some of the women of Lingarajapuram, the edges of the print embroidered with Antony’s hair, because “hair, for me, is a metaphor for memory,” she says. And her art is not just restricted to MAP; it is also being displayed at her studio space, Kāṇike, in Cooke Town and Namma Katte (Our Space), a place for leisure for the women and children of Lingarajapuram.

Artist Indu Antony
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

“There were restrictions in the anganwadi spaces too,” she says, adding that she wanted to open a space for women to sit, relax and do whatever they wanted to do. Namma Katte, which opened in early 2022, offers the women of Lingarajapuram that option. “This space has become so integral to the life of the women there,” says Antony, who intends for it to be an ongoing initiative.

Besides multiple artworks by Antony, the exhibition also showcases collateral works by artists Christine Wong Yap, Mindscapes artist in residence at large, and Cecilie Waagner Falkenstrøm, Mindscapes international artist in residence. While Antony’s work raises questions about “identity, play, rest and the location of the self” as the exhibition’s release puts it, Christine Wong Yap’s beautifully-designed zines give you a sense of belonging, helping you identify what sparks joy. Kindling, a collection of four zines, generated and hand-drawn by nearly 100 everyday people in 11 community-based workshops held in four cities across the world — New York, Berlin, Tokyo and Bengaluru— was part of a year-long project.

Cecilie Falkenstrom’s exhibit, a stunning tapestry with highly-symbolic imagery woven into it, addresses “even broader concepts of data labour practices, and the mental health of content moderators, and the idea of “humans behind the machine,” says Ahldag. She adds. “To me, all these positions the artists have taken are related to Bengaluru, with its tech industry, local communities and young population, and all of them are rooted in language around mental health, in being able to express and be heard.”

Mindscapes: In the company of others will be on view at multiple locations across the city, including MAP Bangalore, Kāṇike, and Namma Katte till August 2023.