Art As Shield

As war clouds hover over the ancestral home of ceramics, the work of P Darhoz finds a new resonance

This is an appropriate time, historically, to see the grand ceramic art work of P Darhoz. Even as he shows, there are war cries, self-righteous screamings, discussions on weapons of mass destruction.

These find a resonance with Darhoz: his own work is derived from weapons, from science fantasy and from shields, to protect oneself from these weapons. Of course, it is also worthwhile recalling that ceramics, despite the poverty and deep losses of livelihood, still has an ancestral home in Iran and Iraq.

Ceramics is typically cast as bowls, jugs, vases and platters. They are often items of utility, an art form that can enter living spaces at the level of objects. Darhoz, however, has been avoiding that route.

In his last show in Delhi about five years ago, he created giant sculptural works, with almost calligraphic surfaces. These were like giant rock formations, as the Baroda-trained artist linked his medium to their very origins, the Earth, inside which lies the clay that gives form to his skills.

In this show, hosted by Art Heritage at the Sridharani Gallery in Delhi, Darhoz has created heavy structures that resemble missiles and other weapons. They sit glowing, a reflection of the ease of violence.

But Darhoz goes further: by glazing them and rendering them in ceramics, he freezes their utility as weapons. He makes them immobile and fragile. At once, he offers us the fruit of a shamanic ritual he has enacted in his studio, a peace wish of a man working with the earth itself.

There are other works too: the most poignant being an ornate shield. Unlike the other work, its shell-like enclosed space ensures that it can, in fact, be used for self-defence, to protect one