Meet Waswo X Waswo and R Vijay, both perfectly ironic orientalist artists

American-Indian artist Waswo X Waswo is playful, ironic and profound by turns. Kishore Singh on his partnership with skilled miniaturist R Vijay

Richard X Waswo – the artist most Indians know by his nom de plume, Waswo X Waswo – is an immersive orientalist at best, a subversive one at worst. He is someone with a lively sense of humour (but also a temper), an American-Indian artist who often places himself mise-en-scène in works made in collaboration with his counterparts in Udaipur. Waswo’s journey from America to India was foretold. “I grew up a bit of an Anglophile just via reading a lot of British literature in my youth,” he tells me. “Some days I would wish I had been born in London, or in some glorious Scottish countryside. I would even fake a British accent. Of course, my infatuation with all things British soon directed me to the Raj, and through that I became enamoured with India, which seemed like an exotic and enchanted land to a 15-year-old boy who longed for adventure.” His father had been stationed in India during World War II, so there were stories, even an album of photographs labelled China-Burma-India, all of them pointing Waswo towards India. So, of course, he came. 

That was in 1993. He was backpacking and wanted to go anywhere but to Agra. “I had wanted to go to Kashmir but a local travel agent convinced me that it was ‘unsafe right now’, so I flew off to Udaipur because of a photo I had seen in the Lonely Planet that depicted a beautiful blue lake with white ghats and temples. I discovered years later that the Lonely Planet image was, in fact, mislabelled, and was a photo of Pushkar. So looking back, my first trip to Udaipur was born out of total luck and coincidence.” But it was love at first sight, and has been Waswo’s home for 13 years now. 

There are other parallels to Waswo’s life that merit attention. He was a vocal advocate of gay rights as a teenager. “I've been out of the closet since age 16, going way back to 1968 when being openly gay in the American Midwest was unheard of. In my 20s I was quite the activist for gay rights, testifying before the State of Wisconsin legislature for the removal of the state's sodomy law, and being one of the two coordinators of Milwaukee's first Gay Pride parade. As I grew older, and society became more accepting, I realised that I did not want to be pegged as a ‘gay artist’, or a gay anything for that matter. To me, the entire point of the movement was to shake off a stigma of identity that had been forced upon us. So, from my late 20s to today, I live my life as an ordinary person who just happens to be gay.”

R Vijay – Rakesh Vijaivargiya when he is at home – is one of his two collaborators and a miniaturist who “paints” the content that Waswo directs. The quality of his paintings is exquisite thanks to his skill, the subjects droll as only Waswo can make them. In them, Waswo is often depicted as the incongruous angrez in a white suit, or boxers, exploring the land as Westerners once did, but becoming, ironically, the object of viewers’ anthropology in his own paintings. 

Waswo’s meeting with Vijay was serendipitous. They decided to work together, Vijay agreeing to create a fresh language at Waswo’s bidding. It brought Vijay recognition even as scores of miniature painters continue to struggle anonymously. Now, several years into their relationship, Vijay has grown significantly. “He takes more liberties in the ways he interprets my concepts, and the compositions of the final works are more and more influenced by his own artistic decision making,” Waswo explains. “There's always a back and forth, and in practical terms I always have the final say, but I've learned to sometimes just allow him to spread his wings and fly.” 

As the more experienced collaborator, Waswo references pre-existing art, from British printmakers to Mughal miniatures and Western masters. “I think this is a part of the playful nature of what we do. Our themes are serious, and sometime actually quite dark, but we present them in ways that on the surface seem quite innocent and mildly humorous.” 

Rajesh Soni works with Waswo on his studio photography projects and, unlike Vijay, can be more aggressive. “I am the leader, but Rajesh Soni tends to also be a leader, and there can, of course, be tensions,” Waswo laughs. “I respect Rajesh though, and he respects me, so in the end those tensions get resolved and we grow together.” It is mild-mannered Vijay who is more resistant, particularly when it comes to unreasonable pressures, actually slowing down when deadlines approach. “It is his way of putting me back in my place, letting me know that he needs the time and space to create at his own speed and according to his own mood.” He adds wistfully, “So, even though I'm the leader, I hardly hold complete control.”

Their collaboration has its critics who censure their work as bastardising tradition. “The art I make with my team is conceptually Western on one level, but it certainly is influenced by, and addresses the East. I see my audience as an Indian audience, not as an American or European audience. The fact that there are still many in the Indian art world that reject me and my art as being outside the scope of Indian art I find strange and rather hurtful. It hurts me, and it hurts my collaborators who are sometimes talked about as if they are merely pawns in my game. There can be a certain amount of disrespect to their contribution and involvement in the project, or conversely, disrespect toward me as being ‘not the real artist’. But as time has gone on I think these attitudes have become less and less prominent.”

Waswo’s gay persona sometimes pops up as home-erotic art in their paintings, providing an arsenal for critics, “but the work is much more complex than that and examines so many aspects of human nature”, he argues. “The miniatures that I do with Vijay speak of the environment, alienation, cultural conflict, confusion and isolation, and sometimes even political ponderings on contemporary events. We try to be subtle. We work with the idea of creating visual poetry. We avoid any sense of propaganda. For me, art is at its best when it stirs more questions than it answers.” As for Udaipur, “I find it remarkably gay-friendly. There seems to be more acceptance there than in many other places in India. You can find this even in the tradition of the Gauri dance whose cross-dressing performances go back hundreds of years. I often wonder if this acceptance is an unspoken part of Mewari culture. “

Who is Waswo X Waswo when he is at home? “I'm of course a Westerner, and an American, and I come with certain cultural baggage and precepts that I may not have if I had been born as an Indian in India. But I've also lived in India for nearly 20 years now, and I associate almost exclusively with Indians; in fact, I go out of my way to avoid tourists, and the few other Westerners that I spend time with on occasion are also old Indophiles.” So, not quite the bumbling white man of his paintings, but still an orientalist? Yes.
The duo's show, Like a Leaf in Autumn, opened on Friday at Gallery Espace, Delhi