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If the measure of an artist's success is the secondary market, then Mithu Sen's Rs 18 lakh outing in the recent Saffronart sweepstakes with Dance After Depression I qualifies her for an encore in this uncharted terrain. If Sen's meteoric rise in the contemporary market was celebrated by many - she did seem to manage awards and residencies with alacrity - others would have advised caution, having seen several of her peers singed by the torch of fame. Sen, though, has remained irreverent. To dismiss her as merely another shooting star would be short-sighted, though it is a sore temptation given the artist's ability to shoot her mouth. But to see Sen's work through her posturing would be detrimental to the observer. She is far more than the sum of her ripostes.
Other artists who have borne the "feminist" tag have been similarly feted as well as lambasted by the cognoscenti. Some of that opprobrium must indeed be borne by Sen for playing to the galleries with her fetishisation of phalluses and sexuality. "For me, it's about personal relationships and how I deal with them," she clarifies of her take on feminism. Still, there is the danger that the persona she has built around her risks dwarfing her art, something she appears to be course-correcting already.
The 2007 Dance After Depression had been exhibited in New York and Shanghai and explores a moment of Midsummer Night's Dream madness - the poise of vulnerability captured as feminine (as opposed to feminist - a constant play-off used by most artists regarded as "feminist") vanity that serves to highlight how women, like wild animals, can be regarded as fair game. Sen's own face becomes the marker for a pair of striking antlers with a donkey's resplendent ears, dainty animal feet (a pig's?) forming the hands and feet for a body draped in a saree that consists of a tiger's skin. The image is glamorous in a desirable, erotic way, recalling a fantastical, primeval being - not entirely removed from the way women are sometimes viewed as the "other". Somewhat presciently, what appear to be intestines dangle from the antlers, now recalling a violent episode that shook a nation's conscience recently.
But Sen has proved a changeling. Alone among her generation she's known as a watercolourist, and her drawings - she refers to all her works as "drawings" even when they are installations, or, for instance, combine sound - are being viewed by collectors who though initially squeamish given the erotic jolt of her early work, are beginning to appreciate it for the life studies they have begun morphing into. Sen is anything but spontaneous when it comes to her work, often writing copious notes around her concepts, which is why she says she is "very conscious, very responsible about what I am doing".
But her interests remain eclectic. If her July exhibition in Vienna plays with light and shade around notions of "appearing and disappearing, of existence and non-existence", the same month, at Tate Modern in London, she has a "performance", followed by a show in Brussels, and another in Mumbai curated by Geeta Kapur; if she's working with a choreographer in Germany, she's also associated with a fashion house in Italy as she "deals with life and negotiates a space for happiness".
This global footprint and appearances have caused her critics some concern - is she, perhaps, spreading herself too thin? In the past, it has been the undoing of her seniors, but Sen appears to have her career well within her grasp, turning each into an experiential moment. Even as the jury's out on the interpretation of her practice, Sen's debut at a significant auction is at least a pointer to her arrival in the sacred space of secondary desirability.
Kishore Singh is a Delhi-based writer and art critic. These views are personal and do not reflect those of the organisation with which he is associated
