Instead of wielding the brush on canvas, she took her art straight into a place where life is experienced in rawness - in a Kerala orphanage for minor girls brutalised and devastated by sexual and emotional abuse.
Celebrated artist Mithu Sen shot her 42-minute riveting but disturbing video installation, 'I Have Only One Language; It Is Not Mine', at the orphanage for destitute girls in Kochi without letting them know that they were becoming part of her project, which now features prominently at Aspinwall House, the chief venue for the ongoing Kochi Muziris Biennale.
By doing so, the artist was careful not to objectify children but to share their anguish and hope, spontaneity and innocence, vulnerability and rebellion, and, above all, their zest for life.
Also Read
This she did by living with them for nearly a month in the orphanage by assuming a fictional name of 'Mago', her alter ego, to experience firsthand what the life meant for them.
For Sen, it was an unscripted performance captured primarily on her home video camera and iPhone, through which she engaged with the idea of "radical hospitality", exploring the limitations of language and the possibility of dialogue outside it.
'Mago' is a homeless person who speaks gibberish, does not understand the concept of time and is in a state of transit between two unknown places.
During her stay, Sen placed herself in the situation as if she and the children themselves were all fictional.
The performance was visually documented by the artist, a house mother at the orphanage and the children who intermittently took the camera into their own hands.
"A video and sound installation assembled from this footage, along with 'remnants' of the performance, forms her exhibit," says Jitish Kallat, the curator of KMB 2014.
Reflecting on her work, the Delhi-based artist says it has two experimental sides through 'Performance' and 'Technology'.
"Creating a fictional character as alter ego and using non-language communication/performance as an anti-violence intervention with emotionally and physically abused young girls in the orphanage, define my work," she said.
