Beneath Layers: Raj Shahani's 'Mukhowta' Reveals Human Emotions

Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung has defined "persona" as a "layered version of human personalities projected to others as opposed to their true selves." Perhaps, sculpture artist Raj Shahani was also dealing with a similar dilemma (between his masked and authentic version) before he came out as a queer at the age of 37. This acceptance of self as who he was also led Shahani to ponder over the interplay between human consciousness and ego, prompting him to materialise his thoughts via artistic pursuits. At 57, he enrolled in an art school in New York to learn sculpture art.

As someone who grew up in Mumbai and lived between the Middle East and the United States, Shahani's travels made him see renewed possibilities. Transitioning from being a product designer to an artist, he was keen to portray the varied human emotions through sculpting. "I was interested in the play between material as metaphors of human subconsciousness and ego manifesting in beauty," he told OT.

His recently concluded exhibition, "Mukhowta," a series of woodworks crafted into a forest, inspired by the sacred snake groves of Northern Kerala, reflects the duality of human emotions using bronze, copper, gold and exotic woods handpicked from Mumbai's Lakda Bazaar, known for selling the ruins of the demolished heritage buildings.

"My works arrive from a deep inherent need to express myself and mirror contemporary life under layers of material. Materiality and beauty are essential to my practice as a sculptor. Therefore, I use old reused wood and embellish it with precious metals."

For Shahani, "that shining metal is our alter ego, our Mukhowta, the mask we don to hide our authentic, beautiful selves in wood." From Burma wood to Kerala's Malabar Coast, these artworks serve as visual retreats, drawing inspiration from human experiences and ensuring sustainability.

Excerpts from the interview:

The curator of the show, Sumesh Sharma, suggested the title in Hindi, as the word 'Mukhowta' has a more dramatic imagery than "masks" because it conceptually encapsulates complex psychological and social contexts. The play between wood and metal seeks an equilibrium of nature and consciousness. I attempt with this showing of sculptures called "Mukhowta" or masks.

The word 'Apsara' in Sanskrit means 'Stem from'. Apsaras are feminine forms from the clouds and the waters, and their role is not well defined as either celestial or of the mortal world. They are there to entertain, but the objective of their lives is often open-ended, and we do not see the point of the narrative. We know that they constitute the forms and modes of the natya shastra or 'ways of dancing' — India's ancient treatise on dance and learn their names — Urvashi, Rambha, Tilottma and Menaka, among others. But we know very little of them.

In our society, a Queer friend, family or colleague is someone we take time to accept and then find roles that don't allow them to feel complete. Statues of Apsara's across the museums in the world are broken, with mutilated limbs, heads and bodies. I feel an urgent need to complete those delicate poses from the Natya-shastras. So that these statues feel complete, adorning their role.

I held my first solo showing at Mumbai's Jehangir Art Gallery. I feared ridicule and scepticism because they were Degas-like decorative couples engaged in ballet dance. Facing criticism for them being decorative, I began reflecting on why I made art, and at an auction of Indian antiquities in London, a pain in the form of a deep void manifested in me. Even though made in stone, the stunning, decorative and delicate sculptures were being auctioned far away from their home. That is when I decided to work on making statues inspired by the Apsaras and embrace decoration.

Today, the city's Heritage Committee is busy protecting old Neo-Gothic stone buildings that enterprising realtors often axe through corruption. In contrast, these old wooden mansions fall and disappear daily without notice. Demolition contractors sell their magnificent beams and brackets to the 'Lakda Bazaar' or the used wood market near the red light district of Kamathipura. Here, they are stripped off their decoration to be made into planks for new-age IKEA-inspired furniture. I was searching through these markets for exotic woods for his sculptures when I came across a section of Corbels heavily carved from Kalbadevi, which had been part of a Jain temple and was now converted to marble. They had been damaged during demolition. I decided to repair them by interlacing one material with a more precious counterpart to project an acceptable persona to a society that often forgets the ravages of time and age. It terms you 'Khandit' or broken, unusable and unnecessary. I mask them with a shining metal or pretence and acceptability.

I fashioned apsaras in stone, drawing my images for sculpture from visits to Mahabalipuram, Ajanta-Ellora, Konark Sun Temple, Elephanta Caves and Khajuraho. I visited the studios of Sthapathis in Mahabalipuram and Bhubaneswar, asking them to give me sculptures that had faults or had been abandoned due to mistakes whilst sculpting. I rescued sculptures from Chattarpur, Delhi, an abandoned lot in New Bombay, and Pindwara, Udaipur, where they make 'Apsara' like statues for Jain Temples. A broken sculpture, according to Shilpa -Shashtra — the Indian treatise of the sculptural arts is called 'Khandit'. 'Khandit' loosely translates to 'fragmented' or 'broken' in English from Sanskrit.

For years, I dealt with my sexuality in secret, unsure and unaware, but my coming out healed years of self-doubt and harm. But self-repair is also damning; we put ourselves out to be judged by an unforgiving society. An openly gay man is ridiculed in a profoundly homophobic patriarchal society. A person who decides to accentuate their persona by plastic surgery, now more commonly known as 'body-sculpting', is often laughed at by people who think they aren't supposed to look the way they feel. Sumesh Sharma sees my process as a slow grassroots approach to conceptual aesthetics, words I don't know, and I am unaware of art history terms. I see my artistic process as a deeply therapeutic exercise I want to share with my audience.

We fear ourselves for the traumas we hold, the years we spend with our body in life's journey, but the scars we hide are like the patina and textures the wood takes upon itself with ageing. The beauty of old wood lies in its weathering and not the polish. Taking two long, worn-out logs of teak, I make facsimiles of the dents, breakages and fissures in bronze and copper. I display them in the alcoves of the courtyard in the Bikaner House, the real wood hiding behind the metal.

Choosing them as a site for my sculptures along with the curator Sumesh Sharma, I intended to change the place into a grove of wood. We forget that wooden beams and brackets were once mighty forests that Colonisers across Africa, Asia and South America exploited for their wood to be used for palaces and institutions of the imperial state. The denudation of these forests is now a legacy we inherit with the climate crisis and the Anthropocene challenge it leaves us post-colonial nations facing.

I travelled to Kannur with Ritam Banerjee, the famed photographer from Mumbai, assisting him on a photography project where he was going to document the 'Theyyam', an ancient esoteric night-long performance of rituals that were derived from an ancient tradition of Animism that predates Hinduism. I was enthralled by the dance form and was drawn into the performance spiritually and emotionally. Many folk deities such as Bali, Mutthappan, Veeran, Bhagvathi, Kuttichathan, Guligan and Amma, played by performers from subaltern castes, wore complex masks that brought them alive. These were made from banana bark, banana flowers, palm flowers, textiles, jewellery and weapons made of bronze and make-up. In the morning, they became oracles, accurately prophesying our futures.