The works in the Rinascimento series by Argentinian artist Adrian Villar Rojas, exhibited at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, remind one of Barbara Kruger’s famous phrase, ‘I shop, therefore I am.’ If Barbara’s work can be seen as a parody or a comic version of René Descartes’ statement, ‘I think therefore I am,’ which overturned the stream of Western thought, the meaning of it in Rojas’s creative world is somewhat different. While Barbara critiques human consumerism, Rojas presents a slightly different world, one with a different meaning. It is impossible to sum up Rojas’s works in a room in Aspinwall, the main venue in the Biennale, as merely a critique of consumerism. While there is certainly a layer of the artist’s precise criticism of capitalism, what the artist presents goes beyond that, exploring meanings and depths.
Various objects can be used to understand eras, particularly in art practices, just as certain words are used to signify particular times; for example, the word ‘Post-truth’ was chosen by the Oxford Dictionaries as the word of the year in 2016, to represent that era, the long preceding period, and as testimony to how humans have lived encircled by countless lies, both the word and the year it was chosen changed.
If the exceptional quality of art creations is their ‘eternity,’ the idea proposed by Rojas is their temporality; in that sense, these art creations fight against permanence and formality. However, they have no weapons or a group of followers. These creations themselves are revolutionary, opposing authority and eternity, thus making temporal existence a reality and a space within time that is both open and closed. From an artistic perspective, it is said that after Rojas’ exhibitions, the artworks are destroyed and discarded, and new ones are created from their remnants. Viewed in this way, the birth of this creation must come from the remnants of another artwork. The next artwork arising from the remnants could also be philosophical. By destroying artworks after they are exhibited, Rojsa also establishes a defence against capitalist art; for example, by providing continuity and evolution to artworks, it simultaneously rebels against the time in which they were created.
When objects are removed from their respective places and centres of power for examination, they can be transformed into objects that oppose authority and contest their usual contexts. For example, the artwork that Rojas exhibits in the Biennale consists of half-open refrigerators filled with objects. It is through the world of these objects that Rojas conveys his message, and this is where objects and the worlds they project intersect. Rojas envisions his art as something place-based. This is where some arguments from Graham Harman’s book, Immaterialism, become relevant. While it is true that one cannot view humans and their lives apart from objects, then how can a social critic be possible through the objects dumped in an open fridge? The fridge, standing at a certain distance, and the objects filled inside (just as the fridge itself is an object, it contains many objects within) signify many things; they are at once remnants of a protest period, a ghostly presence, and pointers to the future.
Harman argues that the foolish belief that humans are the sole agents of action and objects are mere silent witnesses to human actions and movements is incorrect. Harman claims that objects are actors; it is their acting that forms the basis of their existence! Viewed that way, the fridge at home and the fridge sitting at the Biennale venue are essentially the same. If the fridge at home is acting in the role of a fridge at home, the fridge at the Biennale is a work of art; its open interior is filled with traces of decay, human conditions, and ghostly presences; philosophically, they have come from Argentina and have appropriated objects from Kochi’s ‘Object World’. The artist might have travelled with his concept and found the objects there. In this way, the objects found in Kochi can be discussed in relation to Argentina and beyond due to the universal potential inherent in these objects. Harman says that objects will act and break! It is a fact that objects can enhance the given role.
“I think what language calls an ‘artist’ is a reader of his/her time,” Rojas has said. From this, one can gain insight into Rojas’s perspective on the art world. Similarly, in many places, Rojas’s works surprisingly reveal worlds of diversity. For example, works like The Theatre of Disappearance (2017), Return the World (2012), and My Dead Family (2009) can be seen as attempts, as Rojas himself says, to read and interpret his own time. At the same time, it is worth recalling here Susan Sontag’s remark about interpretation: ‘Interpretation must itself be evaluated.’ According to Sontag, at times, in some cultures, interpretation is a liberating act, while elsewhere it reveals the possibility that the interpreted object could be read differently. This is also evident here. Rojas is an artist with a nomadic sensibility who has amazed viewers with site-specific works. The very idea of destroying an artwork after its exhibition stems from this nomadic perspective.
By saying that ‘objects never make complete contact with each other any more than they do with the human mind’, Harman is referring to the irreducible relationship that objects have with humans rather than their camaraderie with each other. This is where the relevance of Rojas’s question about what is in the fridge comes in. Rojas has, at various times, created works that blend the multiple inventions, speeds, and even the anti-humanist forms of arrogance of the Anthropocene—laden with stories and sufferings of human domination—into an inseparable whole, and these are also being exhibited at the Biennale venue. In Rojas’s work, a world is created by combining many different objects. Just as the world we see today was created by combining various things, the distance from a fridge full of banana bunches, crab, and apples to another fridge containing cut jackfruit, other fruits, raw bananas, and overripe plantains can be either the distance to people’s days or their journey to hardships. The experiential world of these objects, which begins to be enveloped by mold, cannot be separated from human life or hunger. The withered curry leaves provide subtle hints about human conditions, with their ignorance, or some fail to acclimate to it.
One fridge is filled with products in plastic covers. Various products are in plastic covers of different colours. In another fridge, there are beer bottles and other drinks. Additionally, it contains cut papaya and other items, making it a messy situation. The tuna fish in one fridge represents another state of decay. Another fridge is filled with various kinds of meat, also tells stories from another world. After the items are stocked, it feels as if people have suddenly left the house, or as if they have suddenly disappeared. Understandably, these artworks are likely to have another layer, as the artist comes from a country with a past marked by political instability. It is essential to recall here that Susan Sontag comments on interpretation. Since interpretations have the potential to become misinterpretations, careful attention is needed for understanding.
It is reasonable to question what exists in a mere fridge and in the things contained in it. This is especially true if the person raising the question is a viewer. The answer is that artworks cannot be understood through see alone. To understand what one has seen, one must go inside what one has seen. The question of seeing is answered through interpreting ‘what we see’ itself, as Sontag mentioned. However, the question of what the artist truly thinks remains a relevant one. Since not every viewer sees the artist, and not every viewer reads or understands the artist’s notes, the gap between the artwork and the viewer is, like the relationship between interpretation and misinterpretation, indefinable.
It is here that a work of art, as the German philosopher Hans Gadamer says, develops its own stance, becoming something capable of self-dialogue. Gadamer states that, as a perspective beyond interpretations and as performances beyond perspectives, a work of art has its own life, situated between various perspectives and interpretations. Rojas attempts to convey his thoughts through his artworks, presenting views from another world. While there is room for these concepts and interpretations in our world as well, the viewer must have the ability to see them exactly as they are—as views from another world. However, one must also have the energy to engage with them. Following the artwork until it captures you is the task of the viewer, the art appreciator.
Krispin Joseph PX, a poet and journalist, completed an MFA in art history and visual studies at the University of Hyderabad and an MA in sociology and cultural anthropology from the Central European University, Vienna.
