Confined no longer

When Madhukar Mucharla was a young boy growing up in the village of Nandi Wanaparthy in Rangareddy district of Telangana near Hyderabad, he was strictly forbidden to have anything to do with the Dappu, the traditional drum made of animal skin by people of his community, the Madigas. However, drawn to its beat, the young boy once accompanied his friends playing the Dappu for an event, and upon returning home, was soundly reprimanded by his mother for disobeying her.

The rather strong scolding ensured that the lesson the mother was trying to teach her innocent son was driven home loud and clear. The Madigas had endured untouchability for centuries as they traditionally worked with animal hide, cleaning and tanning it, and making footwear and drums out of it, among other things. For Madhukar’s mother, the Dappu was a symbol of untouchability that she wanted her son to avoid for obvious reasons.

The rebuke also drove home to the young Madhukar the undeniable importance of leather in the life of his community. He grew up to be an artist but did not forsake the material. Instead, he made it his medium to convey his stories through art.

Mucharla, who turned 29 last month, first came into prominence when his work was exhibited at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale’s student section in 2018. It was a more-than-life-size portrait of Babasaheb Ambedkar made in leather and became one of the most talked about works at that edition of the Biennale; it was again exhibited at the India Art Fair in New Delhi in 2022. The reason was simple — the portrait made of pieces of raw leather stitched together immediately conveyed the artist’s intent; that the material had been used not for its flexibility or tactility but for what it represented.

Mucharla’s small beginnings at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale developed into a full-fledged enquiry into the suppression faced by his community and other Dalits over centuries. “My growing-up years taught me the convoluted significance of leather in our lives. However, the turning point in my artistic evolution came during my post-graduation, awakening me to the expressive possibilities of leather as a medium for contemporary art. This realisation blossomed during a traditional leather puppetry workshop, and soon I was hand-stitching leather pieces to create intricate works that had compelling narratives,” explains Mucharla. He holds a BFA from Potti Sreeramulu Telugu University and an MFA from Jawaharlal Nehru Architecture and Fine Arts University, both in Hyderabad.

Most recently, this enquiry won him the prestigious EAA+ Emerging Artists Award for 2022, given by the Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art (FICA) and the Mrinalini Mukherjee Foundation (MMA). It has culminated in a group show at Vadehra Art Gallery in New Delhi, which was inaugurated recently. Mucharla is one of the 10 awardees whose works are being shown at the exhibition, titled ‘However The Image Enters, Its Force Remains.’ 

Leather, almost a leitmotif in Mucharla’s art now, figures prominently in the four installations that he is exhibiting at the Vadehra Art Gallery. The most striking is the set of four small cages, each holding a Dalit symbol captive — a small statue of Babasaheb Ambedkar; a copy of the Preamble of the Constitution of India, upon which falls a light in a way that only the words ‘Justice’, ‘Liberty’, ‘Equality’ and ‘Fraternity’ get reflected on the floor of the cage; a big heap of tiny leather chappals (footwear) some of which have escaped to lie strewn outside; and a microphone broadcasting an interview of Babasaheb Ambedkar that he gave to the BBC on the well-known Poona Pact, the 1932 settlement between Ambedkar and Mahatma Gandhi that shaped the political representation of the underprivileged in India. There is also an accompanying drawing of an Ambedkar statue around which pigs roam; it is made of animal hide.

Next is an installation of leather puppets showing an Indian family, whose elder members stand with hands joined in a ‘namaskar’. Made of pieces of leather stitched together, Mucharla calls them ‘welcoming puppets’, alluding to a welcome or its absence vis-à-vis Dalits in India.

The third installation is a pile of broken, used and discarded coconut shells, the likes of which can be seen outside temples. “Coconut is one of the sacred items in Hinduism and hence associated with purity. But once it is used and discarded, it becomes impure. In this installation, it is used as a metaphor for Dalits, who have been regarded ‘impure’ for centuries,” says Mucharla.

The last installation is a series of drawings featuring a pig or pigs, an animal considered a pet by members of the community who also rear it for livelihood. Yet, it is often associated with impurity. These drawings are made on rawhide to foreground the narrative. “These are all stories from Velivada (a Telugu word denoting an area inhabited by Dalits), which is generally outside the village, to which the Dalits are restricted,” emphasises the artist.

While Mucharla has succeeded in turning the spotlight on an issue that itself has remained on the fringes of modern and contemporary Indian art, it worries him that quite a few people have labelled his work ‘political’ over the years. He fears that ascribing it a political colour may rob it of the agency it requires for making the Dalit narrative a prominent part of Indian contemporary art. But there is hope as well. A new generation of Dalit artists is wearing its identity with pride and bringing the conversation into the limelight in art circles. These include Vikrant Bhise, Rajyashree Goody, Swathi Bheemani, and Prabhakar Kamble, among others.

“Babasaheb Ambedkar said, ‘educate, agitate, organise’ [at a conference in Nagpur in 1942] and I’m only trying to do my bit in response to his call,” says Mucharla.