NIRMAL RAJA

The interdisciplinary artist copes with the loss of her father through her mixed media collection, Material Remains.

Photo by Kevin Miyazaki

Material Remains was triggered by my father's sudden passing last year. There was no warning, it just happened really suddenly. He had a massive heart attack and passed away within minutes.

My parents live in Chennai, India. When I got the call, I left immediately and it was just this really long process of coping with a sudden change, taking care of mom and getting family support, and trying to deal with what happens when someone passes like that so suddenly without any warning.

So Material Remains is what's left behind when someone passes and all the things that you have to do when your loved one is gone. All the things we leave behind as a symbol of who we are.

With my dad, it was clothing and it was a lot of writing ephemera. Bills, photographs, and journals — things like that. These became the inspiration and material for a new body of work. I used my studio as a place for coping and grieving and processing all the changes that were going on around me. And the remains, these material remains, were what helped me work through a lot of pain and loss.

"I used my studio as a place for coping and grieving and processing all the changes that were going on around me."

It brings to mind your own mortality. It brings to mind their presence and their absence. That person may not be there anymore, but his writing is. And he's a part of my DNA.

Life goes on and things evolve, and I think Material Remains was more about transformation too — of one state of being to another. I used those materials to transform them into artwork. For example, I dipped my dad's clothing in porcelain slip and fired them in the kiln. And in the process, the clothing is actually burned away in the kiln and what's left is the shell — the porcelain.

So it speaks to loss that parallels or mimics what happens with one's body when somebody passes, especially in India with being cremated [as is Hindu custom]. So I chose ceramic processes and the firing process to mimic what happens to the body, but using clothes.

I've always wanted to be an artist and I cannot quite explain why. I just knew that that's who I am. I love making things and bringing into existence something that wasn't there before. I like dwelling and investigating beauty and what that means, and it's just become a way of understanding life.

***

Both my grandmothers were not artists. They were just very traditional homemakers, but they brought beauty into the domestic field in so many different ways, whether it was through flowers or pastry making or drawing rangoli outside — the ephemeral drawings that Indians make outside the home on the ground. It's those kinds of activities that bring a different kind of creativity into the home.

They were both devout Hindus and they were devoted to their families. The way they used ritual as a means of expressing love and devotion, all of it was just a different kind of art form. I feel like ritual comes out of a human need to understand life and revere life and wanting it comes out of an urge to express gratitude or understand the profound. They wouldn't call that art, but it is in its own way.

***

As an immigrant, especially in the current political climate, it’s not hard to understand why you might feel like an outsider or how you are made to feel like an outsider. And for me, the answer is to dig into the past. How did these thoughts emerge and why do people think the way they do?

So that goes back to this orientalist way of viewing the East and how anything that is not originated in the West is considered either exotic and beautiful, or somehow perverse and ugly. And so that's a very skewed perspective and, coming from the East, it surprises you and it makes you want to know why people think this way.

Pipeline to Heaven

That goes back to centuries of orientalist and colonialist thinking, whether it is through images or writing. I did a project where I spent a whole year looking at special collections and old books in the American Geographical Society Library at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. I dug into the archival books that were about India and started investigating images and depictions of people from South Asian regions. How are these first impressions formed and how biased are these descriptions of the cultures in the text? So I think it's all about curiosity.

Of course, it hurts when you are made to feel like the Other, but we have to go beyond and figure out why. And my understanding is that it doesn't happen overnight. It happens over centuries of bias that’s accumulated through media and books, and it still continues.

***

I really do not want to be defined as a painter or a sculptor or a video artist or a fiber artist. It can be all inclusive or any or not at all. You are put in a box so much already that I don't want to be defined — at least in the studio — I want to be as free as possible within these four walls of the studio.

So the way I choose material is very intuitive and is informed by the subject that I'm exploring. With Material Remains, it needed to be a ceramic process because it incorporated fire and that was connected to cremation. And so I gravitated towards that process, even though I'm not a ceramic artist, because of the potential of the right materials evoking and saying what I want to say.

So your materials can be your friends and can enhance and strengthen your ideas like no other. I want to be open to possibilities of what the material and process brings with it. For example, fabric. What does fabric mean beyond its softness or beyond that it's woven? It could also be a metaphor for the fabric of our lives. So it could go to that next level of meaning beyond what the physical body contains. That's why I keep it very open and, really, the subject defines what materials I use.

"So your materials can be your friends and can enhance and strengthen your ideas like no other."

Now, that puts me in a very tough position. It's not easy because no one can burden all of these media; and so that's where collaboration comes in. That's where learning and taking classes come in. That's where bartering and hiring comes in. You work with other people and connect with different crafts and artists in different ways to make the work as strong as possible.

The challenge I think is, honestly, not having common support for artists. During the pandemic, there were so many instances where I connected with artists in Europe, for example, who survived because they had common support — a stipend or a scholarship or something. What happens when there is common support versus artists having to rely on selling work is that they do what their mind tells them to. They do not have to cater to the market. They do not have to make a salable product. It becomes more about exploration and learning and creating something that would create change in people's minds rather than a commodity.

So I think that the biggest challenge in this country is the capitalistic way of viewing art. Of course, you can make money selling work, but that shouldn't be the only source of your income. The artists of any media, any inclination, should be able to survive if they have some kind of common support.

You might come from very different backgrounds, you might have very different viewpoints on politics or life; but once you put something up to discuss or view — a third thing in the room — people have conversations. It triggers thoughts, triggers questions like, Why did this artist put so much time into this? What does this make me feel?

I don't think I have a particular singular goal except to share space with my audience and share what is innately human and make people think about that.

***

This past year was mostly just about grief. But I'm moving beyond that work now, thinking a little bit more, and just trying to be more regular in my practice. I had to go back and forth to India and here to take care of my mother. So now, I just hope I can maintain my practice between the challenges of living between these two countries. And I just want more opportunities to show nationally and internationally.

I've shown my work across the nation, but I think the problem is — even if you do get into exhibitions on the other side of the country — shipping will become a problem because oftentimes there is no funding to pay for shipping or having you come and do an installation. So you want to show elsewhere, but you also want to be careful about the practicalities of doing that.

It's not as easy as saying, Yes, I wanna show nationally, but rather, Okay, so how do I pay for a plane ticket or ship my work back and forth? These are things that you actually have to sit down and think about before you can actually make those things happen.

Peace Offering

I think you have to be creative about it, too. For example, I was part of a show in a museum in Korea and I submitted and participated because it was a video show and all I had to do was upload my videos and, it's done [laughs] — I had another international show. It's a continuous challenge trying to figure out what can actually be possible.

My advice is being open to possibilities and trying to have a discipline that is steady, no matter what. I have a daily studio practice where I do something very, very quick. Every time I come to the studio, my day might get hijacked by any number of things, but I know that I did that. It might have taken just 15 minutes or 10 minutes of my day, but it was something that is steady and that builds up over many days where I feel like I've accomplished something. So having a very firm discipline, even if it just takes a few minutes in the day, will take you far.

As told to Michaela Zee

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. All images courtesy of Nirmal Raja.