Bart Lodewijks - Calcutta Drawings

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Bart Lodewijks - Calcutta Drawings
CARF*, India, September-December 2018

DSC5613 It was security guard Raju Sinoi who granted me access to Calcutta.

DSC5617 The neighbourhood kids want to pull the plant out of the wall because it keeps getting in my way as I draw. 'You should let living things live,' I say in its defence. 'What about the chalk powder on the leaves' asks a precocious lad of about nine, in perfect English.

DSC5628 It's difficult to concentrate; it is oppresively hot and humid and around five kids are basically glued to me throughout the day. 'It's an art project,' I keep telling them, without pausing in my efforts. 'It's an art project… it is an art project,' they repeat excitedly in their shrill, boyish voices. You can press the chalk more firmly against the wall with horizontal lines than with vertical ones: you get sharper edges, which gives the drawing more solidity. I give no indication of what a hard time I’m having and the children also appear to have no idea.

DSC5644 When the brown rug was still wet, the washing line hung lower and the drawing appeared to be drying in the wind.

DSC5659 A rain shower of a mere thirty minutes washes my drawing almost completely off the wall.

DSC5679 I start to gather steam and spend entire days drawing. Local residents point out the many insignificant places in their neighbourhood and then give me an inquisitive look.

DSC5698 There are ants in the crevices of the wall that crawl over the chalk piece and the level onto my arm. The industrious workers draw back during a rain shower, giving me a chance to finish the drawing.

DSC5709 The drawings are all a continuation of one another. No one questions the missing corner; it is assumed to be completely natural, yet for me, it's a new element.

DSC5708 I’m drawing on a tall wall that shields a splendid villa from the street view. The expensive terra-cotta-like blocks form a perfect surface for the chalk lines. The guy from the electrical store suggested this wall to me. His little shack is built up against it. It seems self-evident to me that he should have say over the wall.

DSC5745 I’m unable to complete the drawing because a car is parked right in front of it for days on end. I eventually decide to leave it unfinished.

DSC5755 Two workers from a body shop lead me to their place of work and expect me to draw on the wall. They look at me inquisitively but leave me little time to think. There’s a calendar with a photo of a zebra. When I tell them that zebras are my favourite animal because of their stripes, they decide the chalk lines have to be placed next to the striped animal. Two days later, Farhad, a spirited neighbourhood boy who never lets me out of his sight, tells me that coincidentally zebras are also his favourite animal.

DSC5771 The inhabitants perform their everyday activities just like me. I suspect that the fact of my working means more to them than my drawing.

DSC5797 A little house occupied by a family with a young mother who brings me ginger tea. This tranquillity is brutally disrupted by a neighbour, a wiry rickshaw driver with a terrifying look in his eyes, about thirty years old, who demands money from me. On the street earlier, he had grabbed my arm and tried to rob me. Fortunately, I was able to fight him off and walk on. Shortly after that incident, I searched him out in his house along the narrow dirt road where I was drawing. ‘You need to be nicer. You’re being very unfriendly,’ I said. To my surprise, he bowed concededly.
But that bow was meaningless; we’re face to face again and he wants money. ‘Give him something,’ says another neighbour pleadingly. ‘He needs to be nice. He’s not nice,’ I say. I’m a bit uneasy, though, because this could go down any number of ways. Suddenly he bows and folds his hands together. Is he mocking me? ‘You should draw on my house,’ he says. ‘You have to be nice,’ I say. He smiles patronizingly at the other neighbours watching in silence and walks away talking to himself.
Since then, he folds his hands together whenever we meet on the street, which seems a bit over-exaggerated. To neutralize his humility, I too fold my hands together in the hopes that he doesn’t ever show his brutal side again.

DSC5836 Whenever I start on a drawing, I finish it all in one sitting to prevent people from damaging the chalk lines. The sessions can last an entire day. All the while, people talk to me non-stop, vehicles drive by within inches of me, I’m given tea and ballgames, including cricket, are played in the street. I just barely fit.

DSC5855 I feel like I’m too close to the occupants’ private lives as I’m drawing, but they say it doesn’t bother them. The family spends the entire day trying to cobble together a bed with scavenged boards, scrap and whatever else they have at hand. Two young ladies ask whether I married for love or it was an arranged marriage. They show me photos of their boyfriends on their phones and swear that they will get married out of love. The bed, incidentally, is for their aunt, who did marry for love, but last night she and her husband fell right through the support slats.

DSC5871 ‘It is an art project,’ intones a raspy voice just beside me. An old man with a sagging face and beady eyes has apparently been standing next to me for a while without me noticing. I must look like a ghost to him, covered as I am from head to toe in chalk dust. ‘Every day drawing,’ he smiles good-naturedly, and his cheeks bulge out as if stuffed with gobstoppers. ‘Hobby, hobby?’ he asks, seeking confirmation. And since my visa states that I am a tourist, I answer that drawing is my vacation pastime. Why not, actually? It does make me relaxed. But I’ve hardly been living like a tourist; I haven’t been venturing out much. It might even be a stretch to say that I’m visiting the city; it’s more about working hard and surviving. So I then say, fairly resolutely, ‘This is my work.’ He stares at me as if I don’t look like someone who brings in the dough making chalk drawings. It always is a miracle, that making money, I think to myself. ‘It’s also partly my hobby,’ I say, to partially concede his point. He practically gasps for air. ‘Would you like to teach me?’ he asks, and his pitch-black eyes start to glow. ‘You have to learn by doing,’ I confide to him, to which he nods in agreement.

DSC5881 The drawings all retain their individuality; it doesn’t matter whether they were made in Rio de Janeiro, Calcutta or Ghent. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no requirement for them to adapt or develop; sometimes they might even regress. All that matters is that they keep going. They are nevertheless subject to change. Variations emerge on the fly, as I’m drawing, without premeditation. On a wall along the dirt road, I suggest a slight bulge between the straight chalk lines. It’s a sly reference to the many askew walls that populate the street.

DSC5886 Hidden from view, behind a black steel gate, is a welding firm. The dirt road ends there. Heavily weighted down rickshaws with trailers on the front manoeuvre their loads of steel and iron through the narrow street. Small lorries have to fold in their rear-view mirrors to enter the site and even then it’s amazing they don’t brush against the homes or drawings.

DSC5896 People cook on wood fires in their homes, which is accompanied by choking clouds of smoke. What’s more, it’s muggy, windless and hot, with the threat of rain. If I leave prematurely, though, there’s a good chance the children or washerwomen will damage the drawing before it’s finished.

DSC5915 The drawing survived the predicted nightly rain shower and none of the residents took it into their head to run their hands over the chalk – not even the severely autistic, seven-year-old son of the rickshaw driver, the man who tried to rob me last week. Whenever I see him cycling past, we both still fold our hands together, thus warding off the evil of humankind.

DSC5925 A chunk of rubble the size of a hefty book smashes to pieces on the ground beside me. I jump out of my skin, unable to figure out exactly what happened. It could have been a meteor strike; anything’s possible in Calcutta. But it’s a block of asphalt the rickshaw driver’s son has dropped from the top floor of a building across the way, missing by a hair the one-and-a-half-year-old tyke playing next to me with cardboard soapboxes. The family pulls the boy immediately in off the roof and lays into him, but he just loves all the attention and keeps grinning crazily at the angry people around him.

DSC5945 The trouble with Praneet has been laid to rest. Instead of sending him an email, I make a drawing around his letter box.

DSC6118 The drawing on the old lady’s home takes a full three days. She helpfully points out to me the places I’ve ‘forgotten’ and I allow myself to be guided by her vision. It is an enjoyable game, a dialogue based on the universal language of images. The old she-devil mercilessly shuns all aesthetics, which justifies my drawing beyond the point of beauty to the very point when not one chalk line more will fit.

DSC6052 Because the rickshaw driver has been behaving better, I cautiously start on a drawing on his house.

DSC6086 If I’m away for a bit, the residents use the occasion to hang up their laundry.

DSC6136 In an idle hour, I do a drawing on the right-hand gate wall across from the electrical store. It was at the request of the young owner, who’s eager to spotlight things.

DSC6133 It’s early in the morning when I arrive at the Maa Flyover; people are still sleeping. I walk straight to one of the concrete posts and start drawing on it. It’s pretty much the same drawing I did yesterday across from the electrical store, because repetition is comforting.

DSC6141 A girl is catching the chalk powder raining down from the drawing in a plastic bag. The kids gathered around me all indicate that they want chalk. When I finish the drawing, I ask them to stand in a line. I give each of them a stick of chalk, one by one, until I start to recognize some of the hands and realize the line has become a circle.

DSC6177 The inhabitant likes the idea of me making a drawing on her living room wall.

DSC6163 The upper right-hand corner of the drawing is left open to accommodate the washing line.

DSC6189 The rickshaw driver is excited when I finally draw on his house, even though I suspect him of destroying my earlier drawing attempts with a bucket of water in one of his foul moods. I get to work under the watchful eye of his mother. Yesterday I visited her second home, which looks the same as the house in the dirt street but is in a worse location. No banyan tree, no chrome mirror, no balsa wood slats clattering in their grooves. The house verges on a canal and is reflected in its inky, black water.

DSC6216 Every so often, I have to stop drawing because the autistic son of the rickshaw driver clamps onto my legs. He rubs the chalk lines away with his hands and ignores my attempts to stop him by rapping him on the fingers. I’m at a complete loss as to how to get through to the boy; the only thing that works is ignoring him. It’s like a contest in autistic behaviour: I draw stubbornly on and he does everything in his power to thwart me and my work. The drawing has now been appended with prints of his childish hand and I let him have his way, as if I couldn’t care less, yet my heart bleeds. Suddenly he stops, as abruptly as he started. He sits there, two feet away, staring at me with an idiotic look on his face for the rest of the afternoon. It’s the greatest possible sanction in his power. His grandmother strokes his head, but any time I look his way, he rushes over and throws his arms around my legs again. Because I’m afraid he might bite me, I push him away, but carefully, since I don’t want to hurt him. He takes up his safe set distance again, puts his hand to his mouth and ridicules me with curses I can’t quite place.

DSC6224 The concrete pier I draw on is part of a dwelling under the authority of a wrinkled lady with piercing blue eyes. She’s lived in the place for fifty years and in that sense has more right to it than the entire Maa Flyover, which only opened in 2015. Since then all and sundry have trampled through her living room, including now an artist. She doesn’t seem to mind. Under the bridge, the boundaries between public and private space are more diffuse than elsewhere in the city. No line has been drawn.

DSC6246 ‘They are all gangsters,’ says Akram, who seems wiser and is better dressed than the other men under the bridge. ‘The fat one there is the boss; he’s a kidnapper. And that one is gone.’ Akram points to a heavily built man wobbling on his legs, who looks a bit batty. ‘He was a soldier and cage fighter and has lost his cognitive powers and ability to speak.’ The former bantam immediately starts humming a song and dancing as if he were a child. ‘The old man with the beard was a sailor and speaks every language. He smokes, gobbles, fucks and drinks everything he can get his hands on.’ ‘I am an all-rounder,’ bellows the sailor through a mouth blood-red from chewing betel nuts, which make one slightly euphoric and suppress hunger.

DSC6288 ‘And that giant there is Raja; he was the chief minister’s security guard. If you get Raja’s telephone number, your safety is guaranteed.’ I look at the villain’s faces, not entirely at ease, and the men nod in acknowledgement. They didn’t just end up under the bridge; they earned their place. Raja scribbles his phone number on a piece of paper and hands it to me. He shows me a photo on his phone of him standing next to Mamata Banerjee, the chief minister of West Bengal. ‘Problems,’ he says to me, gesturing that I should call him in that case. I understand: I grab my phone and call him to say I’m surrounded by gangsters. Raja shows my number to the gangsters and they all begin to shake with laughter. They clear the way for me, as if with that call I’ve cemented my place and can draw in peace from now on.

DSC6302 Through the ‘window,’ you have a view into the living room of Mrs Brusanara, who has lived here her entire life. The lorry in the background is one of the few places where people can escape from public view; it is sometimes used for a quick shag.

DSC6301 The Brusanara home has no other concrete walls besides the brick one. This site has multiple homes spread across it with walls you cannot see that are there nonetheless. Brusanara’s neighbour has a plot measuring three-by-three metres, with a stick in every corner to indicate the living area. I can’t get enough of those invisible walls; they are the chalk lines of Calcutta that have always been there.

DSC6328 The wall encompassing the Dutch consulate is purposely pockmarked with rough cement so that nobody tries to post flyers or draw on it.

DSC6383 My simple chalk line causes quite a stir and elicits countless questions. Everyone – from the passers-by to the neighbours to the consular staff – is of the opinion that I should have chosen another wall, one with a smoother, thus more suitable, drawing surface.

DSC6355 The doorman at the consulate asks if I have brought any gifts from the Netherlands. It is presumably customary to distribute any gifts brought by foreign guests amongst the personnel.

DSC6356 My ‘gift’ of a chalk drawing apparently does not count, since it exists only on the walls of the consulate and cannot be taken home. So, I present the doorman with the most precious thing I have: a full box of chalk.

DSC6365 The staff of the consulate want to cut back the palm fronds to clear the entire wall for drawing.

DSC6371 I think back to the first chalk lines I drew in Calcutta, when the neighbourhood children wanted to pluck a plant out of the wall because it was interfering with my drawing. At the consulate, I repeat my original assertion: ‘You should let living things live.’

DSC6290 I enjoy drawing in the houses of the well-to-do, preferably in private spaces. Strangely enough, I hadn’t had the opportunity in Calcutta, despite the fact that rich people do live there. Until I met an American couple who embraced my chalk drawings.

DSC6315 The drawing I produce in the Americans’ apartment is a continuation of the one I made under the bridge. Sometimes they are home while I work, but often I’m alone with their dogs Hiroji and Gremolina.

DSC6406 Inside these four walls of the apartment, I am better able to concentrate than on the street. With the exception of the sound of dogs shifting positions and chalk scraping against a wall, it is quiet for the first time in forever. No constant beeping; no jumping out of the way to save my skin; no one pestering me with questions and comments; I just have to be careful not to knock anything over.

DSC6401 It’s my last day in Calcutta: tomorrow I return home. My arms are heavy and I spend more time looking at the drawing than making strokes. The living room is as still as a sheet of paper. A massive oblong of sunlight moves with the sun, encroaching ever closer toward me. I watch from inside the room as it touches the drawing: a gentle collision that brings my project to a close.

© Bart Lodewijks 2018

*CARF stands for Calcutta Art Research Foundation, the name of the organization that invited Bart Lodewijks for an artist residency in India from early September through mid-December 2018. It is one of twenty foreign residency programmes supported by the Dutch Mondriaan Fund.