A pioneer of performance art in India reflects on her decades-long journey

Today, every major Indian art event, be it a biennial or a fair, features performance artworks in its programme. But despite the form’s contemporary boom, its history in India is still inchoate. As art historian Rakhee Balaram says in a 2022 essay, “The genesis of performance art in India, including the histories of the 1980s, has yet to be written…”

One person who is all too familiar with this history is Ratnabali Kant, a pioneer of performance art and, as art historian Partha Mitter points out, the first Indian artist to synthesise performance and installation.

Kant’s contra-proscenium practice emerged in the 1980s at the same time as Sushil Kumar’s groundbreaking Veil (1985), an undocumented performance at New Delhi’s Tilak Bridge Railway station, confronted the 1984 anti-Sikh pogroms. While very different from each other, these works together marked the full-fledged appearance of a form which, as Balaram points out, had long been gestured towards in India – for example, by Jeram Patel’s blowtorched “action paintings” of the 1960s and Bhupen Khakhar’s photo-performance series of 1972.

Between 1985 and 2005, Kant developed a series of “performance installations” that were among the first such manifestations of the genre in India and part of a foundational archive of contemporary Indian performance art. Trained as a sculptor at Santiniketan, Maharaja Sayajirao University and Athens University, Kant’s experimental works straddled modernist art, theatre (both classical and folk), as well as then-emerging media technologies such as video. She continued this practice till the mid-2000s, responding to various political, economic and social transformations.

At the same time, Kant continued her sculptural projects, including public ones: at New Delhi’s Garden of Five Senses, she installed Children Reading (1996), which was made with Kristine Michael, and the bronze series Senses through Seasons (2002). In February 2024, a retrospective of her five-decades-long career was mounted at the Bihar Museum, Patna.

In a 2018 Asia Art Archive interview, researcher Samudra Kajal Saikia traced modalities of performance art in India from 1990 to 2010, in the shadow of Jan Natya Manch founder-director Safdar Hashmi’s assassination and the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Reflecting on the practices of Indian artists who had started to use the body as a public medium to critique the establishment and patriarchy, he said that Kant “borrowed elements from her everyday life to create performances”.

Challenging the commonplace attribution of performance art to Euro-American influence, Balaram too connects its articulation in India to the subcontinent’s multifarious heritage of theatre and dance. Summarising her analysis of feminist themes in Kant’s practice, Balaram writes that her “highly emotive performances…use the body as a vehicle to draw upon rasa aesthetics…to engage with contemporary politics…[She] strengthens the effect through her…crossing of genres and cultures…as an expression of defiance towards repressive hegemonic/ hierarchical power structures.”

It has been almost 20 years since Kant produced a performance work, the very length of time she practised the form. In a series of exchanges over email and text, the 68-year-old Kolkata-based artist drew on her book Ephemeral Steps, Enduring Imprints (Raza Foundation, 2006) and her unpublished autobiography to lead Scroll through an overview of her artistry and its biographical, historical and critical facets. Edited excerpts:

You trained as a sculptor at both Santiniketan and Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda, in the 1970s, under some of India’s most significant modern artists like Ramkinkar Baij, Somnath Hore and KG Subramanyan. How has their work impacted your practice?
As children live with their parents, their habits, their talents and experiences are automatically passed on to their children.

I learned relief sculpture from Ramkinkar Baij and I have continued that learning in my creative work.

Whilst still on my National Cultural Scholarship after my MFA examination, I worked with Meera Mukherjee, whom I met when she was visiting faculty at Baroda in 1978. When I first called on her at her studio-cum-home at Paddapukur, Meera di was a little hesitant to open the door. But within minutes, she started talking to me like a friend, bringing out tea and delicious mosla-muri (spicy puffed rice) from her studio kitchen. She said, “You must come to me from time to time, we will talk, sing, dance, I’ll do my own things and you’ll observe them.” So, I visited her often and attended bronze casting sessions at her workshop in Narendrapur.

In 1983, you went to the University of Athens for your doctoral studies. It was an unusual place for a young Indian artist, when most went to the United Kingdom and France. Why did you decide to go to Greece?
I was trying for foreign scholarships and went for a couple of interviews at Shastri Bhavan in Delhi. At one of them, a jury member told me that they were impressed but ultimately girls have to enter the kitchen so why would they waste a seat? To this I replied, “Why do you think that sculpture and cooking can’t be done together? Meera Mukherjee cooked on the same stove she used to work with wax for her sculptures.” [Mukherjee famously used an adivasi lost wax technique of bronze sculpture known as Bastar dhokra].

At the time my batchmate and friend Awani Kant had already been in Greece on scholarship for three years. He suggested I apply for the Greek government’s doctoral research scholarship because the exchange programme from the Indian government was for only for nine months. I think you learn more if you stay for a longer period of time in a country and observe things. I applied for the IKY Greek Government Scholarship for doctoral research. With the support of a recommendation letter by my teacher Somnath Hore, I received it for the duration of four years, from 1983 to 1987.

What was your experience of Athens like?
My dissertation topic was “Dynamic Elements in Ancient Greek Sculpture”. For my research, I visited various Greek archaeological sites – temples, museums, ancient theatres – and various islands. At the Minoan Palace of Knossos in Crete, I was fascinated to see relief frescoes of a priest-king and a bull at the Heraklion Museum, and was inspired to create artworks.

After Awani and I married, we first lived in a small two-room flat in Athens’ Pangrati neighbourhood. There wasn’t enough space for me to make sculptures so a friend arranged for us to stay in a huge old house at Kypseli in downtown Athens – it was a bit like an archaeological piece. A year later we shifted to 12, Beles Street in the Koukaki neighbourhood, where my work speed tripled.

Besides my doctoral research and sculpture practice, I strove hard to promote Indian dance and art, giving a number of dance performances. Whenever I visited the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, Athens’ ancient amphitheater, I would want to perform there. In 1985, I was invited to do so during the Greek Summer Festival. I trained Greek actors and dancers to produce a dance-drama called The Princess and Hermit.

On that note, in Greece you trained with the choreographer Dora Stratou, renowned for her revivalist work with Greek folk dance. How did your engagement with Stratou influence your performance practice?

While still at school in Kolkata, I learnt various Indian classical dances – Bharatanatyam, Kathak, Manipuri and Kathakali. I then specialised in Kathakali at Santiniketan’s Sangeet Bhavan during my graduation years. I also learned [modernist choreographer] Uday Shankar’s dance style.

I did indeed have the opportunity to work with Dora Stratou. Seeing my interest in diverse dance forms, she invited me to learn various Greek dances during rehearsals of her dance company at Plaka, Athens. I don’t think Greek folk dance has had any influence on my creative sculpture or performance art directly. However, Stratou also revived some extinct Greek folk dance forms whose motifs were taken from Greek vase paintings and that vision inspired me a lot. Many people think that revival means going backwards, but in fact many new avenues are discovered through it.

Let’s talk about your earliest artworks which used your body as the medium – Rainbow of Desire (1985) and Voices from Within (1986). Can you tell us how those first performances came about and what they entailed?
Among the many Greek artists I met was the well-known sculptor Natalia Mela, granddaughter of the revolutionary Pavlos Melas. On weekends she used to invite artists to her studio.

On one such occasion I got the opportunity to perform my first performance artwork, Rainbow of Desire, in front of many celebrated artists of Greece at her studio in September 1985. I painted my face and my body like the rainbow, symbolising joy and hope against darkness and tribulations. It was an idea inspired by Kathakali, in which make-up is applied according to moods and characters and to transform performers. Rainbow of Desire was my first performance. At the time I named it “body art performance”.

I then gave another performance called Voices from Within at my 12, Beles Street studio, wherein I painted my face and body as if it were burnt, by applying copper mixed gold paint. With my own “burnt” painted body, decked with broken branches and fresh green leaves separated from their stems, I held the leaves in my hands to convey feelings of alienation and detachment from my identity and roots. It was a comment on the sociocultural disparities in the world we live in.

Somnath da then wrote a letter to me saying: “Don’t stay in Greece longer, come back and show your performances, and introduce that art form to young artists in India.” I came back to India in mid-1986.

Of Rainbow of Desire, critic Pranabranjan Ray observed that you used your body as “not a dancing thing, but a bodily performance”. How do you interpret the difference between creative acts like dancing, acting and “bodily performing”?
Nowadays people understand the difference between the general term “performing arts” and the specific genre of “performance art” within contemporary visual art. Performance art stands against all those “finished” works of art defined by stasis. The real aim of this form of art is dematerialisation, decommodification and proximity with common people. I felt that art practice in India at that time, in the 1980s, had sunk into a state of fatigue because of commercialisation, and could be rescued from stagnation only through new ways of thinking and execution. To me, performance art is the art of resistance, and is constructive in its nature.

The terms “performance installation”, “performance sculpture” and “body art performances” have been used to refer to these early works. Which term do you consider most accurate?
“Installation performance” is the term under which I introduced and developed a performative visual art for the first time in India.

The performance art practice I developed is not governed by any pre-established rules and cannot be judged using familiar categories of the work. This is an artform which diverges from traditional media of visual art. The artist uses her own body as the medium to mirror society or the world we live in. This establishes a direct relationship amongst artwork, artist and viewer, thus arousing critical public consciousness. The artist constitutes the very performance, that is the work cannot be split into installation and the performer. The two are an integrated, autonomous whole.

Thank you for sharing your reflections on performance art as a genre. Returning to the chronology of your work: on returning to India from Greece, you mounted a performance – Facing Nightmares Alone – at the India International Centre in 1991. Can you tell us about the work, the process of producing it, and what the response was?
Before I initiated performance art in India, I held exhibitions of sculptures and paintings which were well-received. In 1991, at the India International Centre in Delhi, I introduced and performed for the first time in India my performing-sculpture, Facing Nightmare Alone.

Referring to the disrobement of Draupadi in the Mahabharata, the piece reflects on violence against women and gender justice.

This performance comprised choreographical movements and m fiberglass sculptures. I enacted the humiliation and anguish of Draupadi before a relief panel of six life-size black fibreglass figures representing her five husbands plus Krishna. This group was present on the stage, as though they were living performers, not a mere backdrop. A long red piece of cloth was draped across these male figures, the fabric ensnaring a fallen nude female figure lying on the floor, in obvious agony, as if trying to protect herself against ravagers. This work has great relevance to the harsh reality of contemporary society and the position of woman in it.

As I trained as a dancer also, I thought this kind of interdisciplinary performance could be of help for artists in other fields as well. I did a few more performances along these lines, in which installations were constructed and embedded as an integral part of the performance.

The fibreglass ensemble was retrieved years later from the Lalit Kala Akademi godown and is currently displayed at Vigyan Bhavan, New Delhi, as a permanent exhibit.

In 1996, your performance piece I Feel Life to be Green was broadcast on Doordarshan. It is a rare instance of a performance artwork being distributed through a popular medium like television. How were your performance pieces chiefly documented and circulated at that time before YouTube and social media?
Even speaking to the quality of the images I am able to share, I am an old person and in the early days of my performance practice, only VHS recordings were available. So, all the stills are from those tapes. I had to work on a very low budget and couldn’t afford still photography.

Since performance art is mostly a moving form of art, videography is the best way to document it. These days, if you share it on social media, it can reach more people. But long before social media became popular, recorded videos of my performances were circulated as CDs and projected in universities and art schools.

Your performance pieces were intermedial, that is featuring a diverse range of media. Facing Nightmare Alone (1991) included fibreglass sculptures, Red Under the Golden Halo (2001) foregrounded painting while Tree of Soul at the end of Rainbow (2003) was accompanied by a video recording of your choreography. Besides this, text and poetry were part of your performance pieces. Can you tell us why you chose this intermedial format?
I combined performance art and installation, supported by the Indian traditional aesthetic concept of the interrelationship of the arts. Art in India was never dissociated from other aspects of life and from other disciplines, particularly its poetry, architecture, sculpture, painting, music and dance. reflected this vision through multimedia communication to evoke this wholeness. I firmly believe that art performances reflect this multimedial vision of classical Indian aesthetics and play an increasingly important creative role by combining various forms.

Your last performance piece was in 2005. We next saw your public sculptures at the Garden of Five Senses – Children Reading (1996) made with Kristine Michael, and the bronze series Senses through Seasons (2002). Why did you decide to return to sculpture?
I am a sculptor, and I love to sculpt. I have never deviated from this art practice throughout my life.