Interview with LN Tallur: Dr Rahamath Tarikere

LN Tallur, is a contemporary artist who studied in Mysore, Baroda and Leeds, and
presently resides between Kundapur, Karnataka and Seoul, South Korea. His artworks
are on display in different countries and museums. I met Mr Tallur accidentally. I was
invited to give a lecture at the “Karavali Kattu Nudimaale” (a volunteer-based movement
to rebuild coastal areas in Karnataka) series (2021) in Udupi, conducted by the Tallur
Family Trust.® After the lecture, I got the opportunity to go to Kundapur with LN Tallur,
to his home and studio, where I saw many of his artworks. I also saw his public sculpture
“Coinage” in Manipal and had the opportunity to discuss many things with him. Later,
when my wife Banu and I took a trip to coastal Karnataka, we visited many culturally
significant places in and around Kundapur with him. He is a unique thinker and belongs
to a rare breed of conceptual artists. An attempt has been made to capture his thoughts
in this interview. One may find insights into appreciating understanding, and things
related to the study of art.




You belong to the Kundapur region, a coastal area in Karnataka, and now you are
an international artist. Basically, the coastal area of Karnataka is considered to be
business-conscious, and values entrepreneurship. However, there was [always] a
balance between social movements and the cultural world. An example of an important person who belonged to the same region is Dr Shivaram Karanth (a novelist,
playwright and ecological conservationist). The coastal region has recently evolved so
drastically that a balance of this kind is difficult now. Having been born in such an
environment, how did you step into the world of art?


My father worked with the Sales Tax Department and he used to be transferred to
various cities quite a bit, and then we would return [to Kundapur]. Later, I went to
Mysore for my studies: I pursued a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in painting at the
Chamarajendra Academy of Visual Arts. Then, I did a Master’s in Museology at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Baroda, Gujarat. Later, I also studied at the Leeds Metropolitan University for 2 years, where I did an MA in Contemporary Fine Art Practice. Each
time, when I returned home, I used to look at my experience afresh, of the different
cities I had left behind me. My frequent travels helped me not get conditioned by a city
or a person. Because of this, I liked understanding various systems and how they were
constantly evolving. Let’s take an example of a kiln or a tile factory. It is somewhat like
what you wrote about your father’s kiln. This kiln, from your childhood to adulthood,
might have given you different experiences, over time. When I was studying museology,
I used to visit the studios of students in the painting and sculpture departments every
day. During these visits, I felt they were conditioned within a “pre-decided system.”
I developed an interest in trying to understand these systems and their conditioning
processes. When you start understanding these micro and macro systems, no one
influence stays for a long time.




How did you get this idea of collaborating with artisans, and collating opinions to
create artworks?


I have worked as a visiting faculty in art colleges for a brief period in India and abroad.
Each student has their own personality, individual character, ability and working patterns.
To guide them, I had to understand them first and then had to explore their abilities.
Fifteen students can think in fifteen different ways. Instead of mustering them under one
system, and teaching and fine-tuning them, I went the other way around — there were
fifteen different views, and I needed to contribute to each of them, instead of altering
those views — and I used to experiment with that. When I did that, I too learnt along
with them — it was group learning. This learning evolved into collaborations.
When I wanted to shoot a video, I did not have any knowledge of the camera and its
techniques. When there are experts to do this, why should I waste my time studying those
techniques? I used to take their help. I work as a director with my collaborators to get the
intended final product. Similarly, I collaborated with my mother on an artwork involving
embroidery. She knows that [type of] embroidery very well. Also, that was the time I had
just lost my father. I had to keep her busy to help her deal with the grief. The artwork
produced is important to me, not just because of emotional reasons. This work talks about
a process through that process itself. That is, a work made of cross-stitches talks about the
cross-stitch itself.




Your mother is an artist, too. I happened to see her embroidery artwork when I visited
your home. How do you approach her art?


A lot of things can be learnt from non-academic/non-art persons; their evaluation has
no influence from the art world. My mother responds honestly to my art. When she
responds, “this is not correct” or “this is correct,” I try to get into her shoes to assess what
triggered her viewpoint. This type of thinking helped me while collaborating with
different people. And I create artwork with her help.




There is an opinion that people should be trained in order to experience modern
art — else they ask, “what does this artwork portray?” But you are willing to accept
non-academic/non-art people’s comments and learn from them.


It’s all about habits. People wake up in the morning from the same side [of the bed],
they start brushing their teeth on the same side. Each chore, every day, is repetitive and
standardised. This is a kind of conditioning. Even the language we speak and our communications are now in a typical question-and-answer pattern — there is a space in between,
but gradually, we are failing to experience that space. For example, we get stomach aches
in many hues. Most of the time, verbal language fails to catch the essence of these
completely and there is always a limitation to it when it is expressed verbally. We cannot
capture everything in the words that we speak. There is a limit to it. Let me give another
example. Let us assume that a person holds someone’s hand. There is no verbal
communication, but still, that person may feel the empathy that is being extended.
That is a non-verbal signal. In the case of artworks, a viewer has to see the artworks by
utilising all his senses, and this does not need academic training.




This idea of a museum in India is a concept originated by the British. The statue
collection we saw at Mekkekatthe (a temple in Shiriyara, Karnataka) is not a museum.
It’s a part of people’s rituals. Visitors are not viewers there. It is all about participation
there. Sculptures, paintings, and architecture all have participatory characteristics. For
us, the collection is a part of daily utilisation. Being part of such a culture, you studied
museology, in which artworks are displayed in glass showcases and lack human
participation. They are static. Do you see any contradictions here?


I take it very positively. When we think emotionally, we fail to analyse. Since I have
studied museology academically, I know a bit about the inside perspectives of museums.
According to me, museums are passport-sized photos of a country. My dissertation during
my MA in Museology was titled Museum’s non-verbal knowledge. For that, I prepared a
questionnaire with 100 questions for the objects in the museum. Later on, these questions
helped me create my artworks based on my museum experiences.




Korea is a fairly new country when compared to China, India and Bhutan. It is very
modern and an imitation of America. A country that is born imitating Western
countries may need museums when compared to other countries. We don’t need this
because the objects that would otherwise be kept in museums are an integral part of
our daily life or tradition. Shivaram Karanth had written a travelogue, Apoorva
Paschima, after returning from Europe. It talks about museums in length. He
complains that we do not have a museum culture, have no documentation etc. Isn’t
there a possibility that the concept of a museum might be a foreign one?


We have an emotional issue, where we are not ready to accept what we don’t have.
To solve a problem, first, we should accept that there is a problem. We need to accept
anything good from any part of the world. This can happen only when we inculcate
the quality of acceptance in us.
We have a rich heritage. We haven’t worked enough to save it. When there is no documentation, we might fail to pass it on to the next generation. In the future, a lot of time might
be wasted on the documentation of their past. If you have that information beforehand,
it is easier for them to go beyond that area. Since we do not have that documentation
system, we need museums. Else, we may turn irrelevant.




Now the Museum of Art & Photography (MAP) is opening in Bengaluru. What do you
think is its significance and relevance?


The museum, as a concept in our country, is yet to mature. For example, look at Korea.
It is about half the size of Karnataka. There are about 300 museums and a similar number
of art galleries there. They actively participate in the activities of the art world. Our
country is 36 times larger than Korea. At the most, we have around 40 to 50 active museums and about 80 to 100 galleries. In such a situation, rather than talking good or
bad about the museum system we have, we should welcome the new museums, as they are
a necessity. Emerging museums like MAP create an interface to discuss such issues. It is in
the hands of the artists to make good use of these platforms.
Our art schools still follow the same eighty-year-old academic system. To experience a
change, we should allow the change to happen first. Conditioning makes us stagnant.
This is a sort of self-created narrowness.
We couldn’t develop our own and we are not in a position to continue with the existing
ones. An immediate threat looming around is artificial intelligence. We may turn
irrelevant by the time it arrives. When we were kids, we used to go play cricket. And then
my mother used to say “involve the small kids in your game and only then can you play in
front of the house.” We used to involve these kids with us to play, signalling to our friends
that they would be involved only for the count, and not for the real game. Today, we are in
a similar condition. They [AI] don’t need us. We are in an absurd state.




Can you tell me something about your upcoming exhibition in this museum?


My exhibition is titled Chirag-e-AI and focuses on artificial intelligence and its
relationship to us, humans. Here, the core idea is, we imitate computers and strive hard
to achieve their speed, comparing ourselves with the clarity they have. At the same time,
a computer is also trying to understand us and our behaviour. When you are looking at
the blank screen of a computer, it is simultaneously observing you, too. But when we
compare the speed at which a computer is learning about us, we are way behind. In this
race of humans against computers, the gap that has been created between us and them
is of interest to me. The process of understanding the machine and the machine
understanding us is creative. The computer analyses and creates a structure of deep
learning to control us, which my exhibition explores further.




At present, where are your works being exhibited?


At present, my work Interference is being exhibited in Sharjah. The work is a video about
the dust on a historical carpet, which then, is brought inside a museum. Kings, ministers
and contemporary officers have walked on the carpet, and the dust captures their DNA.
In Germany, my work is exhibited at the Linden Museum along with artefacts from
sixth to tenth century artists. The museum has a rich collection of the Gupta, Chola
and Vijayanagara periods.
About three hundred years ago, Basel missionaries came to India, to my native place in
coastal Karnataka. They provided employment at the tile factories to those who accepted
Christianity. They used the clay and wood from there to manufacture the tiles designed
in Germany. Now, they are popular as ‘Mangalore Tiles.’ I titled this artwork “I came,
I saw, I conquered.” The missionaries arrived in India, around 6,000 km from their
homes, leaving their families to do missionary work; it tells us how fragile their life was.
While most of our historical information is documented in terracotta objects, like this
artwork, they too are fragile, and can easily break.
I made Hatha-yogis on the same tiles. I picked these yogi figures from the ethnological
collection of the British period at the Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai. In an effort
to extend their own life spans, and win against the laws of life, Hatha-yogis put their
bodies through extreme duress. Illness may claim them at any time. The life of a yogi
is also fragile. When we set out to conquer something, our life might turn fragile, too.
My artworks are in the permanent collection and on display at the Modern Art Gallery
in Queensland, Australia; Grounds For Sculptors in America, and M+ in Hong Kong.
Locally, there is a permanent public sculpture named Coinage, near the DC Office,
Manipal.




What are you working on now?


Of late, I’ve been interested in public sculptures. The possibilities here are different from
that of my artworks. Currently, I am working on a public sculpture that is soon to be
installed at the renovated Kempegowda International Airport, in Bengaluru.