Art And The Dangers Of Religious Pieties

Sonu was one of the most promising students in that batch of under graduate visual communication students. I say she was promising, not for the results that she achieved, but for her innate talent for things visual, like photography, design, etc., and at the same time had a passion for the same; and was ready to work hard. She hardly finished her first year; I used to find her absent for classes, and I asked her friends about her. They told me she started working. I, presupposing that her family could not afford her education, wanted to ask the college to wave off her fees at least partially. Then I came to know that she has moved out of her family and is working to support herself. I was curious and enquired further, only then did I know that she belonged to a particular Christian sect and their religious beliefs and piety did not permit her to study or pursue careers in media related fields. She had tried getting out of the house and pursue, perhaps she is still not strong enough to convince her parents and family or stand alone.

This is a down side of people who follow an institutional religion. The religion carries with it a baggage of its own, and every person who come into it also in some degree carry it. They can never be free. Religion becomes an obstacle in crossing boundaries. Pieties of an established religion create inhibitions.

People who are inside a particular religion and belief system, though are practicing art or any liberal sciences of that sort, find it very difficult to completely break free and think fresh and out of the box of their religion. If they try to break free, they risk being excluded and become a victim of the hatred of religious fundamentalists. They most often end up making art or content for the sake of, or to glorify that particular religion and not l'art pour l'art —art for art’s sake. Piety and our belief systems limit art and artistic expressions.

On the other side, the art community sometimes becomes too fortified and gives no room for people who practice certain faith to come into mainstream art. They expect others to respect their feelings of agnosticism or rationalism, but do not extent the same freedom and respect to people of faith. The art community often takes a condescending position and feels nothing about excluding people who believe in God. I am familiar with a serious art fraternity in Kerala called CARP. It was began by artists who are priests or religious (it has other members too), they do art camps, create serious art and hold exhibitions etc. I was told that the authoritative art community of Kerala, comment on the artworks of this fraternity as ‘acchan vara’, meaning, priests’ drawings. They are discriminated for their religious identity.

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