2022/23 MCAD–Jerome Fellow Interview: Roshan Ganu

I’m interested to learn more about the meaning behind the work चांदोबा: A Trip Into The Moon and the significance of the Marathi children's poem that inspired it?

Over the past few years I’ve been observing the recurrence of a dialogue between my internal and external world. This conversation builds a relationship between the landscapes on both sides of this glass pane, which in turn instills in me a sense of belonging. I believe that this is an inherent part of the migrant experience. We continually impose memory and an alternate reality onto the present moment, until it becomes familiar and soft. In चांदोबा: A Trip Into The Moon I decided to exaggerate these landscapes into superlatives: internally as an unfulfilled longing and externally as outer space. Just like mythology does to existence, I chose to ground the work in a popular, memorable Marathi children’s poem that seduces these extremities while igniting a childhood song. All together, the work was an exploration of isolation as a state of mind: the melancholy, survival, the self, longing, calm, movement, water, the moon, illusion, reflection, object, and materiality.

In उत्कंठा, you use neon and moving images to convey emotions. Can you talk about the process of creating this work and your thoughts behind not providing a translation for the Marathi word used?

उत्कंठा planted a seed in me that is still germinating to this day. It brought “language” to the forefront, but not in the linguistic way. Each language is a whole world, a whole consciousness. One understands themself differently in each language based on the socio-political, cultural, geographical, historical, ethnographical, scientific, artistic, imaginary, mundane contexts of the experience of that language. In this way, linguistics is merely one small window in a Hawa Mahal (‘wind palace’ that has hundreds of small windows to keep the palace cool, a fusion of Rajput and Mughal architecture). I am interested in transdisciplinary translation, experiential translation, language as consciousness. With an awareness of six languages, I have adapted language to build thought, belong, build relationships, rather than to impose. It’s ok to not know.

Can you discuss your use of materials, such as animation, neon, mirrors, handmade paper maché sculptures, and water, and how they contribute to the immersive, emotional, and aesthetic experiences in your installations?

I seek materials that can hold emotions and illusions, giving me freedom to maneuver worlds in space. Neon and mirrors are immersive to a level of dreaminess and trickery. Color is emotion. Water and reflection can be meditative, hypnotic, or destructive. Handmade paper maché sculptures foster nostalgia, vulnerability, and monumentalized memory. All these come together on stage through the school of thought called Cinema of Prayog, which is an alternative to experimental and avant garde, but of which they can both be a part. Amrit Gangar, the creator of this thought says, “Prayog is a Sanskrit word which could mean ‘experiment’ or ‘use’ or ‘put together’ or ‘design’ or ‘cause’ or ‘effect’ or ‘performance’ or ‘play’ or ‘representation’ or ‘practice’. So the Cinema of Prayoga can be a much wider, much deeper, notion than ‘experimental cinema’.” While I am still probing my place in the larger system of cinema through moving image and installation, Cinema of Prayog lays emphasis on the collective, relational experience of the different elements in my work, rather than prolonged focus on their individual significance.

Your work often touches on themes related to the human condition, can you tell us more about how you approach these themes and how you want the viewer to respond to them?

Not knowing, the obscure, the night, the limitless. It is terrifying and scares the daylights out of me. But I tug at it, is there a mashaal (torch) I can find? Is the darkness the mashaal? The human condition, for me, is grounded in the mundane, in relationships we build with nature, people, animals, song, spoken and written thought. During the deepest and darkest days of winter, a big feat for a tropical person whose oneness is with the sun, I turned the camera lens onto my interiority and started documenting these obscure spaces. I would film myself late into the night, alone, by the windows at my studio and outside, and the mundane would surprise me. I can go on about this process. But for my viewers, I would love for them to respond to my work with their time. By spending slow moving time, as much time as is available, and to be surprised and/or find their own place within my work.

How has winning the Jerome fellowship affected how you approach your work?

The Jerome Fellowship means so much more than what we read on paper or on the website. Personally, for me winning the Jerome means opportunity, institutional and financial support, a career push, a belief in my cause, a bright beacon to keep going, to up-the-game, to think big, to dream, to make things happen. It means a next step in my career, access to resources, studios and equipment. So many things.

If you could describe your work in one word, what would it be?

Slow, contemplative, open, liminal, poetic, limitless… They are all one word which is yet to be created.