Sharmila Samant - Against the Grain
Outrage at corporate greed is the inspiration for Sharmila Samant's many-fanged Biennale piece, she tells Nick Dent
Biennales are funny things. On the ground floor of the MCA there's an entire room dedicated to just one small photograph of two glasses of water (it's by Attila Csorgo from Hungary and no, we don't get it either). And then, just across the way, you find a room decked out in the kind of engrossing, labour-intensive installation that gives contemporary art a good name. Sharmila Samant, 40, a Mumbai-based artist, has covered the floor with great swathes of cotton fibre, and hovering above them are 1000 elaborate, foot-tall cobras woven in the traditional style of dhana kaam, or paddy art of Bolangir. The piece is called Against the Grain (2007).
What's the inspiration behind Against the Grain? In the past five years or so there has been a spate of farmer suicides in India. And most are committing suicide as the result of the genetically modified cotton that has been introduced about six years ago. The seeds that are produced are sterile, so the traditional ability of the farmer to store the seed and use it for the next year is nullified - they have to keep going back to the corporation to buy the seed. They incur debts and they can't pay them back, and hence the suicides.
The cobras seem to be made from grains of rice and bamboo. It's a craft that is practised by the Devguniya. When the harvesting is done, the children and women pick up the grains left behind and they're made into objects that are little luxuries for the farmers' houses. So I worked with them and asked them to produce snakes, which is not part of their usual repertoire.
Why cobras? The poison of a snake is a protein that goes into your body. Protein can be good for your body but this particular protein, because it's so strong, your central nervous system is completely stopped. And that's how you die. That is precisely what I thought the genetically modified seed was doing to the farmers. Also, if you use GM seeds you have to use a whole lot of pesticides, which means the water tables are being absolutely poisoned.
Can a political artwork like this make a difference in India? We have a huge population and like everywhere else in the world, just two or three percent looks at contemporary art. It's nothing. But on the other hand we can reach people who actually make changes - the politicians, the ones in power, because they're the ones who visit art exhibitions.
Sharmila Samant's Against the Grain shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art, as part of the 16th Biennale of Sydney, until September 7.