The silence of the outsider
By Anand Gurung
What does it feel like to be an outsider? What kind of pain and loneliness does one go through being perceived as "different" in society? How are all of us handicapped in some way or the other, and how can we strive for a better world? How does it feel to live in Silence, to experience the void? And how beautiful it is?
These are some of the questions Rashmi Amatya tries to deal with in her paintings that are on display at the Art Shop in Durbarmarg as part of her second solo exhibition titled "The Silence".
To start a conversation with Rashmi about her paintings, about anything in particular, is not easy. This is not because she is eccentric or abstract, as we presume all artists to be. Nor does she have a sense of superiority over others, something again artists are said to be afflicted with. Words are necessary for conversation to pick up, and Rashmi can only utter a few, indecipherable words. Her hearing impairment from childhood took away her ability for speech as well.
So a girl adept in sign language steps in to facilitate our conversation, and with quick movement of her fingers and eager quivering of her lips, the doe-eyed painter explains her art to the girl, who then explains it to me in the language of "normal" people. It seems Rashmi has always felt like an outsider in this world of sounds.
"I was like an alien to the world around me, I'd just stare at people who uttered words with such precision and that made sense to them," she writes in the introduction to her paintings. "It was scary to think about a future with such a limitation. I would ask myself, 'Will I ever be able to talk and hear?' "
As a kid, this 26-year-old artist from Kupandole was sent to a normal school as she managed to babble a few words. "My parents thought I would be able to connect with fellow students, but the hearing impairment took its toll and I got back to where I came from -- school for the deaf," she recalls. "I made friends with the pen, pencil and paper and would scribble on blank sheets to make curves and faces."
Rashmi couldn't do well in her studies due to her condition, but she tried to overcome her sense of incompleteness by first learning to sketch as kid, and then by taking up painting as a young adult under the guidance of well-known artists. Soon people started to take note of her passion and talent.
In the following years she participated in many art competitions and won one award after another. She displayed her painting solo and at group exhibitions. She held her last solo exhibition at 13, and now, thirteen years later, she has come again with a new set of paintings that speak of, or rather scream out her pain of seclusion, of being "abnormal", an outsider. They express her yearning for freedom, her struggle and loneliness in this world of noises. The use of symbolism, the layers of colour (predominantly blue, the international colour to denote deaf people), the deft strokes and the simplicity with which she brings all this together on her canvas are a testament to her remarkable talent.
One of her paintings seems to suggest, symbolically, that so-called normal people would feel the same kind of loneliness as the deaf or any disabled person if they were to live among the deaf. Another painting uses the same symbols (by marking deaf people as blue and "normal" people with various colours to denote their various disabilities) to show how the stairs that lead to the door are straight and unbroken for the "normal" but winding and incomplete for the "disabled" like her, and how, if the door had been flung equally open for both they would each reach there ultimately.
"I am blessed to have parents who never made me feel weak or disabled," she says, "When I come across people like me, I find meaning in life and am inspired to keep going no matter what comes in my way. I no longer feel lost. You never get what you want in life, only reasons to smile each day."
And that inspiration to live even at the cost of death of a woman who was both "deaf and dumb" (in the language of normal people) like her and whom she personally knew. Confined to the border of her so-called house the 40-years she lived enduring the sense of shame she produced in the hearts of her own family members about her, the woman recently passed away.
Rashmi's message is that people like her who can neither speak nor hear "but who possess tremendous talent and energy" need not feel ashamed or frustrated by the looks and treatment they get from other people; that the sky is the limit for them if they unite.
For an artist who is depicting and rebelling against the society's ills, one would imagine Rashmi to have only bitterness towards her society. No. She views the world of "normal" people with the same compassionate eyes that enabled her to portray her own. She seems to tell us that every person - no matter how able and normal they think they are - is both physically and mentally restricted, and therefore handicapped, sometimes more so than those with a visible disability. For it is only human to have faults, or disabilities, and it is with our respective abnormalities and sense of incompleteness that we live together, and could aspire for a better world.
Her paintings not only give us a glimpse into the world of the deaf, it even shows us its beauty. For instance, to a deaf person, every sound, no matter how loud or unpleasant, is beautiful, like the sound made by the feathers falling to the ground in one of her paintings. In a world of chaos and cacophony and banality, two deaf people can chat away without the least concern, in their own blue world. Another painting tries to capture the joy of a deaf mother whose child is trying to talk to her, and the expression in her face suggests that she understands every word of it.
"Art allows my inner self to experience the outside world," says Rashmi. "I have gone through many ups and downs in life and art has been my best friend in countering these challenges."
The paintings in her Silence series have certainly succeeded in giving voice to the voiceless. andygurung@yahoo.com
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