Seema Kohli

Seema Kohli: As far as art is concerned, my whole life has been about art. As a child, I am sure you must also have been interested in art. That is how I started. At a very young age, I knew I was an artist.

I lacked words. I was disinterested in people. It felt better not to interact with people or enter into any conversation. I was like that even when I was as young as two.

Naturally, my parents were worried about how to handle the situation. Somebody (a child psychologist, I think) suggested that they give me colours and paper. That changed everything. I found myself. The magic was immense, and I am still in that magic. You don’t start a work thinking about how it is going to end. You never know. You just go on with it, discovering.

Art also opened a path to conversation. People began asking me what I had made. I understood that the image gave me an identity and made people interested in me. In a way, the image became more important than the person who created it. However large an artist becomes, it is the work that makes the connection. I am sixty-five now and art still makes me fall in love with it again and again.

It was not easy as a child. Teachers did not want scribbling to be called art: they wanted to see a still life, something recognizable. My still life was never what it was supposed to be. I would get poor grades and I couldn’t understand what they wanted, because to me my work was so good. My papers would get messy because I would scribble over them for hours.For artists to be artists, they need to be really stubborn. In the sixties, hardly any parents thought their children would become artists. Mine let me do my own thing.

The content in me was immense, and that is what I focused on: the stories, what I wanted to say, what I wanted to paint. Even if I had to get a haircut, I would draw girls with short hair, so that my father might guess. There was a writer called Enid Blyton, and in her books there was a thing called invisible ink, which you wrote with and which only showed up later. For me, my art was like that: something that needed to be discovered in a certain light. That is still what I am doing.

I was interested in spiritualism from childhood. Indian households are like that. You grow up with spirituality and the rituals. I wanted to work on this content, so I studied philosophy honours. I knew Indian and Eastern philosophies, but I did not know the Western philosophers, so I studied them. Then I studied applied arts for four years, which was about materials, photography, printing, and etchings on zinc plates. It was important for me to understand the mediums. 

You can be self-made, but that is not something guaranteed to you. You can think of yourself as a great artist, but the moment the work moves out of your studio, you are subject to the gaze of other people. That is the market, and it is very tough.

For the first eighteen years I only showed my work in group shows, never a solo show. I wasn’t sure the narrative was one I wanted to carry forward, so it took me a long time to commit to the first one. After that it kept rolling, one gallery after another. It is tough. It is not easy.

And the insecurities are immense. These are not only insecurities about whether you will ever become a big artist. You also ask, “Am I saying something? Is it reaching somewhere?” Even when we say that, as artists, we want to talk to ourselves, we still wonder whether you are talking to yourself honestly. We are so clothed, one layer over another, that it is difficult to come out and be open, because art is a process of constantly baring yourself. Someone recently asked whether, at this stage, I felt satisfied. I am still not baring myself as much as I would like to. It is still so covered. It is a struggle, and I think it is a struggle an artist must have.

Seema Kohli: You are not alone. Whatever your perceptions are, they are a residue of your experiences with others. They say an artist is constantly obsessed with herself. It’s not that. How can you be obsessed with yourself? You have to be obsessed with something outside you, and that becomes your essence, and that is what you will paint.

I have always felt that artists are like a fragrance or frequency of society. We carry society within us. We carry all its essences within us, and we paint what is within us. We are constantly feeling.

I can sit here and watch this tree for half the day. The tree is not talking to me. I am talking to it. It is not a very active process. A lot of it is sedentary.

When we paint, we have to keep feeling the pain, the happiness and each emotion to its deepest extent. You need to give it time. Then, when you sit down and paint, it is a discipline.

I am very tough with myself. I feel there is a very thin line between activism and art. Art can be activism, but activism on its own is a complete space. We cannot take away from activists what they are going through.

I feel it is unfair when artists call themselves activists without having done the work. Have you gone on a march to protect the forest? What have you done for it? In today’s time, it is very easy to make claims. That is where I have a problem.

I say that I am not an activist. I am an artist. I feel what is there. I do not have to become something else. But there is a very thin line between activism and art. Art can be activist. Activism on its own is a complete space, and I feel it is mean to take that away from the people actually doing it. Artists calling themselves activists: what have you done? Have you gone out on the march to protect the forest? It is very easy to make such a claim in today’s time. I have a little problem with that. I am an artist. I feel what is there. I don’t have to become something else.

Seema Kohli: The question of creativity is very interesting to me. AI training on artists’ work is disturbing, but we cannot stop it. We need to deal with it. At my level, I don’t think much about it because I don’t work with it. Many times I have been baffled by it. I have sent these videos to my children, and they have said, “Mum, this is AI.” I feel very cheated. Nothing in it is real. The people you are seeing are not real. 

I am sure younger people feel differently, because they are more into it. For them, art may be an activity between their minds and their computers. It does not resonate with me. For me, I prioritize the direct senses. That is what I would call creativity. These elements have to be in tandem with each other: my hands, the canvas, my mind, my body. I think of it as a beautiful dance. 

When I am painting, I go through a strange state. I think, “Wow, I was not even thinking about it. Where is it coming from?” 

There is a conversation with the canvas, because the canvas becomes alive for me. The images become alive for me, and the images live longer. Even when I am no longer here, they will continue having conversations with their viewers, audiences and collectors, wherever they are. I feel that is a very different life from an AI thing, which has already been put out by somebody else. For me, it feels like a kind of cheating.

Creativity is an ongoing process. We are constantly creating. We are living and dying every moment. Every breath we are taking is somebody else’s breath; that is how we are connected, and it is so important for us to understand that. I am not a religious person, but tantra resonates with me, because it talks about the elements, and about the spaces outside us that we consume and become.

Seema Kohli: My mind and my consciousness cannot be replaced. Even if I had an automatic hand, I would still need the mind. The ability to love and to feel is important. It is all interrelated. Even the body cannot be replaced. The skin and the pores are full of activity. Each atom in this body is active and able to create more. 

People keep trying to control nature. We keep changing the courses of rivers, and the rivers keep blasting back. We break mountains, and there are landslides and floods everywhere in the world. We try to overtake nature, but she is powerful. I think she is having a nice time playing with us. That is what the goddess is about. She is an illusion, and she keeps creating that illusion.

Seema Kohli: See, we cannot do without technology. I was recently in Iowa, reviewing portfolios for graduate and postgraduate students. I was really thrilled by the ways they were using technology along with weaving and things they could do with their hands. It was fascinating.  Each artist is realising the need for technology, photography, and print, while also balancing those practices. 

Teachers are also sensitive to the fact that we cannot do without technology in today’s time. We need spaces with enough technology. We need to know it and understand it. We cannot avoid it by saying, “This is something I do not want to know.” That is the first wall you create. Artists are seekers. As artists, we first need to understand everything, and then we choose. The tougher the path, the greater the sense of satisfaction. I always try to create strange situations for myself. I think, “If I do not do it like this, let me try another medium.”

For example, there is a great deal of innovation happening in textiles. This raises an important question: how can we use technology to experiment and create something unique? Can we create something as good as, if not better than, what could be made entirely by hand? To use technology meaningfully, we must first understand how to make things with our own hands. That knowledge allows us to apply both mind and machine, combining craftsmanship with technology to create something truly original.

AI can also be used and channelled in the way you want because these systems are subservient to you. They are helping you. But the moment you feel that they will do your job and you will not have to do it, there is a problem. You need to make them work. Then, if you think, “I cannot do this,” you find another way and try.

I feel the times are good. We are in a very good space. Technology is at its best, and so many things are happening. At the same time, we cannot give ourselves up for sale and say, “You can do my job, and I can sit around.” If you do that, there is no game. You need to play the game.

These are games that the world’s consciousness is playing with us. You achieve one thing, and then the question is, “Now what?” There is another thing ahead, so jump forward, go ahead and take the reins. I feel more art schools and spaces need to have technology. At the same time, indigenous knowledge needs to be brought to the forefront for reasons beyond commerce. We need to start respecting it.

We have realised that the word “indigenous” sells. I have seen many artists use it wrongly, and that is not fair to the people who have held this knowledge for centuries. There has to be a humbler way of approaching it.

Think about the way we treat AI and how much we spend on it. Would we spend the same amount to gain knowledge from an indigenous person? It is a very delicate situation. We need to keep our heads in spaces that allow every kind of growth, beyond commercial growth alone.

AI can give us many commercial benefits. But how about growing our minds and seeing where we can be useful? That is also art. It is part of art. It can be very complicated, and perhaps not so complicated after all.