Gandhi & Kallenbach
Mohandas Gandhi was 34 when he met 32yr old Herman Kallenbach, an architect born in Lithuania to German Jewish parents. They became intimate friends, “soulmates”, over the first four years. Seven years living together followed after which they moved from South Africa to India when they were 43 & 45. While they were travelling, WW1 broke out and they were separated. Kallenbach was interned as an enemy alien on the Isle of Man internment camp. Gandhi waited for 41⁄2 months before completing the journey to India without his dearest friend. Towards the end of the war, Kallenbach was allowed to return to South Africa. In 1935 after 23 years of being apart the two reunited in India aged 64 & 66 and again in 1939 when they were 68 & 70.
In the dark space of this installation we find ourselves in Kallenbach & Gandhi’s inner world. In Complete Possession of My Body, a found sculpted portrait of the upper half of Gandhi’s body is given pride of place on a found mantelpiece, a manifestation of the act of taking possession of his body. The architectural elements of the mantelpiece extends a metaphor for Kallenbach’s role as an architect to house them. Kallenbach designed the Kraal house in Johannesburg for them. Kallenbach’s handkerchief, vaseline, cotton wool, envelope, and pen are constant mementos nearby. Gandhi describes the extent to which these objects represent Kallenbach’s having taken complete possession of his body. It was my ambition to infuse the space with a sensual lighting, to provide a moment for sensitive engagement with personal memory and to memorialise the significance they occupied in each other’s lives.
Gandhi has been credited with a return to the hand in an age of machinery. This intrinsic humanistic value is of significance for the hand drawn image, paying homage to its mystery of form and storytelling. It probes the action of drawing as an experimental and playful medium and the act of seeing as a deeply individual experience. In Experiments with Truth #2, a painting by Atul Dodiya, Bapu At Rene Block Gallery, New York, 1974 is superimposed behind the portrait of Gandhi, a bright spotlight obscures rather than illuminates the scene. Dodiya himself rewrites history: Gandhi encountering Joseph Beuys’ installation piece with a coyote (I Like America & America Likes Me). Beuys’ display of human sympathy to a wild animal is expanded by Dodiya – the juxtaposition of the sympathetic Gandhi provides sympathy for the sympathiser. The experimental inclusion of the Dodiya transposes the scene with an amplifying echo. The Neoshamanism of Beuys’ performances with fat and felt and Gandhi’s non-violent resistance in salt are both subversive experiments with truth, together they expand upon the urgency for a utopian vision for us. Suggesting that there is synchronicity and harmony across continents and histories.
Experiments with Truth includes 2 sets of 3 portraits each of Gandhi in differing lighting states. This evokes questions of truth gradually coming to light as we uncover more and more. An acutely limited tonal range creates subtlety in definition, whilst the intensity of the darkness gives it unusual depth. As these works blend into one another in the animation, our perceptions of the man slowly change, altering as different definitions are made of his form.