A powerful reflection by Sushil Poddar on Ratnabali Kant’s installation performance Nipped in the Bud, where contemporary art confronts gender violence, collective memory, and the enduring trauma of the RG Kar tragedy through immersive expression.

Contemporary Indian art has increasingly become a powerful space for social resistance, with few artists embodying that spirit as profoundly as Ratnabali Kant. A sculptor, painter, writer, and one of India’s pioneering installation-performance artists, Kant has spent over four decades creating interdisciplinary works that merge sculpture, choreography, poetry, ritual, and the human body into a single immersive experience. Trained at Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan, the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, and later at the University of Athens, she introduced what she termed Installation Performance in India during the 1980s—a form that transforms both space and spectator into integral elements of the artwork. Her practice has consistently addressed gender justice, violence, displacement, ecology, and the politics of memory, making her one of the defining voices of contemporary Indian visual art.  

The 9th August, 2024: THROUGH HER EYES  

My understanding of the art-fields has been at quite a basic level, or rather even below that, as I have never been possessed by the art firmament. That’s why, when for the first time I came across the concept and philosophy of Installation Art, one of the contemporary forms of sculptural art, more than two decades ago, when Ratnabali Kant, a pioneer of this aesthetically rich art form in India, invited me for her solo show at CIMA at Ballygunge, Kolkata, it came to me as an enlightening experience. Since then, it has endured in me. The vignettes of that show are so distinct in my memory that I didn’t have to jog my mind to recall the theme of that show as I am writing this blog; it was a sculptural-enactment on issues concerning the fragility of women.  

For the initiator, the installation art-form is an artistic expression of three-dimensional work involving a site-specific act where viewers themselves become an active part of the presentation rather than being passive, and where the artist, while performing, transforms the entire space into an artwork rather than creating a single sculpture, thus leaving a riveting experience.

Ratnabali Kant’s Artistic Vision

Ratnabali Kant, as written, is an acclaimed sculptor, painter, and one of the leading lights of installation art. The erudite and humble artist, with an illustrious repertoire to back her, studied sculpture at Vishwa-Bharati University, Shantiniketan, and later at MSU, Baroda, followed by the University of Athens, Greece. Very thoughtfully, she invited us for her show titled “Nipped in the Bud.” Initially, I was not sure of making it, factoring in some preoccupation, but as it is said, there was some inner-calling which, by and by, led me to her studio where she was to perform the act today. Ratnabali’s pioneering practice combines sculpture with performance, transforming the artist’s body, space, sound, and movement into a unified artistic language that has become foundational to contemporary Indian installation-performance art.​

The Trauma of 9th August, 2024

9th August, 2024 has been an ominously tragic day for the country, Kolkata in particular, when a 31-year-old trainee PG doctor of RG Kar Hospital was brutally raped and wantonly murdered, fomenting nationwide outrage. A young and promising life was lost. A family was irreparably devastated. A nation felt deep shame.  The canvas of “Nipped in the Bud” sublimely captured the cesspool of one such sinful moment in an artistic way, highlighting instances of gender violence and sexual assault plaguing the society unabatedly and unabashedly. While watching Ratnabali’s act stoically and silently, like a thousand pin-drops, I was ineluctably beset by a sense of indignation, painfully reminding me of the dreary night when that student was raped. As the show moved toward its unsettling denouement, I felt that artwork like this is much needed to prevent memories of such scars inflicted upon society from fading.​ 

Postscript: Ms Ratnabali Kant is my wife’s maternal aunt.