Waswo X Waswo
(b. 1953)
Waswo X. Waswo’s photographic self-portraiture has been a tactic of mild humour employed to signal the self-awareness of his practice. In these portraits, he enacts the role of the fedora-wearing gentleman of the paintings. As in the miniatures, he is at times a representative of self, at others an everyman, at others an “evil Orientalist” (a role that Waswo has embraced with tongue-in-cheek glee). These self-portraits are tinted and painted by both of his Indian collaborators, Rajesh and Rakesh. They carry forward, and further complicate, the ever-evolving narrative. In one such self-portrait, Waswo is seen picking mangoes from a tree, quite literally the low-hanging ‘exotic’ fruits that his adopted country has offered up to him with ease. These fruits, and the picturesque surroundings, gently mock the conjectured paradisiacal and languid lifestyle enjoyed by the expat artist à la Gauguin.
In another, Waswo (or the character that has emanated from him), chases a butterfly with joyful abandon. The net becomes the symbol of science, categorisation, and invasive inquiry in which the character is both actively involved and oblivious to. Similarly, in another image he struggles to balance an enormous telescope through which he peers, seeking close observation but excluding the totality of his surroundings.
He studied at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, The Milwaukee Center for Photography, and Studio Marangoni, The Centre for Contemporary Photography in Florence, Italy. His books, India Poems: The Photographs, published by Gallerie Publishers in 2006, Men of Rajasthan, published by Serindia Contemporary in 2011 (hardcover 2014), Photowallah published by Tasveer, India, in 2016, and Gauri Dancers, Mapin, 2019. The artist has lived and travelled in India for over twenty years and he has made his home in Udaipur, Rajasthan, for the past thirteen. There he collaborates with a variety of local artists including the photo hand-colourist Rajesh Soni.
He has also produced a series of loosely autobiographical miniature paintings in collaboration with the artist R. Vijay. The paintings are represented by Gallery Espace, New Delhi, while the artist’s hand-coloured photographs are represented by Gallery LATITUDE 28, India. In Thailand, Waswo is represented by Serindia Gallery, Bangkok.
