Vamona Navelcar, Uma Pessoa: The Poet in the Painter

Vishvesh Kandolkar

(With thanks to R. Benedito Ferrão for his critical input.)

On one of my first visits with the octogenarian artist Vamona Ananta Sinai Navelcar in 2015, he gave me a book of Portuguese poetry by Fernando Pessoa. I happened to mention to him that I had taken up a beginner’s course in Portuguese. At first, I thought Navelcar’s message was only a literary one, to not just study a language but, rather, relish it through its poetry. Later, I realised, there was much more to the artist’s gesture. It was an implied message from this fellow-Goan, hinting that Pessoa is also a part of Goa’s history, and therefore learning about the Portuguese poet would only enrich my understanding of our past. Navelcar’s art, though, is far more specific in conveying similar meaning in being a wonderful reflection of Goa’s complex global connections. The Portuguese poet Pessoa is one of Navelcar’s many muses, which include Christ, Rabindranath Tagore, and Mozambiquan women. Navelcar’s fascination with Pessoa, however, signifies something far more profound. Pessoa is not just a muse and an inspiration to Navelcar. Rather, their lives bear remarkable similarities.

Just as a young Pessoa had left the shores of his homeland Portugal and moved to South Africa in the 1890s, Navelcar too had to leave his home in Goa to study art in Portugal in the 1950s upon receipt of a scholarship. That Navelcar subsequently worked as an art teacher in Mozambique, further marks the similarity in career trajectories between the artist and his poet-muse in the continent of Africa. In his article, ‘Vamona Navelcar as Performance Artist’ (Muse India, Jul-Aug 2013), R. Benedito Ferrão writes, “Navelcar’s very life, in its historical and geographical entanglements, cannot be separated from the artistic labour it has inspired”. Each of the figures in Navelcar’s work are a reproduction of his global exposure. Pessoa’s emblematic formal attire is in glaring contrast to the artist’s depiction of other figures. Navelcar often exaggerates the poet’s thin bodily frame, dressed typically in a fato, a bow tie, a hat, and with his signature round spectacles on his nose.

Navelcar’s working methods also seem to mirror those of his muse. Pessoa is known to have been hooked to writing, as he often jotted poems on whatever writing surface was on hand, be it books, loose sheets or scraps of paper, used envelopes, and even receipts. Navelcar demonstrates a similar trait as his choice of canvas seems to be inconsequential: the backs of pages of calendars, bits of cardboard, and pages of magazines have all been the recipient of his artistry. He even drew a sketch of Pessoa on the inside cover of the book he gave me.

The book, Poesia de Árvaro de Campos, is now witness to another common trait demonstrated by both these figures of the Lusophone world: their use of pseudonyms. While Pessoa wrote this book under the fictitious name of Álvaro De Campos, Navelcar signed his sketch of the author with the name Ganesh, which he adopted in memory of his deceased brother. The use of a local deity’s name, though, is not random, as it reflects a more ‘authentic’ version of the Hindu local names that are popular in Goa. Vamona on the other hand, is such a Portuguese name, in that in Konkani it would be Vamon. One wonders if the choice of pseudonym Ganesh is a desperate measure by Navelcar to gain recognition in his native land. In tandem with India’s move to the far right, Goa’s support of cultural production reveals its religio-nationalist biases, and is to the exclusion of an artist like Navelcar whose art incorporates Christian and African themes among others. That such remarkable talent and hard work like Navelcar’s goes unrecognised speaks to the lack of imagination of the State and the ways in which it seeks to limit how Goa itself can be imagined through the art of its visionaries.

Pessoa left behind trunks full of writing, many pieces of which are still awaiting publication. Similarly, many of Navelcar’s works also lie unseen in multiple portfolios and have not been archived or exhibited. Without State or institutional support, Navelcar has to make a living by directly selling his work, which is a huge loss to the Goan public, as only select audiences enjoy his art. The tragedy is that recently many of the artist’s works have fallen prey to white ants, that endemic scourge of Goa. Setbacks, though, have not dimmed  Navelcar’s enthusiasm to produce art, as he continues to paint every day.

It is remarkable that Navelcar’s experience of Portugal, during his time of study there in the 1950s, is emblematized by his portrayals of the figure of Pessoa who was not as popular in his homeland then. This is especially because, during that era of the dictatorial regime of António de Oliveira Salazar, the Portuguese State was actively promoting the classic seventeenth century poet Luís de Camões, as a part of their nationalistic propaganda, while ignoring modern poets like Pessoa, who died in 1935. Nations generally look for ‘authentic’ symbols to represent the country. Pessoa did not fit the bill because “his first writings were in English with a South African tincture” and “he turned to Portuguese only in 1910” (George Steiner, ‘A Man of Many Parts’ The Guardian, June 3, 2001). For the Salazarian regime, the diasporic Pessoa did not possess the commensurate amount of “Portugueseness” in the fashion that de Camões did. It is also easier to use “heroes” from antiquity as symbols, because those in power tend to manipulate the politics of these deceased legends. Pessoa’s writing was not nationalistic enough, whereas de Camões was useful to the State precisely because his works are in the epic tradition and speak to the glories of the Portuguese empire. Perhaps Navelcar relates the side-lining of Pessoa by Portugal to his own mistreatment by the State of Goa – a ‘postcolonial’ Goa that has deemed Navelcar to be not ‘authentic’ enough to be officially recognised.

What the post-‘Liberation’ State fails to realise is that Navelcar’s life in Goa, Portugal, and Mozambique, is often a reflection of a Luso-specific trend of migration that is common to many Goans of a past era. Navelcar is aware of this complexity and therefore remains proud of his multiple experiences of places across continents. He claims to be at once European, African, and Goan, just as many other Goans of his generation might.  Navelcar’s art, as much as his life, is emblematic of Goa’s global connections, which is why Ferrão refers to him as a “performing artist” (Muse India). The State does not seem to embrace Navelcar because to do so would undermine their nationalist politics, which is contrary to what the artist and his art represents in embracing multiplicity. Nevertheless, the figure of Navelcar is a powerful one: he is a living bridge between histories, states, and empires. This is the poetry of his art. And his downfall.

[This article was first published on Joao Roque Literary Journal on 9 May 2017]

The Ruins that are Not

A large crowd had gathered for the Western classical music concert at the remains of St. Augustine’s in Old Goa on 7^th January, 2016. Was the gathering purely one whose purpose it was to witness a musical performance, or was the fact that it occurred at a historical location itself symbolic of something more? Or is it that the congregation in great numbers was a performance in itself, a gathering to assert Goan identity, which the place and the music is emblematic of.

The music concert was held in the Church of Our Lady of Grace which is a part of the Augustinian monastery built in late sixteenth century. The Church was vaulted single-nave, with inter-connecting lateral chapels and had two tower façade. Architectural historian Paulo Varela Gomes writes that the Augustinian church’s more enduring contribution, indeed ground breaking for the architecture of Goa, resided in its main façade: it was the first church in Goa with a two tower façade, a type normally reserved for Cathedral churches that only the Holy See had adopted. It seems, subsequently, practically all parish and convent churches would have two towers. The highly visible landmark, a 46 meter high tower, built in locally sourced laterite stone, once served as a belfry and formed part of the façade of a magnificent Church.

The entire site is in ruins today, and the remaining tower of the Church façade hints at the glorious edifice that once was. In the book Imperial Debris: On Ruins and Ruination (2015), its editor Ann Laura Stoler proposes two ways of understanding the concept of ruins. She writes that “[r]uin is both the claim about the state of a thing and a process affecting it. It serves as both noun and verb. To turn to its verbal, active sense is to begin from a location that the noun too easily freezes into stasis, into inert object, passive form” (p.11). There is no doubt that St Augustine’s Church has achieved far greater fame because it is a ruin (as a noun). In many ways, the surviving tower is also symbolic of what remains of the once dominant Catholic culture. Stoler suggests that ruination is more than a process that ends up with building debris as a by-product. As per her, ruination is also a political project that lays waste to certain peoples, relations, and things that accumulate in specific places. The aftermath of such ruination invites visits by archeologists, art and architectural historians and, at best, tourists, notes Ronald Schulz, in his review of the aforementioned book published on H-Empire (February, 2015). In effect, then, ruins are rendered monumental, fossilized in time. There is something similar happening to colonial architecture in Goa as much as to the Goan Catholic culture it represents - both have become objectified in the way in which people from the rest of India look upon them through a touristic gaze, as if the place and its people were in a museum. 

It is here that I find Stoler’s concept useful, that “[t]o ruin [as a verb]…is to inflict or bring great and irretrievable disaster upon, to destroy agency, to reduce to a state of poverty, to demoralize completely" (p.9). The events that are unfolding in contemporary Goa seem to suggest that the Goan Catholic community is subjected to ruin through the undermining of its agency. This is because the dominant Brahmanical culture problematically characterizes Goan Catholic communities as native-managers and the sole beneficiaries of the erstwhile Portuguese colonial order, which in turn marks them as anti-national.  The Catholic community that produced a unique identity for Goa is thereby made to suffer the sins of an imagined ‘imperial’ past where Portuguese colonialism is rendered as being no different from British imperialism. Accordingly, Goa’s history is reduced to a small blot, to an undifferentiated and righteous Hindu-Indian past that rescued itself from the clutches of evil imperial oppression.  

What is conveniently obscured is that the history of the Portuguese empire in Goa led to the emergence of a unique local culture which was epitomised by the development of church architecture. In his book Whitewash, Red Stone: A History of Church Architecture in Goa (2011), Paulo Varela Gomes asserts that churches after the sixteenth century had “far less Portuguese influence than one would be led to believe” (p.4). Architectural practice during the colonial period in Goa assimilated global ideas and elements to create a unique local architecture, Gomes asserts. More importantly, in participating in the Renaissance and the Baroque styles of architecture, Goans were also contributing to global architecture. This is to say, they were producing modern aesthetics in their buildings, and therefore fashioning themselves as enlightened world citizens. It is this cultural heritage that contemporary Goan Catholics continue to hold on to.

The large gathering of Goans at the Western classical performance at what remains of the Augustinian complex is an assertion that they have not given up on the markers of their culture, the monuments, as much as the music. For these reasons, St. Augustine’s cannot be classified as a ruin just yet; the site is still an active monument, even if only a part remains. 

[This article first appeared on The Goan Everyday on 31 January 2016]