Swistik Pocket Knife

Biju Joze’s juxtaposition of materials and symbols is characterised by hybridity and the often violent melding and appropriation of cultures and artefacts. For a series of works titled Japamala (2008), he made rosaries—ubiquitous symbols of piety in catholic households of South India—by threading together aspirin and Viagra tablets, alluding to the ways in which the traditional and the modern, faith and market, intersect in contemporary India. Joze engages with the wave of transformations India is currently undergoing from the unique vantage point offered by the city of Bengaluru (formerly Bangalore), the country’s premier Information Technology hub and a gateway for global capital.

Swistik Pocket Knife (2009) by Joze is a sculpture that incorporates into the compact body of a Swiss Army Knife weapons and other traditional or ritualistic tools from India. Like a glaring anomaly, the place occupied by can openers, screw drivers, scissors and nail clippers in an ordinary Swiss Knife is here occupied by implements such as the ‘Trishulam’ (trident), ‘Lavithram’ (sickle), Ankhusha (a mahout’s goad) and ‘Eeli’ (coconut grater), adding up to a hybrid instrument resembling a multi-armed, weapon-wielding Hindu God.