Museum of Goa

The familiar image of a Goan householder seemingly sitting on a seat on the balcao of her home greets visitors at the entrance of the Museum of Goa, giving a taste of the artistic ingenuity and fun inside.

The gaur is the mighty bull so this iron bull is a nod to the origins of the name Goa which refers to the land of cattle herders.

The sculpture surprises unexpectedly as it welcomes visitors when they reach the Museum of Goa at the far end of an industrial estate.

One finds terracotta sculptures of roosters adorning the roofs of many Goa houses.

This perhaps is influenced by the Portuguese symbol, “Galo de Barceló’s”.

One of the most popular folk songs of Goa “kaibarelo kombdo mhaka main mhagya dilelo” (what a lovely rooster given to me by my mother), is more than 400 years old. The sculpture is an ode to that song.

Title: An egg and the vice.
A vice is an instrument to hold ‘things’, so that they could be ‘worked on’. The object held by a vice has no choice. For the artist, the egg represents the child and the vice, the social conditioning mechanism.

Subodh Kerkar explores the genetics and ancestry of natural materials after he found a burnt-out interior of a jackfruit tree trunk with its interior remaining intact. His Jackfruit is covered with a thorny surface.

The genetic information off that surface is incorporated in the trunk.

Titled 'The Old man and the Fish', these are ‘twin’ sculptures, one created with laterite stone and the other with iron nuts welded together. The sculpture celebrates Goa’s love for fish and has references to Ernest Hemingway’s celebrated novel, ‘The old man and the sea’.

The sculpture also explores juxtaposition of materials. Laterite stone is found in abundance in Goa and is used for construction of homes. It is rusty red in
colour due to the high content of iron oxides.

This work called Triumphant Trio by Viraj Naik stretches across a 7m by 5m canvas.

In 1502, Vasco-da-Gama set out on his second voyage for the Malabar Coast. They came upon a coastal ship, when hailed by the lookouts, did its best to escape.

The Portuguese sank it and the owner of the ship, Thimmaya, was produced before the captain. Usually, the fate of such prisoners was immediate death, but Thimmaya not only managed to avoid execution, but also got
himself appointed as a local agent.

About his work Mussel Shells Ocean, artist Kerkar says: "I have planted thousands of mussel shells in a pattern, some showing the silvery inside, others with their green backs facing the viewer".

When you go around the installation, the pattern changes like a silk carpet. The work is dynamic, like the ocean itself.

The artist says his shell works celebrate the ocean. Civilizations originated on the seashore and impacted one another by traveling across the oceans.

The waves which wash the shores of Goa have shaped not just rocks, but our entire lifestyle. If we think of our culture as a sculpture, then the ocean is the sculptor.

The shells recall the iridescent ones used in Goa’s windows.

The artist tells the story of this creative work: “One of my friends from my village Keri noticed an anchor completely covered with oyster shells lying in mud in the Tiracol River. It must have been there for quite a few years. He thought that the muddy anchor could be of interest to me. I retrieved the anchor and spent many days cleaning it carefully. Then I took it to the car wash and had it further cleaned with strong jets of water. The muddy anchor metamorphosed into a stunning sculpture”.

The anchor was truly anchored at the bottom of the ocean inviting the ocean to clad it with oyster shells.

No other commodity imported into India has affected the life of Indians as much as chillies have.

Indian cuisine used pepper and other spices until chillies arrived in Goa on a Portuguese caravel coming from South America sometime in the early 16th century. So, if there is ever to be a monument in honour of chillies, it would have to be erected in Goa.

Here, Kerkar, the artist, has used fibreglass, rubber tyres and cotton fabric to create them in his Museum of Goa.

The Museum of Goa is envisioned less as a repository of objects, and more as a laboratory of ideas where all art forms are in constant dialogue with each other.

The present souvenir replicas of the windows of Goa, with new technology, sizes, and a strong social goal, were brought back into focus after acquiring a new form and use under his guidance.

Men, women and children were sold for cowry shells, or Zimbo, which was a currency in this region.

Sometimes the slaves were bartered for cotton, rock salt, gun powder, glass beads or just a bottle of brandy.

Kerkar the artist bought a large number of ceramic plates over a hundred years old from an antique dealer. These plates would have probably arrived in Goa on Portuguese caravels.

He put them in an iron cage and kept them on the ocean floor for six months, where the ocean covered them with oysters.

Many honey comb forms were created in fibre glass and placed on the ocean bed for 2 years.

The ocean created oyster shells on the artist’s ‘honey’ combs converting them into ‘ocean’ combs.

By collaborating on this fibre glass work with the ocean over a series of experiments, Kerkar made the ocean his partner in art.

Read more here:

- Goa’s Windows: A heritage of shell work
- Fashioning Goa’s windows: A new craft is born