Camouflage, is an ongoing series of multi-disciplinary works that explores the armed forces’ use of camouflage. This technique of concealment is adapted across varied geographies and has been crucial in past wars to current conflicts. The concept of camouflage originates from biological studies describing a range of strategies used by organisms to dissimulate their presence in the environment.

In Camouflage #5, the artist explores the use of camouflage by the armed forces. He focuses on the memory of the Indian soldiers who fought in the Great War (1914-1918) and questions whether by highlighting and camouflaging their bodies and positions, were they able to do the same with their intentions, opinions, fears, etc? – concealment thus becoming subversive and salvific to some degree. Dressed in black and wearing a turban, Baptist performed a series of gestures and actions at the Galerie Saint-Séverin in Paris. He interacted inside and outside the glass of the window display – a transparent and impenetrable wall. He held up to the viewers a white enamel cup, cut in two – a symbol of destruction and tearing – which he seemed to try to reconstitute. He touched, pushed, dismantled, moved, and lifted his artworks within the display case, thus activating and incorporating them into his live performance. He kneeled and dipped his face into a steel tray containing salt and a metal blade. Salt was a symbolic food item in the Indian independence struggle and a reference to Gandhi. He reclaimed the power of writing and condemned its silencing by transferring an infusion of black ink from a white enamel jug to his mouth. At the end of his performance, in a kind of paroxysm, he turned to the audience, with what looked like an automatic military weapon covered with a mix of freshly cut and partly wilted flowers. He then placed ‘this weapon’ on the floor, where it remained as a silent observer during the finale, as a ‘harmless bouquet’.

The gallery became a place of memory, which paid tribute to courage, and denounced the absurdity of wars, while at the same time, referring to our powerlessness in the face of the madness and atrocities of conflicts. The artist seized on these memories, to give meaning to the psychological and physical disturbances caused by war and fighting. This has been a slow ongoing process for a decade and more, which has partly led to reconciliation with the colony’s past, and the confrontations. – Odile Burluraux, curator at Musée d’Art moderne de Paris.

Camouflage #5, was developed during Baptist Coelho’s year-long Artist-in-Residence, supported by and at Fondation Fiminco, Romainville, 2021-22. The residency was also supported by Fonds de Dotation Buchet Ponsoye, Paris; Institut Français, India. The performance was first realised at the end of the artist’s solo exhibition at Galerie Saint-Séverin, Paris, from 8 December 2021 to 6 February 2022. The exhibition was curated by Odile Burluraux.