Constructing Memories of a room

Shubhalakshmi Shukla visits Gargi Raina’s solo show at the Bodhi Art Gallery, Mumbai and tries to capture the essence of her works, which are in many ways, a revisit to her ancestral home in Lahore.

As I entered the gallery space I realized that one needs a walking stick and a pair of glasses to elaborate upon each detail of this show, even if it should be within ones own mind.  I decided therefore, to borrow it in imagination from Mr. Kekoo Gandhi a well known personality in this city; and started to walk through..!

The show is inherently philosophical and each detail out here is a passionate description of a memoir built upon a lost pageant around a home address. It is as if one is in a ‘chosen’ exile or an address recognized so well by Michael Radford in his film El Postino.

The address here is No. 1 Waris Road  inscribedon a visual that shows a black and white drawing of a tree wherein half of the canvas shows the tree trunk, while the rest of the half shows its roots, there is no fence.

The significant truth about this address is that it is real and has been the old ancestral house of the artist at Lahore. She decides to revisit this house and hence developed a context for nostalgia (quite different from ‘Under the last Sky’ ) .

Fracture, work by Gargi Raina

How else one could address the circumstances that demand moving in the past and recollect memories other than an existential experience? Gargi chooses to revisit the past, wherein romanticized history is superseded by contemplative observation with subtle subversions.

Visiting this show for me with a significantly chosen walking stick and a pair of spectacles has therefore been essential- to discover similar objects of amplified consequences.

Two walking sticks placed as two arms in the installed composition of ‘Black Boxes’. There is a single key placed as opposite to a single nail that epitomizes the whole presence of a ‘Tasveer’-an absence..! Along with the above there is a measurable description of an old hourglass, a headless horse, a vermillion that is stabbed many a times..!

Human memory conflicts many a times in multiple ways, but taking        ‘Constructing Memories of a room’ as a case, it has been a researched attempt to demystify the lost horizons and get absorbed in it is as an existing truth.

The exhibition also opens up an enquiry into architectural forms of intuitive nature as connected to everyday objects. They come across as instrumental in everyday circumstances for say- entering an interior space or crossing the road and also justify a ‘mythical’ significance.

“I’m not sure another month slips by confusion… and inside inertia and violence…” I read one of the lines in the exhibited works that describe a sullen morning in her studio drenched in deep silence..!

Her drawings of interiors engender a new facet to penetrate the floor space and thus each one divides vertically right from the centre to form an incision which at times is veiled or holds a womb inside.

In spite of the suggestive violence in invoking a memory, the works refuse to take the shape of a grotesque or Vibhatsa expression , they are rather minimal in execution. This kind of language suggests a manner through which the artist has been able to develop a way to dignify the violence within her and humanize the attempt to become pro-active in the act of form-making!

The objects further employed also weave together the singled out drawing to the video screen and vice versa. Like a singled out wing of a bird in a drawing fixes itself on a prolonged video to suggest its history. Experiences of ‘Freedom’ shuffle from an open space to a ‘cornered’ one.

Further there are amplified presence of a nail on the wall, a photograph of mother, a red curtain door through which a pigeons single eye peeps at the onlooker, a drapery that hangs out of the headless horse’s stomach, and the ornamental string-ribbons used by Kashmiri women. To gather a simultaneous connection between all these one does need a walking stick, and a pair of glasses which I continued to carry...and rebuild a sense of deep silence around myself. 

“For Death, He taketh all, but these he cannot take away..” , “ Not one, Not Two, Not three- I come from a thousand layered skin’ such sensitive entitling could suggest the history of the travel path of the Zafraan (plant) in Kashmir. “The Scattering : of Zafraan” leaves the onlooker with a singled out petal of this flower- strategically displayed within the gallery space to form a Z-axis between the two singled out keys on two separate walls!

Certainly the scattering of Zafraan is about the mob of people (Hujoom) who move together to execute their concern for a collective memory and within telling of that story may get scattered to the extent of meeting nothingness..

This kind of nothingness may develop a consequence for entering the black boxes once again, where in small closets keep waiting untiring for the light, an semblance of light that comes forth in the form of “Fracture……….” – the speech which recollects memory within the video frames.

“ for my father and those whose hearts beat faster while crossing borders..”- the voice that is unknown is the voice that is known yet to be discovered..

On the staircase of the gallery that leads to black boxes are lined up tree barks, each with a nail stabbed accept one..!

Video Descriptions of the shifting screens:

First: An inverted right angled triangle in the centre suggesting  chequered floor- design. It moves itself far beyond to draw lines at farther end and become a rectangle while the horizon takes the shape of the pointed triangles on each side.

These frames could be re-read in terms of subversion that may be acceptable to understand human physiognomy. The central triangular floor splits into two corners of the horizons to form the human breast, where as the rib cage happen to be the centralized chequered space- or the heart.

Second: on the right side develops a door whereas on the left a nail.

The house plan develops like that – heart as the central floor space, breast as horizons and the singled out entrance and the nail as two arms.

Third: A mirror appears on this central floor space at the far end till the camera zooms in to show complete stillness, soundlessness and encompassing immaculate vacuum.

Fourth: The camera pushes itself back to bring forth a line that divides it vertically slowly reaching the centre form the left. The camera zooms in.

Fifth: the tear gets formed on this line vertically dividing the mirror plane. The sound gets introduced at this juncture along with the movement on the screen and the tear gets focused centrally on the screen. There was no reflection on this mirror, a white wall in the background  yet it always placed passivity as a denominating factor.

Sixth: The slitted tear zooms in to appear like suggesting a vaginal space which encompasses absolute darkness. The most powerful appearance of this slit occurs due to the presence to two triangles placed horizontally opposite each other, around the centre which appears as the last flame centralizing the darkness as an eye.