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Beyond definition

A group show of seven women artists from Gujarat, curated by Arati Desai, recently created some interesting waves at the ABS Red Earth Gallery, Baroda. Art historian Rita Sodha visits the show and says that the artists have either strived to transcend their familiar spaces and seek a redefinition of their art forms or traversed the indefinable, fleeting and unbridled realm of dreams, desires and fantasy.

‘Art forms and forms of art…… Beyond definition’ is a recent endeavor by a Baroda based art curator, Arati Desai. The phrases ‘Art Forms’ and ‘Forms of Art’ encompass manifold art forms and idioms ranging from the gamut of both ‘individual subjective preferences’ to the ‘collective representation of those subjective preferences’ accumulating to provide a wide variety of art forms, idioms and methods of art rendering of the historical past and contemporary times.

The group of artists comprises Anjum Chaturvedi, Falguni Bhatt, Kavita Nayar, Kavita Shah, Maneesha Doshi, Nehal Rachh and Swarupa Shah.

The ‘Olfactory Nostalgia’ series was painted by Anjum Chaturvedi at a time when her sense of smell was predominantly her only sense of memory. This series is her homage to the ‘nose’ “where life is manufactured, processed and consumed every moment, breath by breath and memories stored bit by bit.” The works are manifestations of those smells which took her back in time to her life lived “of trees, mud, rain, mother, father, lovers, child, self…..”

Each of her paintings is accompanied with an anatomical text illustrating the working process of the organ. The thoughtfully contrived form of the nose with a see- through box-like compartment curiously holding little objects (a perfume bottle, a padlock, machinery of a wrist watch etc.) enables the spectator to peep inside the organ and distinctly associate those to its constitution. The little objects are markers of both different smells and memories.

Falguni Bhatt’s terracotta, earthenware and stoneware works embody a yearning to embrace the coziness of familiar environs within architectural quintessential spaces. Paradoxically she is alluding to the realm of dreams and fantasies not as an unbridled world of thoughts but as an idealized space, “where everything is synchronized to perfection and in tune with the way things should be but probably never are, where one looses perception of reality to create a world of fantasy.” For her, dreams inhabit the realm of belief which is neither true nor false, neither fantasy nor reality. Thus there is a desire to embody these fragile, incorporeal dreams within the enduring structure of architecture. Her cubical representations present a pretty picture of a longed of home – staircases leading higher and higher; a cozy bed, an overlooking window with its drawn curtains which reveal the cloud laden sky; and a pretty garden with a lush growth of shrubs and birds happily chirping away.

Kavita Nayar has reached out to the realm of fantasy- the ephemeral and transient world, the domain beyond conventional norms of definition, familiar yet non existent, evident yet intangible. Her paintings and graphic prints are thoughtfully titled ‘Woven Dreams’ and ‘Sublime’. Commenting upon her works she says her paintings are “Mystery, vagueness and moments laden with so much life and yet so difficult to capture! Interweaving of dreams is a dialogue between the dreamer and the process of dreaming. The real turns into surreal.” An impression of a net stuck or created over the picture plane effectively segregates the dreamer’s pictorial space from the viewer’s physical expanse.

Kavita Shah heavily relies on patterning in this series. Her surfaces are a collusion of finely painted bright colors, exquisitely decorative papers and impressions of traditional blocks. She explains her work thus, “Mind sees what it is prepared to see and notices what it is ready to notice. The brain works as a self organizing system in which information arranges itself into patterns like rain on a landscape organizing itself into streams and rivers. Experience follows these patterns just as rain follows the streams created by the previous rainfalls. Once the patterns are there then we see the world through these patterns.”  Her works are untitled and she has employed acrylic and collage on Fabriano paper.

Maneesha Doshi’s works have always had a point of reference in nature. Deriving elements like feathers, pipal and maple leaves from the nature, she perceptively arranges them upon anatomical parts of human body concerned with movement. For instance the feather flutters as the heart, a row along the arms, back and the waist suggest agility and the ability to ‘fly’ to a desired space, “ into a space distanced from pain and agony like a bird and tortoise who carry their homes within their own bodies.” She uses watercolor and ink on acid free paper and her works are titled ‘Open sky’, ‘Maples’, ‘Pipal shrine’ etc. 

Nehal Rachh a ceramic artist has been rendering images from what she calls the ‘comfort zone’- the physical space of comfort and ease. In the quest of transcending her existing language of expression, she took recourse to the traditional craft of quilting, which she yet again relates to the same comfort zone of her home and proximity to her mother.  Quilting, a community activity women often partake in embodies the physical and literal space of sharing and putting together of bits and parts. Analogically it is an integration and coexistence of fragments of memories, experiences, perceptions, ideals, ambitions, failures, victories good or bad, acceptable or unacceptable, achieved or unachieved, dreamt or experienced.

Her works titled ‘Preserved’ metaphorically denote the same tenor of amalgamation of varied aspects of one’s life which coalesce to present a harmonious and a restful image. She interweaves her habitual and conventional form of expression- ceramics with a non- conventional form of art, quilting. Whereas the former medium’s physical and tangible character is employed to symbolize the accumulated palpable events the latter’s method of integration lends the work of art the desired meaning. Her works ‘Rest in Peace’ resounded a soulful connotation to me probably because of its title and accompanying imagery of a cushion with flowers beside it; however they too intend to bespeak the familiarity and ease the artist experiences in their vicinity, her home.

Swarupa Shah, a very sensitive and a diligent artist, has been carefully choosing her mediums of expression to reveal her poised inclination. I have seen her working with delicately frayed textiles, precariously thin papers and a contemplative text. Her intention to cross over from her customary two dimensional mode of pictorial locution to the three dimensional mode (video installation with sound) of expression through movement (dance) has brought about her present venture ‘That which moves and moveth not’. She perceptively cynosured upon the theme of Dasa avatara rendered in Bharat Natyam partially in keeping with her preoccupation with the animal species and coincidentally evolution too, in continuum with her earlier works.  Inferring a spiritual alliance and nuances of contemporaneity between the scientific art of Yoga and the aesthetic practice of a dance form, she cleverly juxtaposes the climactic moment of each avatara posture from dance to a correlated asana, for e.g. the Kurma asana.

The artists have either strived to transcend their familiar spaces and seek a redefinition of their art forms or traversed the indefinable, fleeting and unbridled realm of dreams, desires and fantasy. Either ways they bespeak of art forms, beyond ‘definition’.

The show opened with a performance of the Dasa Avatara in Bharat Natyam accompanied by relevant yoga postures.