In an ensemble exhibition titled (ME)(MORY) curated by Dipti Anand, Vadehra Art Gallery is presenting the works of nine women artists from the subcontinent — Faiza Butt, Ruby Chishti, Anoli Perera, Bakula Nayak, Apnavi Makanji, Rakhi Peswani, Himali Singh Soin, Biraaj Dodiya and Shrimanti Saha.
This exhibition explores notions of identity and experiences through an interdisciplinary dialogue constructed by the confluence of the distinct artistic styles of the nine artists that it features. Anand, in an excerpt from her curatorial note, explains the thought behind bringing together these nine artists, as he says: “Since the self is as much remembered as it is present, its narrativisation requires a sensitive and cross-sectional articulation of the self as ‘no longer’ and ‘not yet’ from where the ‘is’ emerges. The self-generating individual is a subject beset equally with conviction and vagaries, which are cognitively expressible in art, as in life, as symbol, as figure, as truth, as dream, as myth or as landscape. In (ME)(MORY), the artists approach the construction of these artworks as they might the construction of themselves, from a quasi-dream-like state, or an ecstasy, or states of overpowering emotion, seemingly shedding their exterior bodies for the visceral and whimsical world of within.”
Therefore, this exhibition, expertly brings together an eclectic bunch of artists and their practices — “Soin’s sensory and algorithmic assessment of the semi-colons used in Virginia Woolf’s novel The Waves is an immersive project exploring our relationships with continuity and macrocosms, Chishti’s representational sculptures are refurbished personal memories borne of contextual circumstances then extrapolated to larger, shared experiences, Peswani’s fabric panels are an exposition of the inner theatre of creativity and the tediousness of channeling self-expression into skill, which offer a temporal counterpoint to Nayak and Makanji, whose post-inspiration drawings are a figural self-study of the inter-dependent emotional–physical body and an erasure of inflated values in anthropocentric human forms respectively. Meanwhile, Dodiya’s series of oil paintings are abstracted landscapes that mirror an unknown world navigated by intuition rather than vision, a sensibility Butt shares in intermingling narratives across intense global cultures with autobiographical elements in her ceramic and porcelain sculptures… Saha’s writerly art practice endeavours to establish a unique yet interpretable self-identity, and such inspiration from books finds structural connectivity in Perera’s book art, which is imbued with a selective memory that tethers one to chains of personal–historical moments”.
Viewing this exhibition is as much a viewing of the coming together of nine distinct artistic voices in the context of their commonality of theme, as much it is a practice in viewing art off conceived contexts in order to encourage our engagement in it.
The physical exhibition is on till February 27 at the gallery and can also be viewed online.
