Largely overlooked as a valid art form in the country, printmaking has a rich history and a long tradition of experimentation. Some of this was on display at Multiple Encounters: Whispers of Imagination (an exhibition hosted by Aakriti Art Gallery). The rich textural quality that can be achieved through printmaking can rarely be replicated in painting, and it is this tactile depth that made Seeds of Love by Kavita Nayar stand out. Layers of intaglio, acrylic sheets and zinc plates — using both the print and the base — created a three-dimensional lotus pond with finely-etched leaves. As intricate and fine was K.R. Subanna’s pagan intaglio of Gaia, with hundreds of nude bodies, both male and female, around her torso and her crown.
Ananda Moy Banerji’s serigraphs were passionate bursts of colour that aptly conveyed the emotions of the tangle of bodies in them. The contrast between warm tones like red, purple, orange and yellow for bodies and the bluish-greens of the background was especially striking given the seamlessness with which they blended. Dattatreya Apte used contrast to a cinematic effect in Flower Market. Silkscreen prints of individual flower vendors and their wares were rolled onto pre-exposed cyanotype offset plates with collages of flower markets to great graphic effect.
But nothing was more striking than Srikanta Paul’s imposing woodcut print of Hijabi Kali (picture, left). Besides the obvious novelty of Kali in a hijab, there is also the fact that the goddess is imagined as a nurturing mother with babes suckling at her breasts instead of the destroyer who carries severed heads in her hands. All this is heightened by the aura of light the artist has carved out around the goddess. More subtle, but technically proficient, are Sushanta Guha’s surreal landscape lithographs that look almost like charcoal sketches. Vijay Kumar’s Untitled intaglio of a jaali is mesmerising in its detail and repetitive pattern.
Food and consumption become metaphors for human excesses in Parag Roy’s etchings (picture, right), while Moti Zharotia brings out the many facets of gender and sexuality in his serigraph prints where androgynous figures reach out for warmth and consolation.
