Appearances, like memory, can be deceptive. At first glance, it would have been easy to mistake The Salts of Many Seas, Ali Akbar P.N.’s recent solo show at Emami Art, as an exhibition of archival photographs. In fact, the artist deliberately blurs the lines among diverse media such as acrylic paintings, photographs and even sculptures and models to examine a theme from various perspectives.
To say that Akbar’s acrylic works often mimic old, slightly damaged, archival photographs is not to say that he opts for the sensationalism of hyperrealistic paintings which have become vogue on social media. Instead, by using actual photographs as the source material for some of his works, the artist plays with the malleability of memory — both collective and individual. Attritions and additions to memory with time are carefully recorded. The clever use of various tones of grey, the slightly scratched surfaces of the paintings, and the ever-so-slightly smudged shapes make it difficult to pin down the subjects of his works — each viewer will thus perceive Akbar’s memoryscapes differently.
OFFERING TO SURYA by Ujjal Dey [Emami Art]
Besides the inconsistency of memories and myths, his focus is on the coastal village in Kerala where he grew up, close to the famous ancient port city of Muziris. Like in J.M. Synge’s Riders to the Sea, the sea is all-pervasive in his works and its presence is as ominous as it is crucial to the survival of the coastal population whose lives and livelihood depend on it. The interplay of cultures that shapes lives in any port city is also a cornerstone of these works.
Ujjal Dey, whose solo show, Dawn to Dusk: A Silent Symphony, was displayed alongside that of Ali Akbar P.N. explored a different kind of memory in his works — the oft-overlooked muscle memory that fuels the untiring and unceasing labour of women. His works comprised repeated patterns on soft scrolls of fabric that were reminiscent of the much-mythologised comfort of ‘ma er aanchol’ — how is it that no one ever speaks of the hours of labour that break the resistance of the fabrics worn by mothers to give them their signature smoothness? The shapes of the patterns on these scrolls would be familiar to those who have paid attention to everyday domestic rituals — a shilnora here, an aanshbnoti there. Although the pieces were purely abstract, their essence could not have been clearer or more intimate.
Mother & Child VI by Ujjal Dey [Emami Art]
What is even more interesting is that Dey uses natural dyes and inks that are extracted using the very same methods that women practise over and over — cooking, grinding, washing and so on. It was a poignant suite of works that ended with a pantry of the tools and ingredients — from turmeric to thekua moulds and jaggery to narkel kurunis — used by Dey to birth his unique vision of ‘feminine’ labour.
