Contemporary artist Anjolie Ela Menon has returned to India with a solo show after five years. She chats with Shrabasti Mallik about the description of mothers in her works and getting inspired by life around her
A dark Parvati, wearing textured garments and jewellery, lies on a battlefield with a blue Ganesh. There’s juxtaposition between the right and left side of the painting. To the left, a baby Ganesh reaches out to her lovingly, while to the right, the head of Parvati’s first baby lies severed and skewered with a sword, arrow and trishul. There’s a strange sense of joy in the painting. Artist Anjolie Ela Menon explains that the painting is a “symbol of a mother’s anguish and endurance in the face of suffering.
Her mutated son is born as a result of strife and yet she is joyful”. The painting is part of her Divine Mother series, on display at Vadehra Art Gallery, which also portrays Mother Mary and baby Jesus and Yashoda and Krishna. The artist belongs to a Bengali and American parentage. “I have influences of both religions and have realised that great deities and their mothers are worshipped equally. It is particularly important to Indian mythology,” she says.
The artist does not believe in short cuts and that is why it took her five years to come back to India for an exhibition. “My work is painstaking and detailed so it takes a while to create a body of work. But in the last five years I have had solos in london and Hong Kong,” she shares.
Another interesting series that is part of the exhibition is The Seven Faces of M. Here the artist uses the technique of pentimento in the paintings. “Pentimento consists of unearthing the inner layers of an artwork but I have used that as a device in my art practice,” she explains. The artworks portray the face of the same woman, which mutates to form a new image through omissions and additions, collages and embellishments.
Although the artist has used the pentimento technique, she is known for her signature oil on masonite medium. She shares, “When I was growing up, I was fascinated with early Christian art and Byzantine icons, which were generally painted on wood. I eventually developed my own style similar to that and chose masonite because of its durability.”
She has made several important digressions in the past — with computer-enabled images, glass sculpture and experiment with kitsch but she prefers to come back to oils. “I love to paint with oils. But with time preferences have changed and now a lot of people paint with acrylic. Acrylic dries up fast and is also a bit harsh. I like a subtle tone in my paintings and that is why I prefer oils. It has more gravitas and can create an atmosphere of depth, which acrylic fails to provide,” adds the artist.
There are also paintings which depict nude female figure and there is certain softness to her nudes. She says, “My nudes are not subject to the male gaze but are painted with empathy for the great sorority which I am a part of.”
Menon’s works are distinguished because of their bold palette and figures. Each canvas seems to tell its own story, whether it is gods in distress or people at the cusp of change. Her characters mirror people one may have met on the street. She likes to keep her art realistic and draws inspiration from the “sights and sound outside my studio located at the Nizamuddin basti.”
“My studio has been in the visually richbasti for 20 years where the inhabitants, the goats, dogs and chickens, have been a part of my artworks. Crows often found space in my works when I was in Mumbai. The basti and the nearbydargah, regularly visited by people of different nationalities, are a constant source of inspiration,” she concludes.