Embroidered tapestries display the brilliance of Indian artists, Manu and Madhvi Parekh, at Musee Rodin, says Uma Nair
Musee Rodin opened its portals to the brilliance of compositional charisma of Indian contemporary art created as embroidered tapestries. The Benares vignette of Manu Parekh and the tribal folk motifs of Madhvi Parekh made for a stunning backdrop as Christian Dior models sashayed in monochromatic dulcet haute couture. And the entire scene was choreographed by creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri.
Maria, Manu and Madhvi
Ever since Chiuri took over the reins of Dior, she has been saluted for her work’s feminist stances, always placing art at the centre of her message. Last week at Musee Rodin Paris, during the Dior Spring/Summer 2022 Haute Couture show, the work of artists Madhvi and Manu Parekh were honoured, with an incredible decor of their translated tapestries.
Amongst these magnificent monumental tapestries, two works that stood out were Manu Parekh’s Benares which showed a setting sun in all its glory and Madhvi’s 2006 work Two Heads of a Black Queen shown at her solo exhibition in Vadehras in 2007.
Benares is older than history
Manu’s Benares is a heady delight. It embraces the silhouette of temples, lights and the fervour of the daily puja. Created in warm tones of buttercup yellow and smoky russet shades, this work is a quilt of rhythms and the deep resonance that invites the human gaze and celebrates spiritual fervour. Manu’s Benares carries both an ecological as well as an elegiac echo because it harnesses the harmony of prayer with the paradox of mortality in a world where ritual and relic rub shoulders. This work has many shades to it not just of the sandhya but of the alchemy of twilight as you gaze at the mirroring of the setting sun. The piece scores the truth of the words of Mark Twain, the English author and literature, who was enthralled by the legend and sanctity of the city and wrote, "Banaras is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend and looks twice as old as all of them put together".
Madhvi’s Two Heads of a Black Queen
Madhvi’s Two Heads of a Black Queen belongs to collector and connoisseur Tripat Kalra who bought it from Vadehras in 2007 when they held her solo. Tripat says she bought the work because it had its own identity and seemed to go beyond dialogues and dimensions as it held both the past and the present.
Colour and contour are the two most dominant aspects of her work. In an interview years ago she had said: “As a child, from the rural parts of Gujarat, I have seen the most brilliant lights of nature. On my way back from school, the setting sun would set the whole world around on fire and bathe it in shimmering golden light. Those colours have become an integral part of me and they come to me quite naturally. The dotted lines in my paintings give the impression of running stitches of embroidery I did as a child.”
The position of the two faces against a sky blue backdrop, peppered with tiny elements, reflects she has had an instinctive feel for design and forms comes naturally to her. It reminds us of old folk art practises of decorative floor designs (rangoli), and wall decorations on huts. She represents the beauty and antiquity of the traditional art practises in humble villages and homes in Gujarat.
Running for a week, the monumental embroidered works served not just as a backdrop for the fashion show, but also stood alongside Rodin's sculptures creating a synergy of rare intensity. To imagine Rodin’s nymphs and half-gods meeting Indian temples, divinities and personifications symbolised in the embroidery is an experience of sublime proportions. In a quaint and curious way, we are also seeing the exploration of the male/female dichotomy and their inherent characteristics of complementarity. At Musee Rodin, Maria Gracias has affirmed the principles of savoir-faire and rare craftsmanship. In the melange of materials, metaphors and colour, the embroiderers’ technique of the Chanakya School of Craft in Mumbai is highlighted and given a place of honour.
These two works bring on an entire spiritual dimension and an art immersion in the viewer’s imagination, where the quaint, the curious and the familiar rub shoulders with the real, the imagined and the surreal.