Kota Neelima uses Ayodhya as a metaphor to establish how freedom is the essence of spirituality. By Saritha Saraswathy Balan
What is AyodhyaIJ Defined by myth, reality and contemporary politics, it is an amorphous concept that for artist Kota Neelima is a spiritual refuge for the mind. To her, Ayodhya, which has been coloured by every shade of religiosity in sub-continental discourse, is a free space for our purest selves. Which is why she has titled her series of Nature paintings as Remains of Ayodhya, Places of Worship.
“To know why Ayodhya is relevant in modern times, we have to first define what it is; a historical place or a mythological story. What remains in Ayodhya is the people and the politics of it. Today Ayodhya has found an uneasy balance between its past and present. It will always create uneasiness whenever we try to find answers in structures or territorialise a place. It can never be resolved because we are fundamentally free and structureless. We are all inherently spiritually free. But when a structure is imposed on us or left as a symbol, we know that this is only a partial representation of our inner spiritual freedom. We are then a little uneasy about it as structure containment is not going to make us happy.”
She continues: “A place of worship is an intersection of the sensory and the spiritual, but what when the place of worship no longer exists now, or has been relocated or we have absorbed it within ourselvesIJ What do you call such a placeIJ That is the uniqueness of Ayodhya. Religious experience is sensory; it has its own needs, you have to sense or see something. But my idea is that through the sensory you reach a higher play which is spiritual. If we do carry our own place of worship in our heart, it is much higher than what we see manifested in structures.”
How can the idea be effectively communicated in a country like India where religion is all about worship and ritualsIJ “The consciousness or awareness we have in India is known across the world. My attempt is to illuminate the thought which is free from structures, which is all about questioning or seeking.”
Why has the theme of Ayodhya been represented, mostly, through treesIJ “If Ayodhya is an absence, that is crowded by so much presence, it is the same as nature, which is all-pervasive despite its earthly contours. Freedom is the essence of spirituality and hence in these paintings it is represented through trees which are symbols of nature and unstructured. Nature, to a very large extent, represents what we as human beings are. It’s the purest form of our inner selves.”
Her colour palette has a logic of its own. “As an artist I have to be very aware of each. Every colour I pick up with my brush is about to give a message of a journey there. In the same tree, in which there is light, there are also dark parts. But it doesn’t mean they don’t absorb knowledge.”
“Separate, if you can, the doubt and the belief, the place and the prison”, says a painting titled If you Can at the show. Residence, a huge tree drawn in violet and grey, depicts the humble abode of god or perhaps what it looks like without walls of gold and swords of war. In another work, Constant, difference is an expression or an unmediated transformation or a patient and constant revolution.
A journalist and an author as well, Kota chose painting as a medium to express her thoughts because language is sometimes limited. “It’s not fair if I try to express my thoughts on Ayodhya through words. With language you can do little; it limits the experience. But with visual representation of something, our heart sees much more. I paint an abstract view of nature.” The show, on at Alliance Francaise, concludes on January 16.