Veteran artists try their hands with terracotta for a forthcoming exhibition. Team Viva reports
Compiling artworks by seventeen artists, Niv Art Centre will show over 50 installations for an exhibition titled ‘Mysterious Terracotta’. The gallery held a 3-day workshop in April, inviting sixteen women artists along with Rahul Modak to explore the medium.
Though Modak has been using terracotta for five years, women artists like Anupam Sood, Arpana Caur, Durga Kainthola, Ela Mukherjee and Gogi Saroj Pal never handled it before.
“I generally make installations with staple pins. My work is inspired by urban development. Even with this untitled installation, I created four pieces of bricks to depict an under-construction building,” explains veteran artist Pooja Iranna. She adds, “I never trained as a sculptor. I am a painter and never worked with terracotta in twenty five years.”
Curator Rajan Shripad Fulari says the show’s idea “was to inspire artists to work with terracotta, which has a rich history in India. These women have done extraordinary work but never used terracotta. The form is dying and needs our attention.”
Ask what refrains young artists from working with this medium, Fulari blames the status attached to terracotta users. “It’s not elitist. Art lovers and artists find terracotta a low-graded material. This is untrue. It is rough, fragile and takes time. The texture quality is also delicate. However, artists want to look modern and create quick works. They don’t wish to experiment.”
Galleries, according to Fulari, who is also an artist, want to invest money in secure media.
“Their objective is returns. They are promoting works that are durable, money-spinners.
“I think galleries should support this form. Artists must take it as a challenge.”
Rahul Modak, whose agenda is to promote and encourage use of terracotta, is happy with the workshop’s results. “I want to do it again,” he said.
Modak’s work is primarily inspired by nature. “I belong to Bengal. Many of my works feature big leaves. They are motivated by my own memories of leaves, that are used in Bengal, for daily cooking in villages. I have seen people collecting them from the ground around Santiniketan,” shares the artist, an alumnus of Santiniketan. The exhibition runs from May 26-June 30.