Odyssey at the Habitat threw up a fresh bunch of artists who dare to think out of the box
A group of young artists pooled their money together, some doing odd jobs, to put up a show at the Habitat but were united in terms of their originality of thought and their soulful journeys on the canvas. Odyssey, the show at the Open Palm Court, featured a collection of paintings and sculptures by this band of artists, who are holding their own without falling to the temptations of commercialisation.
At the outset, we were tempted by the installation of young Somnath Raha from Shantiniketan who had laid out a series of steel thalis with chapatis topped with pickle-like faces, contorted and weary, and shredded into bits, representing the unhappy compromises that man makes to earn his bread. Or in this case the basic chapati, which he has crafted from clay and paper moulds. We also liked his series on books and the genderless and faceless human figures, which could have been both man and woman, seated at the base of books, expressionless and tamed. Though they have attained knowledge from books, they haven’t been able to elevate themselves, crumbling under earthly circumstance. Only the self-realised makes it to the top of the books, resilient and calm, breaking through structures and conditioning, and, therefore, distinct in his facial expressions. There’s the raw metal installation of dotara, the instrument of the baul singer, which has little chairs strung on to them. “You could call it man’s ascension in life through his different earthly posts. To me these are steps to his spiritual awakening through earthly reality. These chairs also resemble musical notes. I want everybody to interpret his own way,” he told us.
Sumita Chandani Rekhi, who calls herself the eternal truth seeker, caught our attention with her stone sculptures plated with steel. We found the trinity, represented by three spheres, lining the middle of a leaf like stone outcrop, which had a very complex granularity of inter-crossing lines and texture. Sumita personally believes in minimalism and goes to quarries herself, finding stones that have a language of their own own. But it is her global Gandhi that draws attention, Gandhi’s head in an atomic swirl of steel and minuscule compared to the rest of the warrior-like body. Said the artist, “The body is of a modern warrior complete with boots, who doesn’t give up his muscularity despite being punctured by earthly circumstance, metaphorically represented by screws and nails. Gandhiji may not be present physically but his legacy is just as muscular and strong. And he is a manifestation of divinity. Which is why I have embedded ancient coins of our gods and goddesses on him. The wheel machine embedded Iron-Man like represents eternity and Gandhi can never go out of fashion.”
Artist Sanjukta Sinha, who underwent training in paiting and print-making after giving up her lucrative job in finance, has a communion with the universe in each of her works, be it of the tree of life-inspired series on interconnectedness of nature and all of creation, done in blue tones, or the meditative postures in copper and yellow ochre, signifying a journey to enlightenment and the divine light. The finely-etched fingers, taut in meditation, loom up from the canvas, in their lonesomeness. “This series is in search of my own truth, traversing into the quietude of my inner journey. Trying to understand myself, I try to portray my experiences onto my canvas with gratitude to the supreme self. It is not easy to be truthful. Without sugar-coating the truth, I share my experiences, which brought me out of my darkness and negative spirals by foraying into the world of myriad hues and shades of colour,” she said.
Young Priyanka Batra, who has been inspired by ancient scroll paintings and the folk traditions of the sacred feminine, especially in south India, has done a series on lajja Gauri. Strongly represented in line art, the life-giver is surrounded by nature images done up in the nature of stitches, as if threaded to hand-crafted feminine expressions. “The thread is my metaphor of connectedness. And since my understanding is spiritual, I have used the ritual dhaga to stitch my canvases onto a cloth scroll to give it fluidity,” she told us. Bhawna Arora believes her paintings to be an outpouring of her energies. Hence she specialises in lines and follows geometric patterns to depict her attempt at balancing her energies. “The cheerful orange, the powerful red, the feeling of hope in yellow, the cool expansiveness and openness of blue, the simplicity, purity and freshness of white, this is what I am made of. These paintings are answers to my questions,” she said.