The Child in Us: Looking back at childhood through art

The exhibition takes forward her last two solos, “Being a Child” and “Portraits of Childhood”, which also focused on childhood and sentiments around it. “Childhood is something we all have gone through. I could relive those days with two of my own children, Victor (7) and Lucie (9),” says the French artist, who has been residing in Delhi since 2009. The self-taught artist, who took her lessons by way of work with resin and bronze casters both in India and in France, shuttles between Delhi and Jaipur, where she gets her colour-painted bronze pieces cast.

“A large part of my work comes when I open myself up to the moments in life where magic happens, sometimes in my surroundings, on the beach or even in the street. I observe and fix a scene almost photographically in my mind,” says Margotin. So, the everyday becomes her subject — from children at play to the bubbles enveloping them. A young girl savours ice-cream and another work has a boy stamping his feet, throwing a tantrum. “That’s commonplace. What worries me though is the abuse of childhood,” she says.

The exhibition is on at the Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, till Dec. 15.