Life’s Like That

Loneliness and chaos collide in the exhibition “Zeitgeist” at Gallery Romain Roland at Alliance Francaise. The photographs, paintings, sculptures and video-installation of eight artists show a withering streak of hopelessness, sometimes even nihilism. If Kriti Arora’s photograph has a light-eyed girl clutching a barbwire fence in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, Gauri Gill goes far out to New Jersey to show a dull matrimonial conference in progress.

Delhi-based Gill’s work is from her exhibition “The Americans” that is currently going on at the Chicago Cultural Center and shows a slice of life of NRIs in the US. “I moved to the US in the mid-1990s and much of my work springs from my personal experiences,” says the 38-year-old. Meanwhile, Arora used the camera as her canvas when she escorted her journalist mother to strife-torn Kashmir. “The camera serves as a notebook, recording events,” says Arora, 38.

If Vibha Galhotra’s White Noise (bottom) has the rampant construction in metros embossed on paper, Manil Gupta’s delightfully eerie Malfunctioning Phantasmagoria series (left), all watercolours on archival paper, highlights a malfunctioning growth on a man’s body.

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“The works are multi-layered and cut across the medium,” says Latika Gupta, curator of the show, who brought together the artists, including environmentalist Ravi Agarwal, Nicola Durvasula, Kumar Kanti Sen and Mithu Sen. The works begin at Rs 40,000 and go up to Rs 6 lakh.

(The show moves to Palette Art Gallery and is on till November 5)