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Journalism of Courage
Threading together art and craft, an exhibition titled Parables of the Thread brings together 16 artists. They venture into the territory of what is usually considered 8216;craft8217;, bringing a contemporary edge to the practice of using cloth, thread, dyes and traditional methods of designing to make fresh statements. The show premiers at The Loft in Lower Parel, on
November 14, and promises to be an interesting exercise of revisiting the genre of traditional painting.
8220;This exhibition is conceived as a colloquium to bring forth a dialogue between craftsmen, designers and artists. They all use cloth and environment-friendly materials but conceptualise their images in distinctive ways,8221; as Jayaram Poduval puts it.
In another part of the city, an exhibition showcasing video art and photography and the contemporary visual culture of new media art, brings about another kind of dialogue. The exhibition titled Synonymous premiered in the city at the Guild last Friday.
Curator Shubhalakshmi Shukla puts together a collection of well-known names from this genre while focusing on 8220;representations of the self, extending questions of identity. It could mean a direct political presence in a life-scale cut-out image, a larger-than-life image in a film, or an endorsement8221;.
While these two shows are remarkably diverse, the common areas which are covered by both are of a shared desire to represent mediums other than painting.
Artist like Rakhi Peswani, Lavanya Mani, Ranjith Raman and Hemali Bhuta, who feature in the Parables exhibition have been engaged in exploring mediums like soft sculpture, natural dye on cotton and graphic works. The idea behind these practices is to introduce new dialogues on what was traditionally considered craft8212;like, domestic occupations of housewives that were not fit to enter the realm of high art.
Peswani8217;s sculptures and embroidery work directly take on this issue, reversing the beauty and functionality usually attributed to 8216;decorative8217; objects like table mats, bolsters and wall hangings.
Mani revisits the era of British colonialism and the spice trade of the Dutch, Portuguese and the British through her natural dye prints on cloth. She also learnt Kalamkari from C Subramanyam from Kalahasti, Andhra Pardesh, during the course of her research on the medium. 8220;It is my way of
revisiting craft and keeping it alive through contemporary issues. In my own way I hope to add to this history by reviving the medium,8221; says Mani.
In the other exhibition, we get an opportunity to encounter the medium of photography and stills from video works. The curator acknowledges that photography8217;s transition from its roots in documenting and journalism to art is something that played out in the West. However, the context in which artists like, Kiran Subbaiah, Navjot Altaf, Tejal Shah, Binu Bhaskar and Vidya Kamat, place themselves in re-looks at the entire history of image making. Subbaia, who currently lives in Amsterdam, constantly examines his identity as diaspora and questions his place as an Asian in Neo-Colonial times
of globalisation.
Shah and Kamat revisit the Victorian era where women, dressed in full-sleeved and high collared dresses, were constantly looked on as liabilities. While Shah digs deep into hysteria and its 8216;treatment8217; Kamat approaches her own mortality with a frilled collar made of deaths heads. Navjot visits the site of body tattooing while Sen8217;s kitschy diptych comments on decorative jewellery and sexuality.
All the works are politically loaded and both shows are well worth visiting.
