Yesterday Once More

You may have a Madhubani painting up in your room that you picked up from an art and crafts fair. Or, you may have the work of another kind ...

You may have a Madhubani painting up in your room that you picked up from an art and crafts fair. Or, you may have the work of another kind of a contemporary painter: someone trained at art school, practising from a studio, showing in galleries. Perhaps you will never ask: are these connected in any way? Is it possible to differentiate them into distinct categories?

That can8217;t be answered with a simple yes or no, but it8217;s a fact that many artists have acknowledged their rich gene pool of traditional art forms. Look at the paintings of Madhvi Parekh, who has been using the imagery and styles she imbibed in her Gujarat village, in her paintings, with 8216;modern8217; settings. Her work now is set in the context of a big city and its inhabitants. Others acknowledge their sources too, and putting them together is curator Alka Pande with Gallerie Espace, in its show 8216;The Margi and the Desi.8217;

The show itself seeks to engage in this modernity-tradition polarity by suggesting, from the artists8217; works, how practitioners have approached the issue of both their work and their own space as contemporary artists. The participating artists have all allowed their permeable surfaces to absorb the many proliferating sources around them. This enables a reading of the idea of modern and contemporary. Similarly, one must also ask: why should the older art forms be expected to stay untouched and unevolving through this period? Why shouldn8217;t, for example, the ubiquitous Madhubani, as the famous Madhubani painter Ganga Devi propounded through her works or any other art form, pick up from the changing lifestyles around them? Kalam Patua, fresh from a solo show and included in this one too, interrogates this fiercely. This dynamic nature of art practice, of living and working as a part of contemporary society without rejecting or dismissing the past, is the curator8217;s central hypothesis.

Even as we discuss India, an exhibition of artists from New Zealand offers its own experience. New Zealand is confronted with the issue of Maori artists with a rich legacy of art making and European artists with a Western sensibility towards art. Showing in Delhi, the show points to the significant shift in New Zealand in the 1950s, when traditional Maori artists began to work with materials and styles adapted from the Western world, while retaining their inherent world views and vocabulary. The example of Emily Karakah is interesting, because she is clearly influenced by Jackson Pollock, although she is one of the most political artists in the country. Darcy Nicholas, of Maori descent, and showing here too began by painting scenic landscapes. When his sister died, the idea of the land, and one8217;s ancestors came back to coax him to produce works imbued with a strongly Maori vocabulary. That audiences in New Zealand don8217;t expect a traditional carver or painter to produce the known and the encoded, holds a lesson for India.