Category Archives: Uncategorized

We Are …..?

The work drew inspiration from the sustainable traditional practice of Kantha stitch originated in Bengal, India. Initially, Kantha began as a medium to repurpose old sarees into blankets for newborns, embodying a deep-rooted sustainability ethos. Over the time, this practice has now evolved to creating designer sarees, handbags, stoles, and more.

The shift however, has empowered artisans practicing Kantha works. But it is the over consumption by capitalist consumers, that the cheaper alternatives are challenging and overshadowing the sustainability values of Kantha stitch.

The works exhibited in a group exhibition ‘If Henna Could Speak’ at Toynbee Hall, London,  subject repercussion of the consumer’s surging buying capacity which is central to the capitalist society we live in. The consumer’s capitalist attitude, however, boosts economic growth but contradictory to that, it generates heaps of landfills, adversely altering and affecting our ecosystem.

History and Culture

Being a Community Appraiser in London

As a team of Community Appraisers for the Petticoat Lane Conservation Project at Toynbee Hall, London, we conducted surveys to assess the preservation needs of various historic buildings in the area. Through active interactions with local residents and in-depth archival research, including resources from the Metropolitan Museum of Art Archives, we uncovered the rich history and evolution of architecture of the streets.

The findings highlighted the cultural and architectural significance of these buildings, forming the foundation of our argument against their demolition in favor of modern developments. Our detailed report presented a compelling case for preservation, which was shared at a public forum. This discussion further reinforced our position when presented to the local council, contributing to a broader conversation about the value of historical preservation in the face of urban development.

The project not only advocated for the protection of these historic sites but also fostered critical dialogue about the balance between progress and conservation in urban planning.

In pursuit of …!

The CMF Palette of Life

‘Where is home?’, when asked for the podcast interview at International Students House, the first place that came to my mind is my ancestral home in West Bengal. The colour palette of clear blue sky, the lush green garden at the entrance, and earthy brown soil, both on the banks of river Teesta, and in the central courtyard of the house, has subconsciously stayed with me. When I started to map my life story through colour, material, and finish palette, it is then I realized that how the influence has impacted my interests and eventually my choices in art practice.

The first image on the extreme left corner is from my ancestral home and the second to it is of London. The dominant colours blue, green, and brown in the images, can also easily be traced in my artworks (the rest five pictures that I have shared in the slide). Constant learning with the endless opportunities of exploring beyond my limits is for me the sky and colour blue symbolizes the same. The opportunity for continuous growth with an optimistic approach is what colour green and nature means to me. While green for me symbolizes life and originality, brown gives me a sense of being simple and real. Even if the soil looks ugly and coarse, stony and ordinary, it provides nourishment to the whole ecosystem. Thus, for me, the roughness of soil and it’s earthy brown tones signify struggles as learning to succeed in life and not as disappointment. The brown colour keeps reminding me of my ancestral home and will always keep me grounded in whatever I achieve, and wherever I go.

All through my childhood, I was discouraged from not taking up art as a career, and with no access to formal art materials, scarp materials became my medium of expression. It is from my early childhood I realized that nothing is a waste. Overlapping materials of different substances in my recent art practice reflects my belief in the uncertainties of life, yet trying to balance with bringing everything together. While jute as a dominant medium in my works signifies strength, the line drawings inspired by Madhubani paintings mirror my overwhelming desire to search for stability in all the chaos.

Coevality

The multi-layered human faces and trees at Charles Gaines Exhibition ‘Multiples of Nature, Trees, and Faces’, investigates the practice of identity and diversity amongst the human race, and conscious and material human actions on trees. The numbers engage formulas and systems, while overlapping colors over black and white background, subject the existing identity politics in humans and their dominance over nature. Gaines’ work reflects the human-made binary relationship of self and the other.

While walking through the exhibition, I could further relate his artworks to the works of two Indian artists, Prashant Pandey and Subodh Kerkar. Prashant’s work ‘Artha’ examines the addictive compulsion in humans, of referring to the inferior as ‘other’. Sculpting together the discarded blood sample slides, in a diamond form, Prashant questions the use of the term ‘other’ amongst the human race, specifically in the context of race, religion, and caste. One cannot segregate slides just by looking at them. Thereupon irrespective of varying race, religion, and caste, all may have similar blood groups, as according to scientific research in large proportions they might have different DNA, but can have a small relative ratio in genomes. And as research suggests plants, animals and humans have few analogous genomes.

Expediting on nature-human relationship, I am citing here Subodh’s work ‘Annabrahma, Infinite Rice……’, depicting the infinite rice fields facilitating in feeding humans, reflecting upon human dependency on nature for their healthy mental and physical growth. Henceforth, the human must realize that technological advancements can only feed our greed, but a balanced relationship with nature is the only key to human survival. A prominent affinity in all these works is the use of transparent medium whether it’s Gaines Plexiglass or the use of Glass slides in ‘Artha’ and Glass panel in ‘Annabrahma, Infinite Rice……’. The medium itself is contradictory, both projecting the inner self and absorbing the other that is the outer self.

Primordial

The traditional patterns on recycled and discarded materials depict a spiritual conduit between past, present, and future in Tau Lewis’s works, and Huguette’s 3d pen and paper sculptures with repetitive lines and dots suggesting totemic motifs reminded me of Madhvi Parekh’s work inspired by the tribal art forms painted in black on bamboo and paper-pulp white tableau sculptures.

Conscience

Jonathan Baldock’s unsettling and disfigured puppets and quilted hand embroidered human figures, features, and body parts suggest the irony of a woman’s life. Though our society has progressed and so does women. With post Women’s Liberation Movement, the reforms have been propagated to liberate women, but still, few sections of our society, dominated by patriarchal mindsets, monopolizes the role of a woman. Jonathan’s work thus reminded me of the works of Indian artists like Chithra E. G., Krishna Murari, Hemi Bawa, and Bharti Kher, gyrating around subjection, objectification, and moral duties of a woman, with adhering to the norms set by the society.

Femininity

‘Body’ as both object and subject. The object is however invisible, but it’s the subject that matters in these works. The silhouettes in the works may initially appear provocative, but their materials transmuted them to a medium of expression. Steel in Kalliopi Lemos (UK) ‘Big Bra’ transformed them into warriors, raising voice against gender injustice, safety pins in Tayeba Begum Lipi (Bangladesh) ‘Comfy Bikini’, as a weapon against sexual predators, and elastic bands in Anoli Perera (Sri Lanka) ‘Second Skin: Elastic Dress II’, as a signifier of the anticipated pain, and anxiety during cyclical changes.

Home

‘Home’ an irony, a story of destruction, displacement, and hope

Rachel Whiteread’s ‘Internal Objects’ portrays an occurrence of a catastrophe, with nature taking over human settlements. Retrospecting the subject, the work that reminiscent ‘Internal Objects’ is Marzia Farhana’s (Bangladesh) ‘Ecocide and the Rise of Free Fall’. With installing the remains upside down, Marzia depicted the devastation that followed the floods in Kerala (India) in 2018. Echoing the same, through his work ‘Serenity of Desolation’, Veer Munshi narrated the stories of casualties that took place in Kashmir folds in 2014.

Contradicting these, ‘Victoria Terminus’ witnessed a human-made disaster. Manifested as a home for an enormous number of migrants, brimming with the stories of displacement and relocation, in the hope to earn living and lead a better life in a metropolitan city, had turned into a place of horror and despair. T. V. Santhosh’s ‘Victoria Terminus’ reiterated the terror attack of 26/11 when numbers of migrants lost their lives and hope, that questioned the certainty of a place we assume as home.

The tent in the work ‘Taking Refuge’ signifies the Buddhist philosophy of rebirth. The tent in a metaphoric sense represents Earth, serving as a refuge of the human body, where a human takes birth, lives, and dies to take birth again and the cycle goes on. Home is where one feels secure, in place, and at peace. For few, it stays the same for the rest of their lives, but for others it is transitional. At times it is intentional, at times it is accidental and at times it is natural. In ways, home is where we live, connect, and make memories, whether it is for a lifetime or for a limited time span.

Hobby Horses

https://www.instagram.com/acertainkindofloudness/

Resistance

Portraying the friction a ‘woman’ of contemporary times goes through, as being seen in fragments. And somewhere in a due course of time, the realization that surfaces in a woman is, where do ‘I’ as an individual exist? I do not want to conform to the expectation of others anymore. I want to be heard for who I really am….