Fabular Futures

CURATORIAL NOTE

Anupama Alias and Sanket Viramgami invoke the power of myth and allegory to explore both inner and outer worlds. While Alias delves deep within herself to reveal her innermost thoughts, apprehensions and aspirations, Viramgami investigates more worldly concerns.  In their paintings the artists also point to a multispecies coexistence. Viramgami’s canvases are populated with human and animal protagonists, Alias’ mixed media works, on the other hand, depict flora and fauna often morphed together with human beings.    

Viramgami’s richly patterned tapestry-like landscapes have vignettes of life buried deep within them. The viewer is called upon to navigate through the wealth of detail, like an explorer in a jungle, to discover hidden nuggets. There is no prescribed route that we are called upon to take, nor is there a set chronology of events that unfolds before us. Instead Viramgami sets us free to construct our own narratives, our own connections and our own pathways to enter or exit the artwork. The artist also brings together several temporal registers within a single frame, where past, present and future—as exemplified by his cast of characters—exist cheek by jowl with each other. So, you are just as likely to stumble upon a Mughal courtier as you are to encounter a mini-skirt clad female. This quixotic universe often reveals strange bedfellows—pirouetting dancers, groups of armed soldiers, a bunch of nurses or then mundane scenes of domesticity.  Interspersed between them are often mythical and four-legged creatures. 

The artist’s visual vocabulary draws from traditions of miniature painting as evident in the highly stylized foliage. But Viramgami gives them a contemporary twist. A flat space of colour surrounds his embedded characters, as if to provide areas of contrast and refuge against the teeming and almost overwhelming dense, dash-like strokes of colour. Covering almost every inch of the canvas, they are reminiscent of the stitches in kantha embroidery. 

Alias’ paintings and mixed media works have an autobiographical ring to them. Her female protagonists appear to be on a voyage of self-discovery, grappling with the strange circumstances they find themselves in. Their fears are writ large on their faces as they try to fend off calamities, which often leave them abandoned and marooned. These trials and tribulations appear to be projections of their own inner anxieties and demons as they navigate their way through different phases of life and womanhood. Other bodies of her works are marked by a spirit of enquiry and inquisitiveness. In these the artist’s characters appear more like intrepid explorers, daring to go, where others fear to tread. Many of Alias’ dramatis personae are clad in flowery, diaphanous garments, which serve to obscure and yet reveal their bodies and inner selves. Both artists create their unique band of fairy-tale creatures. While Viramgami’s paintings feature winged beings, Alias’s females often sport beak-like masks, making them appear like bird-women. Employing legends and myth Sanket Viramgami and Apupama Alias open up for us fantastical, fabular futures.

By Meera Menezes