Fragile

CURATORIAL NOTE

You’re here, you’ve made it! The moment you took the stairs to enter this space, you’ve made a conscious choice to bear witness to the artist’s vision of what the world is like. Take a look around the room, here’s someone opening their heart out in the hope that you might resonate with some part of their story. Do you have what it takes to be an ally?

Latitude 28 presents a three-person exhibition of young contemporaries – Al-Qawi Nanavati, Dola Shikder, Purvi Sharma – each of whom situate their practice within an experience of being vulnerable to life. They belong to a group of new-age artists who are occupied, first and foremost, with the responsibility of building their own identities as individuals, and then that of being creative practitioners. In their work and their life views, one finds newfound vigour that is much needed in making sense of a world that seems to become more and more fractious. This exhibition, therefore, is strongly rooted in the universality of human experiences of love, loss, and the mundanity of everyday life. It is a chance to look at one’s relationships with oneself, with loved ones, and with the larger world outside one’s own realm of knowledge.

Situating her work in printmaking, painting and drawing, Al-Qawi’s works in this exhibition are majorly influenced by her experiences of life after the sudden loss of her mother. For her, making art after this huge loss has been akin to the experience of returning to nascence and starting from scratch on new forms of art-making. “I weave, crochet, embroider, paint, print, and process these items into paper, to keep her alive”, she says, of her experience of finding new ways to build memories in the absence of her mother. ‘Letters to my Mother’, therefore, emerge as deeply personal works navigating and dissecting grief in a manner that allows for newfound wisdom. Al-Qawi, in putting out these works for the world, makes viewers privy to the ways in which loss has allowed her a new perspective of looking at the world.

Dola, a young student at MSU Baroda, has a strong sense of what she wants to convey through her art – the feminine experience of navigating the world and oneself. Having grown up in conservative Bangladesh, her personal experiences of femininity hold prime place in thinking about the creative pursuit of art. ‘Myths of Belonging’ is her series of work that finds inspiration in the many different experiences that have affected Dola’s own sense of being. Topics of migration, the complex relationship of owning and inhabiting the physical body, the portrayal of women in popular media, find space in the multi-layered works that she brings into being. Using textiles, acrylic paint, kantha embroidery, henna and synthetic hair, most of the works in this series have grown out of her collaboration with her mother, Kakoli Shikder. Dola’s powerful voice shines through the choices she makes in bringing the canvas to life – one notices the transparency of cotton blend with the rich hues of henna brown, the texture of the synthetic hair woven into the cloth, the translucent lines depicting the body. Everything is a conscious choice in her commentary on the role of “playing woman”, as she titles one of her series of paintings. 

If definitive themes of loss and identity, respectively, come across as important contexts in getting to know Al-Qawi and Dola’s practices more closely, Purvi’s fascination with channelising uncertainty into a visual language should be kept in mind while making sense of her work. Having specialized in sculpture-making, Purvi’s background in the visual arts is supplemented by her willingness to translate the everyday-ness of life into tangible objects of art. She strives to find meaning in the mundane, at a time when digital media and its implications on mental health can feel overwhelming. Each of her terracotta and stoneware sculptures displayed as part of this exhibition, resonate with the intricacies of fragile innocence. Beyond the surface there exists a certain dynamism, as she adds a sense of movement to the objects, even though outwardly still. There is also a meditative quality in the patterns and arrangements of Purvi’s sculptures, which she suggests are derived from her observations of formal layering on storefronts, woven textiles, buildings, flags and the vastness of the natural environment.

All three artists use multiple mediums and materials to open up their experiences of love, loss and life; having made conscious choices in moving against alienation or fear to give voice to their feelings in pursuing art. This exhibition, therefore, is an exercise in holding open one’s heart – not in a sappy, all-is-well sense of optimistic outlook to life. But a more engrained approach to looking at the world differently, letting oneself be vulnerable to grief and change, and bringing acceptance about the self and others through this process. Moving beyond technicality, Al-Qawi, Dola and Purvi share a worldview that is guided by the relationships and friendships central to their lives. And the artistic language that emerges from this group showcase is one which pays tribute to the range of human emotions one goes through in growing up and making sense of the world. Critics and thinkers have, for ages, theorized about the importance in turning inwards to oneself, in being patient, in learning to accept the questions that come up as one navigates through life. These often seem outmoded in making sense of a world where chaos reigns supreme in real time. Al-Qawi, Dola, Purvi, as young artists are conscious of the responsibility they hold in being creative practitioners, in showing that art at its core is about letting one’s guard down. 

You’re here, you’ve made it! This exhibition, much like every other display of art, is a call-to-action to think more deeply about the world. ‘Fragile’, in particular, asks you to introspect on the experiences of living, mourning, finding new meaning in the everyday. It is about being conscious of the burden the artist bears in caring about the world. It is also about the importance of being a conscious viewer of art. Take another look around the room – you are called to play a part in helping create a healthier ecosystem for nurturing creativity, in making space for vulnerability. Do you have what it takes to be an ally?

–Text by Ankita Ghosh