Note: Previously published as Experiencing Gulammohammed Sheikh’s Kaarwaan and other works in the online version of Take on Art magazine with a change in format

Archana Hebbar Colquhoun

If I were to stitch together images, information, and narratives from memory, of the lectures delivered by Gulammohammed Sheikh for our art history courses in Baroda, and left them to grow and form into a display of artworks it would be Gulam’s Kaarwaan and Other Works shown by Vadehra Art Gallery at the Bikaner house, New Delhi, from 19, February 2024 to 12, March 2024, and subsequently at Gallery Chemould in Mumbai from April 5, 2024 until 15, May 15 2024.

The works in the Kaarwaan exhibition have come out of an atelier set up with a master artist (Gulammohammed Sheikh) conceiving, designing, and directing, the works to precise specifications, which atelier hands have contributed their labor and artistic talents to and help give the works physical forms of large, wall- mounted paintings; tall, painted screens stood on the floor; and small, architectural constructions painted and with movable parts – placed at eye-level on pedestals.

The works in this exhibition throw up many surprises of which we come to later.

It is interesting to note that the works in the exhibition were made over a period of four years or more including the two years when the Covid-19 pandemic raged. The pandemic restricted the one-on-one communication between Gulam and the artists assisting him in this large project.

In what way might the interference of Covid-19 have affected the production and the final outcome of the works is a question I asked myself.

The main work – Kaarwaan – a dream sequence

Only through a dream sequence can you conjure up a vision of known, unknown and historical characters from diverse regions and disciplines belonging to different time frames in a single cluster, seen all at once.  The figures in Kaarwaan are not shown as walking and moving of their own volition towards a common destination but are propelled in a boat that bounces along on wavy waters.

A kaarwaan is a group of travelers along with their living and non-living accompaniments making their journey on foot from here to there and from what is this to what maybe that in their life’s passage.

The boat in the painting, Kaarwaan, is not merely a vessel in which people are transported to a destination but it is a self-contained watercraft that also accommodates a large land mass of breathtaking landscapes with buildings, as if luring the people crowded together at the back of the boat to choose the boat itself as their final destination, in a way trapping their souls on the earthly plane of history – history written, and created by humans – although there are the angels and farishtas hovering just above the surface of the water and  around the boat ready and waiting to take the souls on their onward journey to liberation. For anyone with a certain amount of knowledge and familiarity with art history the “chosen group” of people packed at the back of the boat are recognizable but Gulam is kind and he provides a map (displayed at the entrance to the gallery) of that area of the boat, which houses the figures from history, with a demarcated space for each figure on the map, spelling their name, so as to make the viewer’s journey through, into and across the painting a little bit easier and less intimidating.

Kaarawaan, Acrylic on canvas, 80 x 257 in., 2019 – 2023

Entering the gallery and viewing the works

Upon entering the gallery, I found that the arrangement of the works was in itself a creative act. Not all of the painted works could be hung on walls – as in a typical exhibition of paintings – in an array that is often monotonous.

In this exhibition are tall, double-sided recto verso painted screens, standing at strategic places that act as architectural devices, which divide the interior space of the gallery into fluid sections. Then there are the Kaavads.

At the exhibition opening when the gallery was full with visitors, and there was little room to move about, the experience was like that of negotiating movement between people and the works through shifting passages that had invisible walls. The movement of visitors was made even more complex and diversional when we were enticed to move around, sometimes in circles, to view the multiple painted doors of akaavad box shrinedisplayed atop a pedestal, once again the gallery space being broken up, by the kaavad-bearing pedestals, in a manner different to how the double-sided, free-standing painted panels divided up the gallery floor space, the arrangement creating a play of turns and many U-turns for the viewer.

The works seen in the exhibition and indeed how they were displayed engage the viewer such that their eyes flitter from one object to another in wonder and excitement with each work on display demanding the viewer’s attention in competition with the other works displayed; the experience akin to visiting a busy village fair with its many stalls and activities or grand Christmas or Diwali sales with their dazzling spread of objects and artefacts.

The varied collection of works and their display in a single exhibition creating unique paths of movement for viewers is a memorable feature of this exhibition since the same combination of works may not be presented at the same time, in a single presentation, very many times in the future. The reason is that the works belong to at least three distinct categories of structural constructions as described above. However, notwithstanding the fact that the show contained different groups of works which might prevent the works from being shown together in a single exhibition, there is the distinct possibility, even as this write-up is being prepared, that the works from the exhibition would be acquired by art collectors, removing them from public view and perhaps made irretrievable for a future show as one collective – the ownership of the works being spread out amongst many individuals and institutions.

[As a critic and a writer I am biased towards giving prominence to how artworks are presented in an exhibition space. This leaning comes from my own practice as an installation artist, where I present individual artworks with others as part of a family of inter-related works, the combinations and  arrangements of which almost never repeated in  another exhibition.]

Kaavads are complex, multi-paneled painted box works with dynamic moving shutters. They are sacred objects and are religious in nature.

Kaavads are portable box shrines the making of which involves the skills of a carpenter who constructs the box shrines with (light) wood and before the various parts of the kaavad are assembled into a shrine the individual parts are painted on both sides with ‘pre-planned’ narratives. The carpenter (Suthar) and the painter (Chitrakar) may or may not be the same artisan.  It is a complex symbiotic relationship between the suthars/chitrakars – who are the creators of the painted kaavads – and the Kaavadiya Bhats who are the travelling storytellers who buy the ready-to-use kaavads from the suthars and narrate stories illustrated on the kaavads to their patrons (Jajmans) to whose houses they carry the kaavad and seated on the floor, placing the kaavad on their lap (tilting and moving the kaavad for better view) regale the small audience with stories from the epics, puranas and other literary texts illustrated on the kaavads while embellishing these well-known narratives with the genealogies of the patrons and extrapolating further the stories with “news clips” from contemporary happenings.

The kaavad is central to this tradition of storytelling prevalent in Rajasthan and while the kaavad is a prop, a device or an accompaniment to the performance of storytelling this embellished box shrine is way more than that; it is in fact the main actor, the protagonist that is central and indispensable to the kaavad presentation.

The kaavads in Gulam’s exhibition, I found, were completely novel structurally compared to the traditional kaavads. These fascinating kaavads that Gulam presents in his exhibition have even more multiple doors opening up in even more directions than the most complex of traditional kaavads I have seenand that I bought at craft fairs many years ago for my own small private collection. The paintings on the surfaces and the small door panels of the kaavads in the exhibition were certainly those by/of Gulam (’s). I assumed that the kaavad box structures were bought directly from artisans who make the kaavads, but prior to them being painted by a chitrakar, and the blank surfaces of the little folding doors and the walls of the small box-shrine being painted on by Gulam with narratives of his choice.  But I was corrected by Gulam when I posed this question to him, in that these multidimensional structures were, in fact, designed by Gulam and not bought as ready-to-use objects (as do the storytelling kaavadia bhats). This fact was a revelation to me as I only knew Gulam as a teacher of art history, giving spell-binding lectures (a brilliant storyteller himself), and as a painter and a muralist

Gandhi,  Acrylic on board 18 x 34 x 31 in., 2019 – 2024

Note:

I moved to Japan in the late 80s developing my own artistic idiom and was isolated from the goings on in Baroda and New Delhi, the two places where my mentors and artist-peers functioned as art professionals during which time many of whom grew greatly in stature.

The structure of the kaavads and the narratives they hold

Due to the many ways and directions in which Gulam’s kaavads can be opened, with each surface and each door depicting a scene or scenes – the totality of the many different tableaux adding up to a multitude of detailed narratives in one single kaavad, the viewer could consume the entire time planned to spend at the exhibition simply studying just one of the kaavads.

Another noticeable departure in Gulam’s kaavads, other than structural, from the traditional kaavads is the subject matter of the narratives painted on the surfaces of the boxes, making them no longer shrines but structures which house historical and contemporary narratives that are non-religious.

The kaavads in the exhibition are titled as follow:

1. City Blues, water colour, casein on wood 13 x 30 x 19 in., 2020
2. Gandhi,  Acrylic on board 18 x 34 x 31 in., 2019 – 2024
3. Deluge, Water, Life, Casein, water colour on wood 10 x 35 x 28 in.,2019 – 2024

Having seen the kaavad box shrines in the exhibition, I could imagine Gulam creating a single kaavad, not as a miniature box-shrine displayed on a pedestal in a gallery but as a large architectural structure such as a kaavad room that accommodates people, who enter and exit the kaavad room from various doorways. This surmise of mine turned out to be a happy and unexpected synchronicity of reading an artwork as Gulam had already made such a kaavad room. I learnt this fact when I watched a YouTube video of Gulam’s – subsequent to including the above observation in this article – where he described a 7 to 8 ft. tall kaavad house he had created, not very many years ago.

Painting as Tapestry

The 21 ft. long painting – Kaarwaan – has large areas that are predominantly rendered with perfectly drawn parallel curved lines, denoting waves in the sea.

However, I viewed the painting as if it was an ancient tapestry that had undergone wear and tear, through extensive handling or neglect, whereby the tapestry retained many islands of its original woven rendering of narratives – the main image of a boat; the slope on the left hinting at a final destination for the people on the boat; and small, individual beings and animals scattered around the boat, the original weave being intact.

Conversely, the large areas of the painting occupied by waves I saw as those where the woven wefts of the tapestry had worn off and the fragile underlying warps being visible, creating a mystery and an opportunity for the viewer to fill up the near-blank spaces with a composition of narrative imagery through freewheeling imagination; each viewer recreating the entirety of the tapestry, in a manner uniquely their own.

Detail of Kaarawaan, Acrylic on canvas, 80 x 257 in., 2019 – 2023

The paintings displayed on the walls in the exhibition are as follow:

1. Kaarawaan, Acrylic on canvas, 80 x 257 in., 2019 – 2023
2. Simurgh aur Pariyaan, Acrylic on board, 84 x 15.5 in., 2019 – 2024
3. Hunted, Acrylic on Board, 84 x 15.5 in., 2018 – 2024
4. Francis and Kabir; Acrylic on canvas, 78.5 x 123.5 in., 2010 – 2023

Recto Verso panels or free-standing painted screens

The double-sided vertical panels in the exhibition with the sides defined distinctly as either Recto or Verso bear the following titles:

1. A. Majnun in the Forest (Recto) B. Tree of Sleep (Verso) Acrylic on board 84 x 48 in., 2019 – 2023

• A. Conference of Birds (Recto)B. Lands Violated (Verso) Acrylic on board 84 x 48 in., 2023 – 2024
• A. Dus Darwaze (Recto) B. Forest Fire (Verso) Casein on canvas mounted on board 84 x 30 in., 2019 – 2024
• A. Rising (Recto) B. On the Prowl (Verso) Acrylic on board 84 x 18 in., 2019 – 2024

My earliest experience of dealing with recto verso pages in a notebook was when, as a child, I tore off the last page in my notebook, which was blank and to my astonishment found that the first page, perhaps the most important in the notebook, had become detached.

The fascinating aspect of recto and verso sides of a page is that the two sides could contain continuous text of a same narrative or texts that are not related to one another as in when a new chapter of a book or an entirely different essay begins on either the recto or the verso side of a page.

The aspect of un-relatedness between the contents printed on the front and those printed on the back of a page is undeniable and becomes obvious when the staples that hold together the pages of a notebook are removed and each folded sheet, now detached, previously forming four pages numbered for example, 1, 2, 15, and 16, containing distinct blocks of text on each of the four pages where the texts on the two recto and the two verso sides, i.e. the two sides of the sheet, are completely jumbled and apparently randomly selected for printing.  

So, are the recto and verso sides of the painted panel, for example, the panel titled “Dus Darwaze” on one side and “Forest Fire” on the other, related or unrelated in their content?

The double-sided painted panels in the Kaarwaan exhibition contain another example of playful dialogue that the audience carries out with the work , which Gulam introduces in his works.

There is precedence in European art of the middle ages, depicting predominantly Christian subjects, to painting both sides of a panel with narrative scenes or iconic subjects. The double-sided painted panels may be an individual panel stood on its own or the panels could be doors of an altar of which the doors are an integral part with both sides of the doors bearing paintings, which when opened and shut reveal closely related narratives or individual episodes from the bible depicted on either side of the altar door. The architectural structures of the medieval Christian painted altars; the double-sided painted panels; the diptychs and triptychs etc. are all present as artistic ideas in the kaavads and the recto verso works of Gulam’s. However, the ideas drawn from the above sources are uniquely transformed by Gulam, leaving the viewer to either accidentally or through labored research find the sources and their connections to Gulam’s works.

The tree of life and a catalogue of birds – from the recto verso series

Content and Subject Matter – briefly viewed

The exhibition touches upon a range of issues, one among them being the degradation of the planet Earth and a very real possibility of extinction of many life forms, for example, of the birds in the painting, Conference of the Birds*, and referring through absence, in the painting, to the unfathomable range of species on earth that are dwindling in numbers rapidly, even the common ones.

The dense, dark greens of the tree and the background areas of the painting also rendered in greens, not allowing any daylight to filter through, invoke feelings that an end is near.

The Conference of the Birds (Recto); Lands Violated (Verso); Acrylic on board 84 x 48 in., 2023 – 2024

The painting, The Conference of the Birds, draws upon bestiary and aviary subjects depicted in medieval illuminated manuscripts and Indian miniature paintings, especially paintings produced at the ateliers of Mughal emperors.

The painting serves as a pictorial counterpart of the DNA data banks of life forms or refers to a modern day Noah’s Ark. The birds in the painting can be taken to be ones which are part of a selection of endangered birds that are under preservation orders, set by an expert committee, even many of the common ones.

[* The Conference of the Birds is a visual representation of the allegorical poem by the Persian Sufi poet Farid ud-Din Attar, 1177 A.D. In the poem the birds speak with each other about appointing a suitable sovereign. Each of the birds represents a human failing and to find the sovereign, the Simorgh, the seven valleys of vices have to be crossed. The poem symbolizes the intractable trials of being human. The motif of the tree of life is recurrent in Gulam’s works and he described in one of his interviews that a tree need not always be an independent entity in itself but can be an abode that houses other living beings. In addition to animals and birds, Gulam’s trees house portraits of his artist friends and other individuals, each portrait hanging somewhat like a large fruit in the tree.]

Style – Stylization and Realistic Rendering

Style in Gulam’s paintings has many identifiable roots; however, homogeneity in style is maintained through careful curation.  

The elements within each composition in Gulam’s paintings are drawn in the styles of medieval illuminated manuscripts of Europe and the various schools of Indian miniature paintings; however, the scale of the works are large and by using a style/styles of figuration of what are traditionally intimate, hand-held works in a large-scale painting, he introduces other ways of looking at his works to that of an intimate viewing, that which requires distance.  

A folio page of an album of miniature paintings can be studied without so much as moving the head, while in the case of the large paintings of Gulam’s the viewer is required to walk back and forth, forwards and backwards, and across from left to right and back to view a single painting – the figures and forms (greater in number) being painted in the various miniature styles and in varying sizes, on a large canvas.

Interestingly, the same “miniature” style of rendering figures and forms is applied to both large as well as small areas of painted surfaces – the large wall-mounted paintings; the recto verso panels; the surfaces of the small, shifting doors and the fixed walls of the kaavad box shrines.

Note: I am yet to have the opportunity to study the sizes of the figures in Gulam’s paintings and compare them with the ones in the miniature paintings to see what differences there are in the sizes of figures relative to the size of the works.

However, when “realism” is introduced into a painting, as in the work Kaarwaan, the rendering of figures and faces deviates, to a degree, so as to stubbornly retain a certain stylization that is personal and still drawn from the “miniature” style of painting.

Palette

The palette of the works in the Kaarwaan exhibition is distinctly sober compared to Gulam’s larger body of works dating from the earlier years of his figurative-narrative paintings.

The vibrant reds of Gulam’s earlier works are replaced in the present works with deep mustard yellows and dense olive greens in the larger areas and touches of titanium white made to shine forth luminously from small areas.

The hallmark of Gulam’s earlier works is the use of swathes of red, the pigment laid flat with no hint of textures from brush work or variations in hue from dilutions and mixing of paint, unless a colour gradation as in the edges of a flat surface is clearly intended.

While in the earlier works the large, flat areas of red connect self-contained locales of narratives, in the painting Kaarwaan, for example, and in other works in the exhibition the connecting areas are filled with delicate line work and other textured inclusions.

[This point I need to study further by viewing the actual paintings rather than their reproductions].

A large expanse of wavy lines surrounding jutting rocks of the Zen garden -Ryoan-ji – in Kyoto, Japan

The composition of the Zen garden in Kyoto with a sea of parallel, wavy lines raked in sand amongst which isolated, jutting rocks are arranged to perfection is a reference that I, as an observer, could not miss. It was from Gulam’s lectures on Japanese art that I first learnt of this extraordinary work of dry landscape art. Here colour is almost entirely absent and ephemeral lines drawn in sand act as rendition of a background to the rocks, which are found objects, not hewn and transformed in anyway, an example of the concept of wabi-sabi in Japanese aesthetics.

Colour and the meanings of colour

In yet another one of his YouTube videos (which, I also found subsequent to having written the first draft of this write-up) Gulam talks about the use of bold, flat, non-local colours, especially the reds in Mewar miniatures as drawing from senses other than the visual. The colours in the Indian miniature paintings are not only those that are seen but those which are sensed through edible items that have distinct tastes. This made me ponder the reason for the change in Gulam’s palette from the vibrant to the sober. Have the colours in Gulam’s paintings changed to a certain extent because of his repeated encounters with European and North American cuisine with the dull yellows and browns of say a burger, and his long(er) exposures to western cuisine, which is more weighted towards texture rather than strong flavors and colour?

Intertextuality

In addition to stylistic and compositional references – conscious, intended, or subliminal – to works in the history of art, Gulam also extracts images and figures from the works of other masters as well as his own and scatters these extracted images as pictorial quotations within the expansive compositions of his paintings, introducing new meanings to his works.

CONCLUSION

The exhibition contains other important works – Kabir and St. Francis in a mapa mundi work- that I have not discussed in this write-up. There is also the absence of a greater discussion and analysis of the extensive content and subject matter of the works in the exhibition, except for a brief discussion relating to the painting “Conference of Birds.”

As a concluding statement, I would say that the works in the exhibition Kaarwaan and Other Works are the product of a sophisticated, thinking mind that carries knowledge both expansive and of great depth, which is ever increasing.

The time was just evening, the place was the courtyard of Shakti Mahapith Kamakshya, and the air was filled with the Shabda Brahma created by Pandit Ram Kumar Mallick and his team. Pandit Mallick ji, a Padmashree awardee for his contribution to the Darbhanga Gharana of Dhrupad, orchestrated the musical tapestry. The architect of that great moment was Sangeet Natak Akademi, which initiated a festival of Music and Dance titled ‘Shakti’, set to resonate across all the Shaktipiths of India. This was the inaugural event of this series.

Listening to Dhrupad by Mallick Ji live is a rare artistic experience, and Sangeet Natak Akademi receives heartfelt gratitude from the audience for curating such a program in Guwahati. Dhrupad, a genre of Indian classical music, is practiced by a select few artists, and public recitals are comparably infrequent. Pandit Ram Kumar Mallick, renowned in this field, is one of the prime representatives of the Darbhanga Gharana. In this concert, he was accompanied by Dr. Samit Kumar Mallick on vocal and Mr. Rishi Shankar Upadhay on Pakhwaj.

Pandit Ram Kumar Mallick

In this concert, Pandit Mallick performed Aalap and Chautal in Raag Yaman and a Durga Vandana ‘Jaya Mangala Sarba Mangal Kar Nihari’. His baritone voice, infused with the ritualistic sensitivity of prayer, transcended the earthly realm, captivating the audience. The melodious utilization of Gauhar Vani and Khandar Vani was evident in his singing. Alongside his gorgeous vocal delivery, the harmonious blend of detailed Aalap, Meed, Gamak, intricate rhythmic patterns, clear pronunciation of Bandish’s verses, and other layakari, made his recital an extraordinary auditory experience. His rendition of Durga Vandana paid homage to the Shaktipith, his voice echoing the strength and aesthetic beauty akin to a philosophical interpretation of a forceful waterfall on a hill, retaining its melodious appeal even after it falls on the ground. Pandit Ram Kumar Mallick’s performance elevated the recital into a spiritual pilgrimage through resonant melodies.

Another significant performance was Suknanni Ozapali (a traditional religious song from Assam with rhythmic body movements resembling dance) and Deodhani Nritya by Drona Bhuyan and his ensemble. Drona Bhuyan, a leading artist of Ozapali and Deodhani, was honoured with the Padmashree by Govt of India. The presentation comprised Ozapali, involving singing, and Deodhani Dance, with Bhuyan playing the lead role in both performances as a singer and drum player in the dance. The team’s performance paid tribute to Shakti through song and dance, resonating with the energetic beats of traditional drums, dynamic movements with war-fighting props, and spirited choreography, crafting a soul-stirring reverence to the Devipeeth, the eternal Shakti.

Two other performances in the evening included the Kathak Dance by Dr. Ruchi Khare and her team and Garva Dance by the Sanskar Group of Bhabnagar.

In closing, as an enthusiast of music and dance, I fervently urge Sangeet Natak Akademi to arrange another enchanting concert featuring Rudra Veena in this sacred Shaktipith.

Photo UTAPL DATTA

https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?ref=search&v=795010365395664

A tribute to Vivan Sundaram: An artist unparalleled in diversity and creative output

A letter from me to Vivan post March 29, 2023

Dear Vivan,

I know I can never meet you again. I can’t hear your eloquent speech in the flesh but I have a recording of our long interview from three years ago – taken during the height of Covid. I have been listening to the recording since the moment I heard you were no longer with us. I feel your presence surrounding me and I can hear your soft voice even when I’ve got the recorder turned off.

[The interview is titled “Investigating the Mind of an Artist” in which Vivan spoke at length about many aspects of his work in response to my questions about his working practice.]

I feel so fortunate that I had the opportunity to have known you right from when I was a teenager – soon after I joined the Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda and through my years in Delhi.

When I first met you at the faculty in Baroda, as I saw you walking towards me, I was struck by the magnetism of your presence. It seemed to me as if you owned the ground on which you walked as well as the air that surrounded you. I later, and only in stages, got to know of your extraordinary artistic heritage.

My interview with Vivan – a recording, and a pending project

Despite having had the recording of the interview with me since late 2020, I couldn’t work on the interview in any significant manner. There were many reasons for that. However, I have now returned to the interview and I feel that the more I listen to our exchange, hearing Vivan’s voice, the greater is the challenge to formulate my ideas about Vivan’s work and present them in writing.

Although regrets are entirely futile and counterproductive but if I were to consider any regrets that I have with regard to my association with Vivan, they are that I missed seeing his stupendously varied body of work as it was developing and the startling constructions he made and exhibited over the decades, since I moved to Tokyo in the late 1980s.

Vivan Sundaram’s Sisters with Two Girls (2001)

There are innumerable images to choose from for Vivan Sundaram and his artworks. Any choice made to use an image is necessarily accidental and arbitrary.

The murder of Naina Sahni – shot dead by her husband and her body stuffed in a tandoor oven to be burnt to cinder at an upmarket restaurant in New Delhi coincided with my exhibition of Torii sculptures and paintings at the LTG gallery in June 1995.

The principal installation of a Torii gateway in this exhibition was made using wooden planks that were coated with a clay and straw mixture. The Torii structure was erected with supports of low brickwork walls arranged in the form of a courtyard of a traditional Indian home. The brick structure contained within its walls mini gateways made of two bricks placed upright with one horizontal brick placed across at the top, to create little entryways.

At the start of designing the installation, I had originally planned to place in the courtyard space a collection of moulded objects that acted as signifiers or markers of early human history.

This idea of attempting to depict the history of civilization suddenly gave way when I heard of a horrific “Breaking News” item of the Tandoor Murder case just as I was working on the installation.

After I heard the news, my work changed – the structure remained more or less the same as initially planned – but the contents that were to be placed in the courtyard were replaced by objects such as charred remains of coconut shells, other burnt articles, and a full head of a woman’s hair as if yanked in one stroke and flung at the foot of the Torii gateway.

The uploaded image shown below is a doctored one with two images of the same work almost mirroring each other. When the main Torii work was created in the gallery as an installation I had titled it “Boundaries of Experience.” Broadly speaking, the title still holds even after the intrusion – into my work in progress – of an unrelated subject that of a gruesome murder that took place at a walking distance from the gallery.

An important lesson I learnt from doing this show was that when an idea starts to take the shape as an art object a dynamic, external entity may completely hijack your carefully planned art work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Naina_Sahni

The original title of the work was “Boundaries of Experiences”

Shalini Patel’s drawings, some in pencil and others in charcoal were done during lockdown. Nowhere to go, nothing much to do outside with friends, acquaintances or passers-by; she had all the time on her hands and the opportunity to observe the banana trees in her neighbour’s yard. For these drawings the view was from the first floor balcony of her house.

It’s these banana plants that lent themselves to serve as artistic models to Shalini’s black and white drawings of 2021. Before we discuss the formal content of the drawings and Shalini’s very own interpretation of this tropical wonder of nature, let’s look at the distinctive form of a banana plant. In fact, there are three distinctive forms in the main within a single banana plant – the trunk, the fruits, and the leaves. A banana plant is often referred to as a tree due its size.

The trunk of a banana plant has a plump tubular form, soft, flexible, fibrous within and covered in layered sheaths, unlike the wooden trunks of shrubs and trees. The leaves are large, very large, and radiate out and become floppy all too soon. Each leaf is an individual growth separating out directly from the trunk, starting off as a cylinder that slowly unfurls and opens out to the familiar shape of a banana leaf. Then there are the bananas themselves, which grow in multi-levelled clusters, each banana pointing upwards and attached to a thick stalk that droops from the weight of several dozens of bananas, and at the end of the stalk grows a large purple-hued blossom of tightly packed petals.

All parts of a banana plant have their use. The fruits and the blossoms are edible, the leaves are used in cooking and most commonly serve as disposable plates in India, and the fibre in the trunks provide material for making ropes, baskets and mats etc. Parts of the trunk are also edible. It is said that each plant produces fruits and blossoms just once in its lifetime and then the plant is cut-down and in its place there’s a new plant ready and waiting to become a full-fledged banana plant. Considering this, Shalini’s drawings are perhaps the only record of the existence of those specific banana plants, which lived through the lockdown and by now will have become dead matter. Shalini observed the changes the banana plants underwent and recorded them in sketches and drawings.

Form and Content of the Drawings

Banana plants have been widely represented in Indian art and art of other countries. Although banana plants are ubiquitous in the tropical climate of India as Shalini said to me she had never before drawn a banana plant or its many plant parts until last year.

The drawings are variously titled “The Banana Tree,” “Composition from the Banana Tree,” “Friends to Look At,” “Song of a Bird,” “The Night,” etc. and “Composition,”

The works range from the depictive to the abstract. The earlier works in this group of drawings were more depictive such as those titled “Compositions from a Banana Tree” and progressively the drawings became more minimalist and abstract and simply titled “Composition.”

When an artist titles a work “Composition” or “Untitled” there is an immediate understanding on the part of the viewer that the subject matter or the formal reality of the work has been constructed as a design, bereft to a large extent of marks of identity as to what the work is about. The works titled “Composition” in Shalini’s banana tree drawings are arrangements of elements of a banana plant, such as a small section of a banana leaf, a portion of a stem or the trunk and other forms within the plant. Shalini devices ways to depict the forms and textures of a banana leaf such as the ridges that extend from the spine to the curvy edge of the leaf, which are a series of parallel lines, the leaf in the process of unfurling, and the natural splits that occur along the ridges in the leaf over time. We may presume that the various elements in any given drawing in this series are put together by breaking apart the view and arranging the elements into a composition drawn from the artist’s imagination.

However, in the case of these works the compositions are as they existed within the growth of the banana trees, which the artist observed and then drew without rearranging any of the elements. It was a matter of merely selecting a frame consisting of a pre-existing composition that appealed to the artist. Still, it is to be noted that many of the drawings have compositions made up of diagonals and radiating lines, which we may not associate with the vertical trunks and the characteristic curved forms of a banana plant.

The compositions have areas that are filled with textures drawn from the banana plant with negative spaces in-between, creating a play of dark and light forms. Despite the abstraction and given the non-descriptive title “Composition” of many of the works they leave no room for doubt as to the source of the subject, namely, that the forms and textures are clearly drawn from a banana plant, however fragmented, and no other plant or object.

The title “Compositions from a Banana Tree” that many of the works carry is telling. The preposition “from” denotes that the artist is not the all-powerful creator for whom subject matter is something to simply reach out to and grab and make it the very own property of the artist. Through the title the artist acknowledges that the “Banana Tree,” the protagonist of the works, is the giver and the artist the receiver.

Many of the drawings have representational elements and are simple narratives of fleeting activities of birds and squirrels among the banana trees.  The work titled “Friends to look at” is one such drawing where the elements are drawn with a sensitivity and expressiveness that I wouldn’t hesitate to say are feminine in their impact. The drawing depicts squirrels running along a wire, which crosses through banana trees. The work is not merely charming, it has the pathos of a life lived during a prolonged period of a global lockdown – pitting freedom against incarceration.

Another work, a charcoal drawing titled “Song of a Bird “shows a bird in the left foreground with its beak open. The work evokes sound through visual representation and by the choice of words for the title. 

In some of the works we see people on the ground but they are diminutive in the presence of the seemingly towering banana trees. Even the clusters of upturned bananas look like groups of people wearing shrouds, huddled together. These works give prominence to nature and raise the debate of man Vs nature.

The work in charcoal titled “The night” has many surprising features. The night is not dark; however, the large banana leaf, again only a fragment of a leaf- its lower half- occupying nearly three quarters of the space within the composition – along with other elements in the drawing is depicted in dark tones. Touching the edge of the leaf is the full moon surrounded by a dark circle and in the vicinity is a lone star, prominent because of its shape that of the Star of David. Shalini’s interpretation of a night-time view is unique/original.

Shalini’s set of drawings titled “Harmony” are being exhibited in Bhilwara, Rajasthan, at Akriti Art Gallery from 5^th. to 9^th. Sept., 2022. The exhibition is sponsored by the Gujarat State Lalit Kala Akademi.

Gond art form, as the name suggests is the art form that is practised by the largest one of the largest tribe in India, i.e. the Gond tribe which is housed in central India in the states of Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh etc. The word Gond derives its roots from the Dravidian expression, Kond which implies ‘the green mountain’. In the recent times, the importance and the value of the Gond art form has gained such zeinth that the Indian government has stepped in to preserve and profess the art form.

In the central regions of India, paintings have been flourishing since the 1400s. Paintings are an integral part of the Gond traditional practices. The Gonds were of the opinion that viewing images and paintings brought in good luck for them and helped them gain prosperity. The tribe also used the art form to pass on the knowledge of history down the generations. It is due to this very reason that the Gonds traditionally have been creating motifs, tattoos etc. on the floors, walls of their homes.

For the Gonds, the art form is a means to illustrate the close connection the people share with the spirit of nature. The Gonds were of the strong faith that every natural element be it the mountains, the sun, the rivers had a spirit in them. For the people, recreating these acts in art was an act of worship and reverence to that spirit. The mighty Indian mythologies are some other sources of inspiration for the Gond art form.

The Gond art form has striking features in the way the lines are drawn in them in such way that pique the curiosity of the viewer into the subject instantly. A sense of movement and flow was established by the use of waving lines and curvy strokes. The spread of the dots and the dashes in the Gond paintings complement the geometric shapes and patterns employed. The art form regularly employed the shapes like that of fish, water droplets to etch out an expressive value and weight to the painting.

The Gond art form employed sharp, defined colours in the paintings with the canvas being dominated by bright hues of red, yellow and white background to highlight the contrast. The sources of the colours were all natural ranging from plant sap, coloured soil to charcoal.

The Gond art form in contemporary times has reached the global scale with the efforts of modern artists and the steps of the government to preserve the art form.

Independent Project by Abhinav Sharma

Guide ⇒ Prof. Manohar Khushalani

References :

1. Gond Art : A Folk Art Form with Beautiful Tribal Colours, Themes, and Shapes
2. Gond Paintings – Capturing the Life and Essence of One of India’s Largest Tribes

The trajectory of my art practice takes on a zigzag path sometimes; and at other times a circuitous one or a U-turn that I didn’t expect to take.
The work “The General” is one such. I started off with figure sculptures and then went on to study life drawing at Boston University.

`Ritu Beri inaugurates the exhibition, Kapil Dev sends a video message to the artist, who is back in the city after 15 years

The Mind’s Eye: a seminal exhibition of Prabhakar Kolte
Curator:  Uma Nair
9^th October –  10th December 2021
11.00am -7.00pm, Monday to Saturday
Treasure Art Gallery, D-24, Defence Colony, New Delhi- 110024

New Delhi, 9^th October, 2021: Veteran Abstractionist Prabhakar Kolte’s seminal

exhibition The Mind’s Eye, curated by Uma Nair was inaugurated at Treasure Art Gallery in the city by renowned fashion designer Ritu Beri in the presence of CDirector General, ICCR; Adwaita Gadanayak, Director General, National Gallery of Modern Art; diplomats; eminent artists like Arpita Singh, Paramjeet Singh, Rameshwar Broota; prominent gallerist & art collectors.

Kapil Dev, former Indian Cricketer who could not be present at the event, said  in a video message, “Looking forward to seeing Prabhakar Kolte’s beautiful abstract painting at Treasure Art Gallery in Delhi. This will add colour through everybody. To me definitely. All the best and hope I can have one painting in my house too. I wish everybody whoever is involved, good luck.”

Treasure Art Gallery is a contemporary art gallery owned by Tina Chandroji with two partners. The avant garde gallery located in the heart of   Delhi’s upscale Defence Colony is made up of two exhibition spaces that makes it one of the biggest spaces for exhibitions in Delhi. TAG plans to work with emerging and established artists with the central aim of allowing their work to grow both in terms of production of new projects and the making of new exhibitions.

TAG launched officially on 9^th Oct 2021 with debut solo exhibition of the abstract master Prabhakar Kolte one of the greatest mentors of the Sir J.J. School of Art Mumbai. For curator Uma Nair, “The most intrinsic quality of the gallery is the light filled window spaces and the fact that you can glimpse the masterpiece in the window as you pass by in your car.”

Kolte a famed Professor of J.J. School of Art and deeply loved by his students and collectors alike was present for the show. He ranks amongst India’s finest artists according to Nair who has followed his work for more than 3 decades. The seminal exhibition includes the portraits and still life works made during the early stages of his career, the paintings made during the formative years and the mature works made during and after realizing the hallmark art lingua that established his position in the modern art discourse.

One of the pioneers of Indian Abstract Expressionism, Kolte has been successfully carrying forward his unique abstract language for over five decades with timely innovations, experiments and changes within the same, in order to make the paintings fresh and alive. TAG houses the largest inventory of the artist’s works till now and has the ability to create a new collector base for the artist.

Uma Nair, Curator, The Mind’s Eye, said,  “The Kolte solo show has stellar works of art and they range over a period of time while most belong to the past 10 years. Amongst canvases and works on paper and drawings are three intriguing installations that add to Kolte’s repertoire of creativity. The show is expected to run for a few months so that many art lovers and students of art have the opportunity to discover this great master from Mumbai.”  

“I’m Delighted to inaugurate the Treasure Art Gallery, with an exhibit of Prabhakar Kolte, a personal favourite. I believe this show is going to be a visual delight for one and all. The Treasure art gallery is also going to add to the vibrant art scene of Delhi. We look forward to some unique collaborations between art and fashion to blur the lines between fashion and art.  Congratulations Treasure Art Gallery and I wish you all the very best. You guys are going to rock.” said  Ritu Beri, Fashion Designer and Founder Luxury League.

“We would like to add to the city’s character of art shows and hope to expand our reach with established artists as well as emerging contemporaries,” says Chandroji a second-generation art collector. “We hope to serve the arts in many ways and are looking forward to establishing new connections in Delhi which has a thriving art market.” Said  Tina Chandorji, Director Treasure Art Gallery

“I have been practicing my way of painting and it will continue till my last breath. For me painting is my passion, it’s my breath and life. I am really glad to showcase my diverse practice with the official launch of Treasure Art Gallery in Delhi. I have full faith that Treasure Art Gallery will be a great treasure to the existing art ecosystem and will definitely add value to it.  My best wishes and support are there with TAG in this new journey.” – Prabhakar Kolte, Artist

“Looking forward to viewing ‘Prabhakar Kolte’ – legendary abstract artist at the inauguration of Treasure art gallery” – Nupur Goenka, Director, GD Goenka Group

“We are delighted with the opening of Treasure Art Gallery which will be featuring the honourable Prabhakar Kolte. We fully embrace the beauty of Indian art and are looking forward to the opening.” said Mr. Ramesh Chauhan, Chairman Bisleri

“Treasure Art Gallery TAG launches itself in Delhi with a grand show of recent works of the master abstractionist Prabhakar Kolte of Mumbai.  Impressive and gorgeous in range, size and depth, the show presents Kolte in his well-regarded essentials and yet discovering something new and unexpected.

 Done largely during the pandemic, the art underlines a colourful zest for life. An intense spontaneity, well-tuned to the multiple rhythms of colours, runs across fiving you enough freedom to discover your own personal intimations of meaning and memory. A very well-appointed gallery, elegantly designed, with a magnificent show,” said Ashok Vajpeyi, Indian Poet, Noted cultural & Arts Administrator

About Treasure Art Gallery:

Located in the heart of New Delhi at Defence Colony, Treasure Art Gallery (TAG) is born out of a vision to build an institution dedicated to modern and contemporary Indian art. Treasure Art Gallery (TAG) is formally launching itself into the contemporary Indian art sector with a select retrospective exhibition of the veteran modernist Prabhakar Kolte from Mumbai.

 TAG a gallery with a difference, is aimed primarily to offer a panoramic view of the arts they represent. We aim to encourage collaboration with institutions and artists by bringing in an active discourse around art and to create business partnerships. TAG also aims to support seminars, workshops, lectures, discussions, and talks that contextualise art within critical dialogue. We truly respect and value the modern masters and simultaneously encourage emerging, cutting-edge contemporary artists. Our objective is to provide a cohesive environment where younger artists are able to contextualise their work alongside the masters of Indian art and find avenues for their own journeys.

About Prabhakar Kolte:

Short Bio:

Prabhakar Kolte was born in 1946, in a village called Nerurpar of District Ratnagiri in Maharashtra. He received his Diploma from Sir J.J. School of Art, Mumbai in 1968. He also taught there between 1972 and 1974. The artist has a number of solo shows to his credit. He has participated in many important group exhibitions both nationally and internationally. He is the recipient of ‘Druga Bhagwat Award’ for his Book ‘From Art to Art’ – a compilation of various articles on art, in 2010. He has been writing about international and national artists for the Mauj publication (Marathi magazine).

About His Work

One of the pioneers of Indian Abstract Expressionism, Kolte has been successfully carrying forward his unique abstract language for over five decades with timely innovations, experiments and changes within the same, in order to make the paintings fresh and alive. 

His early works show a strong influence of Paul Klee, the Swiss artist and teacher whose childlike figures belie the sophistication of his richly textured surfaces. Kolte’s abstract layering with paint echoes cityscapes where the signs and textures give a glimpse into his modernist consciousness. His early works are characterised by a single, dominant colour in the background, on which lighter and more complex geometric or organic forms are juxtaposed.

The operative system that Kolte found for his works was in a way colour field,  but fundamentally different from that of the colour field abstractionists of his time like Marc Rothko, Robert Motherwell, Clyfford Still and so on. What he made was not even remotely similar to the paintings by KCS Paniker in the south or GR Santhosh or Biren De in the north. He was even different from his immediate predecessors like Raza, Gaitonde, Ram Kumar and Swaminathan. But the most interesting thing about Kolte is that, throughout his career he has been having the spirit of this international abstract movement that later condensed into a life philosophy rather than being just a mere art style or lingua. Kolte is a conversion of life into terms of colour. It occupied everything pertaining to life; from music to harsh mundaneness. Using an aesthetic alchemy, he turned them into pictorial expressions that opened up wider and narrower slits allowing entry to the viewer and sealing it the next moment, a sort of visual trapping for aesthetical engagement.

Prabhakar Kolte was born in 1946 and received his Diploma from the Sir J.J. School of Art, Mumbai in 1968. He also taught there between 1972 and 1974. His early works show a strong influence of Paul Klee, the Swiss artist and teacher whose child like figures belie the sophistication of his richly textured surfaces.

Treasure Art Gallery
cordially invites you to the Preview of this

Veteran Abstractionist, Prabhakar Kolte’s
the seminal exhibition The Mind’s Eye

Curated by Uma Nair
Inauguration by Ritu Beri

The other dignitaries who will be a part of the exhibition opening and inauguration are Shri. Adwaita Gadanayak, Director General, NGMA; Shri. Dinesh K Patnaik, Director General, ICCR; Diplomats; Eminent Artists; Prominent Gallerists & Art Collectors.

The Mind’s Eye by Prabhakar Kolte
Treasure Art Gallery
9th October, 2021, 6pm onwards
D/24, Defence Colony, New Delhi – 110024

The Preview will be followed by wine and cheese
The exhibition will be on view until 10th December, 2021. Monday-Saturday, 11am-7pm

R.S.V.P.
Anuj Kumar Boruah/ Shakti Raj Vidyarthi
Conversations Unbound
+91 9958372662 / 9711118189
anuj@conversationsunbound.com

Life to Art (and back to Life)

I saw the person walking backwards, moving with a rhythm well practised, as they would when facing forward and walking straight on. So far so good but within a split second the image of the person walking became clear.

I was amazed at the sheer simplicity of the innovation.

The problem resolution was ingenious. Footwear was cleverly adapted to be worn back to front, making the body of the man face the opposite direction to his feet.

A passing glance at this man walking on the street, comfortable in his skin, gave me little information as to whether his condition was congenital or was the result of an amputation (medically required or a deliberate act as in “Slumdog Millionaire”). Whatever the case may have been, it was certain that the pair of shoes he wore were of the same size.

The Making of the Sculpture

Carving a life-sized figure not only requires technical knowhow of how a form is to be sculpted and also the wherewithal (studio space, tools etc.) but most importantly a material that would lend itself to giving form and expression to the image you have in mind. I found a ready solution in the form of large blocks of polystyrene that were available in Tokyo outlets, easy to carve, lightweight for a person of my physical frame to move and manipulate as required.

When I made the sculpture and explained to friends and viewers that the concept of a man walking with his feet facing backwards was no allegory or a metaphor but something I had actually witnessed, few believed me – at least readily.

The sculpture shown below is a faithful depiction of my memory of the person I passed by in the street in as far as the main feature of “a man walking backwards” (seen from the point of view of the feet) is concerned.  But there are other metaphorical features to the form of the body, all of which are hidden at the back. They are revealed only when the viewer goes around the sculpture to inspect the feet. (Refer to note below)

NOTE: The Secret Weapons Hidden Behind

• The man carries a bundle on his back which is integral to his body such that the bundle which could be a bag of tricks is also a part of his physiognomy.
• The arm that he conceals behind is a formation of his extremity that can act as a tool that he could spring as a surprise weapon at an opponent who may pose a threat.

Art and Life are interrelated, one does not exist without the other and the two come together unexpectedly and at surprising intervals.

An example of this is a recent reference in digital media to the same issue that relates to my sculpture ….. (From Life to Art and back to Life)

On one of my many subconsciously motivated searches on Google, I one day came across the following photo article about Howie Desjarlais. It was now my turn to be taken by surprise.

I had witnessed a scene, I made a sculpture of the principal figure in the scene – the figure frozen in three dimensional form….and then, as if to reiterate the whole experience of me seeing and making of an image, I come across a document about Howie Desjarlias that indirectly pays homage to the life of the unnamed individual and to me an entirely anonymous person who I pass by on the street and who becomes the subject of my first life-size sculpture.

Provided below is the link to the article

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/regina-man-landscaping-double-amputation-

” …he landscapes yards around Regina to earn money for his family, despite losing both of his legs from the knee down. (Cory Coleman/CBC)”

Archana Hebbar Colquhoun