Multifarious brings together three young artists who choose to look within themselves in relation to their surroundings, to derive meanings through an interpretation of everyday events. Translating them into their own system of languages, they refurbish these encounters through a unique set of mediums. Very diverse in their approach, the three artists comprehend and deliver an abstract condition of expressions. But what are expressions, if not abstract? Complex overlaps of thought processes that get smothered by the structured use of language, resurfaces to communicate on an impressionistic plane. Abstraction here gives visual form to those inexpressible occasional experiences.
Vijaya responds to her surroundings through human associations. Originally trained in wood-carving, she now primarily works with terracotta. Having spent her graduation years with a visually-challenged roommate, she helped her through her learning periods -recorded her notes, appeared for her exams- and in the process learned to perceive through alternate sensations: she discovered modes of seeing overseeing alone. Consequently, incorporating Braille into her sculptural renderings, she was able to multilayer them with diverse sets of meanings. Appearing abstract at a glance, a closer observation of her works reveals miniature terracotta arrangements in the form of rolled scraps of paper. Each roll, she explains, is complete with embossed text and names in Braille (or a common language). The geometrically assembled segments stand in contrast to its abstraction, finding meaning in chaos. Meaning-making is gradually derived from an ambiguous context.
Siddharth Kerkar shows a series of paper works utilising watercolours, acrylics and firecrackers to delineate his surroundings. The experience is what he gathers from having lived and participated in agricultural landscapes for most of his life, where harvests, the burning of crops and the transformation of the terrains become a seasonal ritual. Except, these human interventions are characteristically transforming the environment to unrecognisable lengths. While the land retains its capacity, the landscape is what periodically alters. His compositions bring to mind a birds-eye view of organic topographies with geometrically segregated regions, indicating the continual interplay between nature and nurture. An untitled series of three works foreground through their similarities and dissimilarities, the altering facets of regions around an advancing civilisation. Effectively translated into his works, the use of carbon and firecrackers also add to explicate the release of toxins into the environment that generates deep scars on the surface of these scapes, affecting the natural course of things.
On a related tangent, Shahanshah Mittal described his predicament when he first came to Delhi, where he frequently encountered ongoing constructions across the city. Concrete buildings, fading washes and the conciliating walls, eventually led him to develop deeper associations with these spaces. Making the walls a blank backdrop in his earlier set of works, they continued to re-emerge in his later series; now integrated into the fabric of his renderings. He recounts how his first studio was located near a garden, the flowers of which gave texture to his compositions: flowers became a recurring motif. Music accompanied, with spontaneous strokes developing in correspondence to its tunes. His surroundings become his abstractions. He does not choose to define these sensations in a cluster of words, for his experiences keep evolving. Instead, articulating through a symbolic abstraction, he plays with figures, unintelligible script, and illustrations, trying to stimulate meaning against the blank wall, yet avoiding any. Looking within himself, he engages with a personal outcome of emotions, in the process, communicating with his works.
The three artists in order to find alternate channels of language and meaning-making, entrust their immediate selves to uncovering and deconstructing everyday occurrences. As a viewer, how one interprets these visual representations will, in turn, rely on how one chooses to deconstruct and receive them.
This article was originally posted on Big Art.
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