Each of the three female painters brings her insights into the everyday to reflect on one single theme. Although painted separately in the hues of their own strengths, the paintings in unison offer an introspective walk through morbid broodings. The shades in their works intricately balance the melancholy in them by introducing moments of vivid brightness.[break]
Photos: Bijay Rai
Beginning from the reflections of submerged slippers and moving through the perils of domesticity and into the seeds of memories, the displayed paintings circle around recurrent introspections. In their titles, sizes, choices of colors and subjects, personal affects of experiences seem evident. The works are modeled on encounters of the everyday with further retrospection. Through the splashes of colors, renderings of intricate and diluted figures, including the use of patterns, the trio attempts to break the singularity of the ‘female subject.’ These especially persist in the works of Bajracharya and Dasgupta.
The mundane
Kurchi Dasgupta’s six canvasses explore both the self and the other. Starting from a detailing of two maroon slippers dipped in a blue swimming pool in two separate canvasses, she is quick to direct a life-size self-portrait where she questions the reality of her existence. The colors in this work titled ‘Invalid Password’ bend to kitsch.
In it, her naked shoulders are holding on to a laptop which is faced to the viewer. Her indifferent eyes avoid direct confrontation and trail away, evoking questions of sexuality and gender. The horizontal patterns of paint on the top of the canvass form a memory window. And the sofa set she rests in has hornlike structures emerging from it and candy floss like pillows decorating it. The world of fantasy and reality appears to be fused in through the ‘media’ in the suggestive form of the laptop.
Everyday objects like laptops find admiration in her work as she paints them with metaphorical meaning. ‘Candy floss dai’ does the same by foregrounding a small figure of a candy floss seller in the backdrop of a cemented wall. She picks up these quite solemn moments and sets them in a picture plane of memories. They recall a loss of innocence, or could be a mere moment in passing. Signs are crucial in her works, letters stressing a direction or a motive. They are spelled out in the painting; no discretion is used to cover them up. There is also the play of numbers in her work which add rawness, an unfinished touch to them.
The contrary
Pramila Bajracharya’s feisty women appear to be leading two lives. In her seven paintings they are boldly outlined in profile or in frontal view in deep thought. When painted in profile, their chins are upright and exude a confidence which is mellowed by the domestic sphere they inhabit. Their dotted blouse and redness of the canvass speak of marriage and domesticity. They seem to be looking out of their spaces, calculative in their gestures as if brooding on the question of ‘stepping out of the threshold’ or not?
But the question is often subdued by the simple pleasures they derive out of everyday work. Often they seem content, following tradition and their domestic duties. The sari, blouse, cow, bird, a backyard tree define her being. She takes solace in them because her life revolves around them. Yet sometimes she contemplates on a life beyond them. The vision of that possibility is blurry but it makes her happy and she peeks out of the canvas in a half smile.
The past
There is a trail of memories that follows Bidhata KC’s eleven works. Her absorption with leaves and foliage continues in them but they appear with added melancholy. Her broodings on life, death, existence and longing seep through them. There are no depictions of concrete human figures in her works but foliage-like flashes of memory are often compartmentalized to be forgotten. But they seem persistent, no amount of travel or new experience being able to erase them. So they emerge in her canvases in dim colors, swaying to the passage of time.
Furthermore, the titling of her work like ‘Pinjada ra pancchi,’ ‘Chhekiyeko manchhe’ and ‘Manchheko manchitra’ enhance the mystery in her works. They relate to lingering memories as if piled up unconsciously which now fail to go away. Although half of her displayed works belong to the series ‘Dobatoma Ubhieko Samay’ and the rest are in etching, they all have a rhythmic, poetic quality. They are mapping memories of lived experiences.
The exhibition will continue until August 14.
The writer holds a Master’s degree in Arts & Aesthetics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
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