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Boats are adman-artist Rajat
Bandopadhyay connections to his youth.
(Photo: IANS) |
New Delhi: Quest for
roots, reconnection to childhood and the trauma of dislocation are
the emotional soul of their art. This pain lends an air of
nostalgia to canvases, becoming more pronounced with the redrawing
of geographical borders during conflict and political aggression.
Paula Sengupta, a Kolkata-based mixed artist and printmaker,
connects to her family roots in Bangladesh through her art.
She speaks of the India, Bangladesh and Pakistan conflict with
images of war using embroidery, serigraphy, acrylic, aquatint,
wood block prints and used objects in her new series of work -- "Lv.Pony".
"My works are about rootlessness and the longing to connect to my
roots. My current works are themed around the liberation war of
1971," Sengupta told IANS here.
"I went to Bangladesh in 2008 and it helped me understand who I
was and who I am now. My father was from Comilla and my mother's
family descended from Jessore," she added.
Sengupta rediscovered undivided Bengal's traditional "nakshi
kantha" threadwork -- the artistic thread of her lineage -- and
wove it as a medium into her embroidered and etched narratives.
Watercolours evoke nostalgia and bucolic memories of simple living
amid nature, first loves and the innocence of youth, confessed New
Delhi-based adman-turned-artist Rajat Bandopadhyay who has
returned to his artistic roots after 20 years.
Bandopadhyay's solo exhibition of naturescapes in water colours,
"Relate", begins Aug 1.
"Water colour is a medium that I learnt in my art school - the
Government College of Art in Kolkata. Our college taught us the
British style of water colour in which the light and shades are
more pronounced," he said.
"I remember working on three water colour compositions on an
average every day in college," he added.
Bandopadhyay looks "for slices of Bengal in the array of boats -
fishing boats, country boats, trawlers, dhows, tow and tug boats -
that he loves to paint on paper".
The nostalgia for roots and traumas have also been the driving
emotions for early masters like M.F. Husain, S.H. Raza, F.N.
Souza, Shakti Burman, Tyeb Mehta, Ram Kumar, Paritiosh Sen, Sohan
Qadri and several others who wanted to connect to the Indian idiom
post- Independence, breaking away from western influences.
The history of art is crammed with hunts for roots.
"There are many instances of artists who have returned to their
roots to unpack traumas. For example, a lot of 65-year-old French
artist Christian Boltanski's works are on the Jewish holocaust
which displaced his family," said senior art critic-writer Gayatri
Sinha.
"Issues like homeland, displacement and migration have deep
socio-psychological impact on artists," she added.
Artist Vivan Sundaram has opened his family archive to re-invent
it and M.F. Husain's art has been autobiographical, Sinha said.
For Sabyasachi Ghosh, who exhibited in the national capital
recently, Indian mythology and religion were ways to connect to
his roots in India during his tenure in Riyadh where he worked as
a school teacher.
"I painted motifs from the Mahabharata, flying pigs, eagles,
images of Lord Vishnu and the cosmic big bang in secret so that my
neighbours could not spy on me," Ghosh said.
"Figurative painting is not encouraged in Saudi Arabia. But I had
to reconnect to my roots because my culture was my identity," he
added.
On his return to India, Ghosh has given up his job for the cause
of full-time art.
Mithu Sen connects to her artistic roots "with an element of
nostalgia" in her art, while Manju Nath Kamath is trying to revive
old performance arts traditions of "Bootha kola and Yakshagana" in
native Mangalore as an extension of his art.
"The walls of my family homes in my village also creep into my
art," Kamath said.
Artist Niladri Paul, a native of Jharkhand, is haunted by a tribal
avatar of Radha-Krishna in his art which he links to the ancient
musical, dance and theatrical traditions of India in his acrylic
compositions.
"My art is journey to the roots," said Paul, who spent much of his
childhood among the tribals of Chhotanagpur.
The eagerness to connect to a lost homeland and roots is
sustenance for the Hindu Kashmiri artists in exile.
Vishal Dar of Kashmiri origin talks of the Kashmir conflict,
corruption, suicides by army soldiers and intra-national identity
in his new media works.
Said Veer Munshi, an artist in exile from Kashmir: "The pain we
feel gets translated into our work."
(Madhusree
Chatterjee can be contacted at madhu.c@ians.in)
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