HYDERABAD: It’s quiet in Hamburg Hall, Goethe Zentrum Hyderabad save for the gentle hum of the AC which is interrupted gently by images on a large screen. The images get a heavy voice in Urdu verses: “Deewaron ko chaat raha hai tanhai ka zahar” which means the venom of loneliness is licking the walls. One gets to see the scissors running across the map of India, its lines, cities, towns, hamlets, rivulets and hearts, too. As the eyes adjust to the dim light in the room, the assemblages and artworks on the wall silently invite attention. These works by artist Shruti Mahajan have been collectively put as an exhibition titled ‘Seal’.
The oeuvres have a symphonic monochromatic palette resonating a common language that’s better understood when not spoken. The silence does the trick. Silence of brown envelopes, lotto tickets, newspaper cuttings, postal stamps that seem to cover the topography of the country with a delicate net the birds above always seem to be pulling up to release the fog eating up its sunlit corners, blocking its gates, making its doors blind and putting barbed wire in front of happy ruddy faces. It’s not just freedom that faces the embargo: it’s access control as well. It’s the sealed envelopes that are timekeepers of boundaries, maps and dislocation of people. This is precisely what the rows of them pasted above one another try to convey.
A small metal box below the collage holds old postal stamps: discarded, forlorn yet kept museum-like. Maybe the envelopes hold unwritten letters by immigrants, refugees or prisoners of wars. The contents of the exodus is sealed within: access denied! In another artwork in muted shades of charcoal black and sand-white home and homelessness is seen from a distance maybe the way artist has seen as she says, “My works resonate of people who get displaced, their idea of forsaken homes.”
And she’s right as her work appears to be a large home abandoned, unkept for years as a sepia postcard in someone’s faded memory. The silence of the forsaken home spills out from its frame. All this while, the film on the screen continues with slogans showing a hand drawing thick dark lines again on the maps. This resonates well with a barbed wire created with paper climbing up a white wall eating much of its space.
The works on display are portrayals of pain inside those who are forced to leave their homes and build an uncertain home in an unknown land thanks to the political conflicts. The closed gates are captured well in an assemblage of black and white photographs arranged like clothes on a wooden hanger rack. The snippets block the vision forcing the inner eye to contemplate what’s beyond that gate: artist’s perceptions, mere snapshots or assemblage of secrets.
The exhibition is on till July 11