“Once upon a time, a long while ago, there was a womb. A golden womb. The Hiranyagarbha. From the Hiranyagarbha emerged the sun and the moon, the planets and the stars, and a conscious universe was born. The golden womb: from it emerged the five elements, air, water, fire, earth and ether. A universe that was neither male nor female. But as it took form, it led to the birth of Maya, or illusion.”
- Excerpts from I Am by artist Seema Kohli
It is difficult to miss the strong presence of spirituality in Seema Kohli’s works. Step into the artist’s studio in the heart of Delhi, and serenity washes over you. Born in 1960, Kohli’s art is almost a philosophical journey in search of answers. The Museum of Sacred Art (MOSA) at Radhadesh, Durbuy, near Brussels, Belgium, is hosting a six-month exhibition of Kohli’s artworks—Celestial Revelations—curated by Sushma Bahl. Says the artist, “They started collecting my work almost six years ago. MOSA director Martin Gurvich connected with me very well. Every time he would be here, he would add to the collection, till it became fairly big—from etchings, drawings, and videos, to sculptures in bronze and fibre. In fact, they have one of the largest collections of my work. So they realised all this needs to be catalogued and after putting in a lot of thought, we decided to go ahead with this exhibition.”
Kohli’s work encompasses topics such as god, devotees, universal form, cosmos, yoga, and philosophy. In her search for answers to the constant questions of existence, she transports spectators through her stunning visuals to a higher plane. For an artist who works across mediums, Kohli insists that her language is lines that she draws on the canvas. “I think in lines.” She goes on to add, “There are times that the images I am working on sort of become demanding and want a different dimension. So I try to see which material would be best suited for that particular work. It could be bronze, wood, stone or even fibre. So the moment the work requires a different material, a different medium, the whole outlook of the work changes and that is what I feel is the life of an art work.”
Her creative repertoire is definitely eclectic—she also works on murals, installations, printmaking and the performing arts. In fact, she is quite upbeat about an installation she has been asked to do for the new Supreme Court building in Delhi. “Art has to go public. It has to move out of elitist circles and involve the common man. We have to make our museums more public friendly, something like in the West,” she says. Kohli started professional practice after passing out of college with a diploma in applied arts. But it was only in the 1990s that she got the attention she deserved. She draws inspiration from both Eastern and Western philosophy, and the woman—in its physical form and symbolically—is a constant theme in most of her works. She believes that it’s the image that has to be more powerful and has to talk to the viewer long after the artist has passed away.
Kohli believes that at the end of the day, all artists are self-taught. “They can be guided by a certain force, but if they become ‘the institution’, then it is the institution that you are representing. What is representing you?”