As the monsoon settles over Hyderabad, Maison D’Art at Banjara Hills turns its attention to the many moods that a season can evoke. Curated by Pooja Mallepula, Mausam brings together works by Ejum Riba, Monika Singh, Sayuri Bhanap and Vijay Kethavath, exploring memory, nature, identity, landscape and emotion through varied artistic practices. For Pooja, the exhibition began with the idea of the season but soon grew into something more personal and expansive. “Mausam is not simply about a season; it is an emotion behind it. That emotion can also be love, anger, and depression. It is also something which we want to prove: who we are,” she says, describing how different emotions can find a place within the theme. The exhibition is on view until September 13.
Ejum Riba:
I take inspiration from my own community, home. I have always been intrigued by the history of Arunachal Pradesh. The most challenging aspect of creating artwork is understanding the context and choosing material for expression; material holding its own history is somewhat complex to digest. I have used OMR sheets, pages from students’ notebooks, stamps, stencils, and silver foils. Through these materials, I question the pedagogical system heavily influenced, which is one of the wider reasons for ethnic erasure in young minds.
Vijay Kethavath:
Mostly, I work with landscapes, farming lifestyles, and the medium of printmaking. I draw all my layouts from memory, thinking about the flora and fauna, how they are connected with the land, and how farmers are connected with them. For instance, red velvet insects appear before rainfall, and when these insects emerge from the ground, farmers know that it is supposed to rain. These are stories passed down by my ancestors and my mother, which I have tried to recapture through this medium. The paper canvas was made from fibre collected from different farmlands, which I reprocessed for nearly 15 days. The medium is mixed media, as I used colour pencils, ink, and pen to make these art pieces.
Monika Singh:
This whole work started off with regular visits to Peacock Lake, on the University of Hyderabad’s campus. The early morning walks, quietly watching and observing the happenings in my sight, from sunrises, flocks of birds, to little variable sounds that exist in that specific location, became the starting point. The bird’s flight was the most captivating thing, which I wanted to revisit and rewind through translucent layers, repetition in nature, movement, and slowness. Through observation and drawing, I explore isolation, solitude, belonging, memory, nostalgia, movement, and stillness. Charcoal and gateway sheet or tracing paper create layers of visibility, movement, memories, and fleeting experiences.
Sayuri Bhanap:
I’m studying at the University of Hyderabad for my master’s, and that’s when I was exposed to a lot of wilderness around me and nature in contrast to the chaos and pollution of the city. That was a major turning point for me and forced me to question the difference between a completely consumerist, capitalist, developed metropolitan city and a more natural setting. I primarily worked with paintings, but switched to fabric, thinking about sustainability. I use reused, repurposed fabrics, hand-stitch them, and the colour palette comes mostly from intuition and natural landscapes. The main challenge is visualising and composing the work.