CHENNAI: Uma Jayabalan was born into a family of traditional goldsmiths, each generation handing down its secrets of the craft to the next. Naturally, she has flair for the arts! Her debut exhibition, titled ‘A 31’, is described by the artist as a ‘melange of Tamil poetry, art and photography’. Featuring 31 works in each medium, the exhibition opened at the Art Houz Gallery on April 8.
The ‘A’ in the title represents the first letter of the Tamil alphabet, “because it’s my first exhibition or showcase of any kind. It’s the beginning,” explains Uma. The number 31 represents Uma’s age. “I have no qualms about revealing my age,” smiles.
Why showcase all three mediums in the same exhibition? “Why not?! All my work is a holistic expression of who I am. There is no unifying theme. The topics range from feminism and religion, to love and lust,” she explains. “Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev says, ‘If you don’t know what you want to do in life, do everything’. That’s what I do. I explore various artistic forms and see what emerges.”
From wildlife photography in Kenya and bright abstract paintings of Adam and Eve, to lyrical Tamil verses about the state of gender equality in modern society, Uma’s works are as diverse and far reaching as she is. “We experience so many emotions in life, and with each additional emotion, our spectrum of art becomes wider. I represent all these emotions through different mediums.”
This Coimbatore-native who writes and speaks eloquently in Tamil is actually Telugu by birth. “But Telugu is like a boyfriend,” she chuckles. “It’s great and lovely, but I don’t need it. Tamil, on the other hand, is like the air that I breathe —I can’t live without it.”
She is inspired by the lush green landscape of Coimbatore, and says, “Cycling to school, I would pass these roads strewn with yellow flowers. I recently did a painting that had a similar kind of ‘yellowness’ and I remembered the flowers — these memories keep resurfacing in my art. As a child, I played more with colours than with toys.”
Uma serves as the Creative Head at Ramco Systems, a technology company. Asked about how she finds a balance between her job and creative pursuits, she shrugs. “Twenty four hours is a lot of time. Rani Lakshmi Bai of Jhansi had a child and still managed to run an entire country. I have no excuse,” she laughs.
A solo exhibition reflects an individual’s dedication and commitment to art and her journey. For Uma, the support of her family played a critical role in her development as an artist. “I always knew I didn’t want to do physics or engineering. My family encouraged me to pursue arts. All these struggles and fights would have been a failure without my family’s unconditional support,” says Uma.
Now that she has one show under her belt, Uma plans to use this momentum to continue sharing her art to larger audiences. “My art always has this sense of incompleteness. I want the audience to come to the exhibition and complete it themselves. I want to see and do more. All this art work is a way for me to talk about myself — and I am very comfortable doing that,”she laughs.
(The writer is a freelance journalist)