Remember the saying, ‘home is where the heart the lies?’ For Gayatri Shantaram, who lives in France, miles away from home, it was a heart-in-mouth situation during the Chennai floods, as she anxiously awaited word from her parents.
“All you feel is helplessness when there’s nothing you can do,” she avers. Add to that, recovering from the terror attacks in Paris and a newborn baby, her plight became acute. “I just felt very far from home, and I wanted to do something to give back.”
This weekend, Gayatri, who is finally back in the city she calls home, will showcase a series of artworks that will serve as a fundraiser for flood victims. Titled ‘Water’, the two-day event at The Brew Room on ECR will showcase 60 paintings.
The themes, which include elements such as water and wind, as well as an unexpected ‘meditation’, are all abstracts using watercolour on paper and acrylic on canvas. The paintings are priced between Rs 3,000 and Rs 30,000, and the soon-to-be 30-year-old has tied up with the Madras Round Table 1 to donate the proceeds to various NGOs.
Despite the large number of frames, Gayatri says she did not want her collections to be showcased in a formal gallery.
“I would love to hear people tell me how they endured the floods and have interactions with those who drop by, which is why the exhibition will be in a coffee shop,” she explains. Hoping to create a warm, home-like space for people to converse and feel comfortable, the initial idea was to conduct the exhibition at a friend’s house, but she admits with a laugh, “We just couldn’t fit in all the paintings.”
Returning to her husband in France in a few weeks, her next exhibition will be a series on the various emotions felt during the Paris attacks. “I will never forget that day,” she shares, “because my French husband escaped one of the attacks by a few minutes. He was to meet friends at a bar near the Avenue de la Republique that night, and it just so happened that he was late,” she recalls.
The exhibition of paintings titled ‘Water’ will be held at The Brew Room, 13/143, ECR, Utthandi on February 19-20. For details, call 9940305361