Art is as much about the past as it is about the present. As one era rolls into the other, the definition of what’s contemporary also shifts. Three artists attempt to raise these social, political and spiritual concerns. Through Art Alive Gallery’s new series called Contemporary Idioms, its first edition asks: ‘what is contemporary?’
Purvai Rai
Stories in Lines is artist Purvai Rai’s way of highlighting the transitioning topography of contemporary art in India, which is deeply tied to its past. There is no other way of comprehending it.
The yarns of synthetic and natural textures and materials in red and white that she has developed are representative of the human chakras or energy forms.
“I studied various contexts of textile such as political, cultural, social, environmental and spiritual, in addition to the evolution of clothing from function to fashion,” says Rai, who used this textile knowledge as a metaphor for her conversation.
She explores this idea through old and new ways of clothing.
From the time when humans wore animal skin or vegetation to post World War II when women began to work and resultantly, embraced comfortable clothing as opposed conservative styles, and then from functional to immaculate and pretty wearability, a lot changed in terms of moving away from ancient clothing wisdom.
“Once fast fashion emerged as a trend, we forgot about fabric and the flow of energy,” says Rai, who points out that the seven chakras can be obstructed by our of clothing. This is to say that artificial fabrics can block this energy flow. Even the colours we wear in our clothing impacts us.
“The fashion culture is making us lose what we once attached to clothes: the memories, attitudes, rituals and traditions, faith, culture, everyday celebrations and stories that passed from one generation to another. We’re losing parts of our identities to a desperate need to keep up with trends, oblivious of the fact that the clothes we inherit are a testament to our memories.
For example, in India, Khadi is not just a cloth; it has great historical, traditional, and cultural importance,” she says, hoping contemporary times will take all this into cognisance.
Suman Chandra
Suman Chandra is committed to deciphering the term ‘contemporary’. From it, he gets clues for his unique language too. In his practice, Chandra represents the situation of coalmine landscapes.
“Coal mines aren’t the conventionally romanticised landscape. We talk so highly about beautiful places but our coal mine landscape and the dangers confined within it are a reality too that,” says the artist, whose paintings and sculptures portrays this predicament.
The mines are at the cusp of contemporary concerns modern India faces, and Chandra hopes there is a favourable solution soon. “Rather than asking what is contemporary, I pose the question, what is development? It seems to be an instrument for the power to destroy the living land of poor people and force them to migrate. This is the most worrying contemporary reality for me,” says Chandra.
Divya Singh
Contemporary is a work in progress. It doesn’t have a linear outline. Its contours are ever-changing and redefining itself. and that’s why artist Divya Singh’s examination of the word is yet to take final shape. “With respects to transition into the contemporary, my work has its specificity in concept and aesthetic.
How we define concept, aesthetic and politics is interlinked. In this exhibition, the fluidity between these milestones of concept, aesthetic and politics is made to meet at a place in which they are all embedded, nuanced, and concealed in metaphors and poetry, within the work.”
Her three oil works and polaroid photography is on display. She has also printed excerpts from books and films as text and image, “to emphasise or to aid and produce a near-complete body of work”.
Till: September 15
At: Art Alive Gallery, S – 221, Panchsheel Park