HYDERABAD: The 31-year-old, Baroda-based artist Soghra Khurasani feels that the world is filled with violence. “Everyone reacts to the atrocities happening aound them. But only a few of them have it in them to express what they feel,” she says and that is what is depicted in her latest work at Kalakriti Art Gallery in the city.
Soghra’s current works on display includes varied forms of print making, the same that she specialised in. “This show is curated by local artist Noman Ammouri, who wanted to bring print making to the Hyderabad art scene. He wanted to bring new mediums along with print making to the city,” informs Soghra.
Titled Reclaiming Voices, the works are in vibrant red. “There is bloodshed everywhere. I wanted to bring notice to that,” she explains pointing out to one work, ‘Flooded Flow and Silent Torso’, that has magnified blood cells erupting out of a volcano. “This is my vision of what happens inside common people considering that something or the other happens everyday in India. There is an eruption of emotions,” she elaborates.
Her attention to detail is the first thing one gets to notice at the first look and to bring that amount of detail through print making is quite a task. But Soghra is one who loves challenges.
“Print making is a process where everything is carved on wood, that is filled with ink and then transferred on to paper. It takes time. Most people, though specialise in print making don’t want to work in the same medium because it is quite challenging,” she says.
Soghra though specialises in print making, also works using new media. A photographed work on display at the gallery is what she did a year after Nirbhaya happened. “That incident shook me quite a bit. So on the same day, around the same time, a year later, I picked up on the last words she said -- ‘I want to live’ which was heart-touching because every human wants to live. We dug out those words on the ground, that went up to 54-feet. I then invited people I knew in Baroda to come and help me save these words. We set fire to them,” she recalls, pointing out to the video that is play on the screen. Through this, Soghra also wanted to bring together the ways of different religions. “Muslims and Christians bury the dead and Hindus burn them. So everyone is part of paying tribute to her,” she explains. Her video display is one that everyone faces in their lifetime. “When we are children, we can do what we want. But as we grow up, at every point we are forced to ‘do this, do that’, ‘follow this, follow that’,” she points out to the video of her writing it down on a white board, and another hand erasing an option, leading her to reach a point where she feels ‘damn this, damn that’.
The show is on till November 30.