Be it the paintings where the ladies are celebrating during the Bihu festival, or the acrylic on canvas of ‘Radha Krishna’ or the paintings delving into man-woman-animal relationship with nature, all the 65 exhibits at ‘India Revisited’ represent the ethnic diversity of India. The exhibition curated for the global Indian diaspora is conducted in association with Dolna and Le Meridien.
Mithu Basu, curator of Dolna says that the exhibits were born from the concept of homecoming. “With the occasion of Pravasi Bharatiya Divas 2013 coinciding with our exhibition, we thought of giving pravasis an opportunity to experience the real India through art. And also they can take back little bit of India on canvas with them,” says Mithu Basu.
The exhibition includes three works each from 15 artists. On display are works from Anuradha Thakur, Bindhi Rajagopal, Devyani Parikh, Debjani Dutta, Gunjan Gowlagi, Prakash K Raman, Poonam Chandrika Tyagi, P Bendre, Rita Khanna, Rajeshwar Nyalapalli, Subodh Poddar, Santosh Kumar Sahani, Salva Rasool, Sanchit Jain and selected collection from Dolna.
The acrylic on canvas of Buddha with five abstract ladies by Devyani Parikh explores the vices surrounding the society and inspires one to follow the path shown by Buddha. “Though Buddha is surrounded by five vices, he is not affected by any of them,” says Devyani, a selftaught artist. Through the work, Devyani also points out the chaos going on in the world. In another work titled ‘Two monks with diya’ Devyani delves deep into the teachings of Jainism and Buddhism. “The monk in white is a Jain monk and red one, Buddhist. Though the sect is different they speak about same thing,” adds Devyani
The nine rasas in Kathakali done by Subodh Poddar is another thing of interest in the exhibition. The artist has recreated the nine human emotions inspired from live Kathakali performance held on the opening day. “These nine emotions cut across all the people irrespective of geography,” explains Mithu. It is also amusing to know that the artist has taken approximately 30 minutes to finish the nine canvases.
Another set of paintings by P Bendre show the tribal lifestyle of Madhya Pradesh. The painting in which a lady is performing rituals infront of a temple shows how deeply rooted is faith in one’s life. Another thing that one can notice in the works is the prominent use of soft earthen colours. Ask him what is the inspiration for representing the tribal culture of India through the paintings, the artist says, “I thought the best way to show the real India is through the lives of these tribes,” says the artist.
The paintings titled Transformation, Communication and Showing the Love by Poonam Chandrika Tyagi also catches one’s attention as it explores the different sentiments of women. “In Communication, a lady is communicating with a lion. She is attempting to make the male dominated society understand that she is also equal to them,” says Poonam.
The exhibition is on till January 11 from 9:30 am to 09:30 pm.