Paintings 2005

Works

As a child of a newscaster and a journalist, both avid readers and litterateurs, I have grown up surrounded by tapestries of words.  I learnt to appreciate the written word in several languages very early in life and as these signs floated around me I learnt gradually to see their immense power and beauty. Traditionally with the Bible and the Koran, the written word took connotations of each religion and texts were to be revered,  but these are different times and I have chosen to use the words of contemporary writers, poets, family and friends as reflections of the world today, as we live it. The glimpses I provide are from our daily life, concerns of people in Kashmir, Delhi, Bangalore, tribes of Madhya Pradesh, extracts from real conversations, interviews and my letters, all collated to reflect the shared Indian experience, our basic philosophical oneness.

 My use of everyday humble materials along with such text perhaps subconsciously subverts the existing notions of what is acceptable in cultures or in communication and it strives to call your attention to alternate utterances. Another reason however is that I see beauty in their ordinariness and a redefinition of many notions in aesthetics and life like those of value, identity, elegance, import, or contemplation. Its like trying to reach the fundamental core, a universal truth for which no formal language is actually required or is enough.

 Art and life are for me simultaneously about the personal as well as about cultural contact, about experiencing the other. Just as in this series, Urdu is an inalienable part of the many layers of my identity and our larger Asian culture we barely find it in Indian contemporary  art. So its use here is a conscious choice probably as a political  construct, my personal resistance to the global wave which perceives and often deliberately builds upon  the cultural image of a backward, narrow minded Muslim jumping into action only while wielding weapons of terror. This series is an affirmation of a divergent and a more inspiring reality.

The quietness of the works can be attributed, apart from my middle age, to my belief in the significance of a calmer ground in communication so that you may stop and look closely at an apparently lucid picture, and upon reflection gradually come across the understated disturbances in its wrinkled textures built over time. After all there is a history behind these works worth exploring which consists of multitudinous elements. Behind the nails and the soot may lie ideas like humanism, compassion, justice, blindness, greed, non - violence, cowardice, oppression, lies, silence and protest. We must learn to read this book of disquiet and ask the right questions.                             
 

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