Emami Art’s newest exhibitions keep memory and medium at the core of the conversation. Each work stems from personal accounts and depicts unique perspectives and messages. Indulge visits the exhibition’s opening, and bring you some stories behind the works.
History relived
Arpita Akhanda’s works, Under the Moon Across Many Waters, have a palette that calms the senses. Developed over the past two years, her major solo exhibition comprises weaving, photography, performance, drawing, video documentation, and an installation — each shaped by memory, family archives, and the question of what it means to search for a home.
For Arpita, Partition wasn’t just a chapter from the history books. It was a deeply personal family memory where three of her grandparents crossed the border from Srikail, Barishal, and Faridpur through the river routes before settling in Odisha. History, for her, entered through lived experiences and as heard stories from her family. She mentions, “Water body is a medium that takes me back to my past. I see it as a passage of transit because I grew up listening to stories of how my grandparents crossed the Padma River during the Bengal partition in search of a home. I crossed the same river to go back in 2018 and find the place where their home once was. They carry, reflect, and repair these relationships across the generations.”
The exhibition collectively points to the aftermath of Partition, which is further enhanced by elements of personal history, river maps, photographs, memories, and more recorded through paper and jacquard weaving on to her art works. Talking about experimenting with jacquard for the first time, she states, “Jacquard is woven in a machine, so that becomes easier, but it doesn’t take away the fact that the whole preparation to do that weaving takes a lot of labour, time, and conceptualisation of how the weave will finally appear. While paper and textile are different mediums, the process — the warp and weft coming together—remains crucial.
Also, I look at the warp as the past or the personal history and the weft as the present institutional archive that comes together.” Sediments, an interesting installation stems from her intrigue in omission. Speaking about i t , she says, “Sediments i s a n extension of a performance seri es that I have been developing where I invite my friends to come and stamp a certain date on my body and whisper a memory. In exchange, I would whisper one of my own memories back, allowing memories to migrate metaphorically between our bodies. I’m also interested in erasure through addition, where the act of adding something to a space can gradually overwrite or erase what was there before. So the technical arms stamp the same lines throughout the day and, in the process, erase it.”
When material speaks
Imaginarium, launched during the pandemic as a platform for artists to show their creativity and combat creative disruption all over, progressed to its sixth edition this year. This group exhibition gives an impetus to 10 emerging and mid-career visual artists who, for this edition, explore sculptures, paintings, ceramics, installations, textiles, and more under the overarching title Insubordinate Matter. Material takes precedence in this exhibition, where a viewer can almost reach out to touch the artworks, which hold within them an idea, a memory, a story, or an emotion. Participating artists include Bhagyashri Dange, Sonu Pujar, Subhash Deka, Srijita Raha, Tithi Das, Annanya Dhanda, Ayushi Shukla, Dibbya Mudi, Shibayan Halder, and Siya Raju.
According to Ushmita Sahu, director and head curator, “These are artists who think through substance…and who treat the made object not as a surface for ideas but as something living that holds memory and carries a fragile world.”
Two of the most fascinating works that hold depth are by Sonu Pujar and Dibbya Mudi. Sonu’s visual documentation of chopping off her long tresses, presented as an installation complete with beforeand- after photographs, her hair woven into a rocking chair, and a notebook with scribbles, is sure to tug a string in every viewer’s heart.
Sonu mentions, “A hair for a woman is like a second skin. My journal notes the moment I cut my hair because I felt empowered, and it was a much-needed transition. Also, the chair isn’t random here; it represents the site of politics and power.”
Dibbya Mudi’s intertwining rubber strands weave a beautiful web of their own. Just by looking at his pieces, one can understand how waste materials can be easily turned into art. He states, “I picked up weaving from tribal communities, and rubber was easily found in many garages near home. Its non-degradable nature also harms the environment. That’s when I started thinking of bringing waste rubber indoors and combined it with the folk weaving technique for my practice.”
Both exhibitions are on at Emami Art till December 26.
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