Memories of a time gone by shared stories and filial love define most individuals and shape their ambitions and actions. Artist Seema Kohli belongs to the same emotional tribe. “Everything I do goes back to my childhood. My art is an interpretation of the stories I heard during my growing-up years—tales of Punjabiyat that my father, who spent his early days in Pakistan’s Punjab, would share with me like a Sufi teacher. What I do leads back to my father. I can’t think without his guidance,” she says.
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After a gap of 14 years, during which she worked on commissioned pieces for the British Museum and mounted a performative series based on her father’s autobiography Mitar Pyaare Noo, the 63-year-old multidisciplinary artist is exhibiting in her native city, Delhi. Named Cut from the Same Cloth showing at Bikaner House by Gallerie Nvya, the 40 displays comprise paintings, drawings and 13 tapestries with embroidery on raw, untreated canvas woven with silk and cotton threads, beads and sequins.
“My creative process behind this exhibition began in 2017. I did not want to go wrong with the colour, the stitch or the texture. I wanted all the works to look painter-ly. The last one-and-a-half years were spent only on embellishments and touch-ups. I originally wanted to do 22 pieces, but by the time I finished 15, I was totally spent,” remembers Kohli, adding that sometime in 1991-92, she had tried to explore embroidery, “but I did not have enough means or the ways and time. I could not explore the medium as much as I wished. Since then, it lay buried in my mind”. The canvases of Cut from the Same Cloth are large—some measuring almost five feet by three feet. The prominent colours used for two of them—the Tree of Life series—are rust, red and yellow to denote the interplay of sunshine and dusk. “These hues are my favourite. Most of my works are dominated by them,” says the artist.
Kohli’s inspiration is a philosophical quest. These could be Sufi or Bhakti sayings of Baba Nanak, Naamdev, Bulle Shah, and Baba Fareed, or they could be the Shaivism of Kashmiri saints like Lal Ded. “They have always guided my hand. These saints talked about the body as a cloak, a garment, a vessel, which we have to leave at a certain point,” muses the artist, who will present a multidimensional performance, My Cloak Made of Colour, Air and Songs, a day before the exhibition draws to a close.
The artist has a fascination for Tantric mysticism which casts its spell on her work. “Through my art,
I wish to study how the Creator has made us of different colours, styles and textures. The body comprises five elements. The celebration of life is central to my work,” she reveals. But for Kohli, this celebration is irrefutably feminine. “My consciousness takes a female form—Maya. Everything emanates from her. She is the be-all and end-all,” she says, adding, “From Maya, come the yoginis, who are ever-present in my works.
I see them as the working hands of the invisible feminine energy, which needs to operate in different forms. All manifestation takes place through them.” Kohli presented an exhibition of sculptures—64 Yoginis—at Sundar Nursery in 2019. As someone who works in oil, acrylic, tapestry, sculpture, printmaking, and performance, which medium is the most drawn to? “Each one has its deficiencies, so I move between them. Had one medium been complete, I would have stuck to it. At the end of it all, what matters is ‘line’. It is nothing short of magic, the way a line becomes a form and then talks to you.
The line is the basis of all my work. I think it is my strongest point—the line and its fluidity,” says Kohli, who takes pride in the fact that she is largely an untaught artist save for a short stint at South Delhi Polytechnic. “I don’t come from any established branch of art, and my work shows my creative freedom. I belong to a very independent school of thought. My images are free from any kind of intimidation. Artists are very stubborn. We create our own language and continue at it,” confesses Kohli, who likes the work of American fibre artist Bisa Butler, the cathartic art of late American artist Louise Bourgeois and finds Mrinalini Mukherjee’s hemp sculptures stunning.
Would she like to be anyone other than an artist? “I was always an artist. I did not acquire this role. It was me. This was my path,” says the artist, as she gazes at her canvases. Beneath the patina, sketched in invisible lines, is the fluidity of her story.