Building Beginnings was my first solo exhibition at Anant Art Gallery, New Delhi in 2008.
It is said that the first step towards getting somewhere is to decide that you are not going to stay where you are. And so, I left my hometown, Bangalore, for an indefinite period in August 2003 and came to Baroda with the desire to become a painter.
Having not procured an admission at the Fine Arts college for that academic year, I still chose to come to Baroda and paint in a rented studio, and reapply for the M.A painting programme the following year. However within two months of this self defined regime, I understood that I needed an interactive stimulus of structured learning, and approached Rekha Rodwittiya who accepted me as her student. I dedicate this show to her; for the belief that she invested in me in helping me pursue my dream. Five years have passed in a whirl wind of sensory awakenings and my studio has grown to become my sanctuary. With the commencement of my first solo exhibition I am reminded of a telephonic conversation I had with my teacher Rekha in 2003, when she said to me: “You cannot hope to write a novel when you are still learning the alphabet; five years from now, you may write your first book.”
Every young artist stands at the threshold of their careers with the excitement of a novice who dreams about a future with an idealism that is transparently naive. I know that I am no different and in the celebration of embarking on this new journey, cliched as it maybe to others, I hope to begin a dialogue with my audience today that continues over many years.
I wanted to find a way of introducing myself to you in a more personalized manner. The text that intersperses with the paintings are extracts from my writings done whilst traveling; and from class-notes and other jottings. Since writing becomes another space to hear myself, where I can edit and reconstruct my conceptual world of ideas into the physicality of existence through paint, I thought it useful to place these writings into the space of this exhibition, so that the process of my perception is also suggested. The paintings however are not illuminations to these texts. My ideas develop from a multitude of things which become impacted upon by circumstances around me, and it is my writings that are diaristic in nature which articulate my responses in a more immediate manner, which I can then reflect upon in my studio. The relationship between my art and my writing is not overt, though each feeds the other in subtle ways, remaining independent of one another at the same time.
Building Beginnings is conceived through the mediation of refining the seminal inceptions of both learning from the discipline of an art school training, as well as making departures from these very precincts of established modules of learning. Ideas and personal language conjoin, and philosophies are introduced through mentored worlds from which I attempt to create new meanings. I view these past two and a half years as a crucial period where I have grown up to become a woman. In celebration of my own coming of age as an artist, the ritual of this exhibition becomes a rite of passage that heralds this beginning.
Malavika Rajnarayan
View the entire catalogue- Building Beginnings Catalog PDF
Malavika Rajnarayan 