A selection of my recent work is currently being presented as part of an exhibition titled ‘The Baroda March’ by Rukshaan Art at the Coomaraswamy hall, Chatrapati Shivaji Vastu Sangrahalaya (former Prince of Wales museum) in Mumbai. The exhibition is on till the 15th of March 2013.
‘Flight’-Watercolour and gouache on paper- 2012- 25 in.x 36 in.
‘Cradle’- Watercolour and gouache on paper- 2013- 30 in. X 48 in.
This time, the second time I have come,
I dream no more the vastness.
With hands behind my back,
I walk from one end to the other
I am thinking —
How can so slight a thread tie up a city?
Lin Ling
What began as a space of intimate connection with myself during the short spans of time I’d spend painting in Bombay, while the rest of the day saw me in a desk job, opened up what seemed like an endless sequence of a visual dialogue from one painting to the next. Walking back home everyday through the crowded streets of south Bombay, I was impacted by an unabashedly intense experience where ideas of public and private, home and outside are all blurred into one. The sights, noises, smells and random voices of passers-by whose home is under the vast sky and whose company is the clatter from the street, became a stimulus that I could only respond to through painting. The small scale of the works from the series ‘Threading the City’ are a result of both circumstance and choice, where the sequencing of paintings becomes a metaphor for every day’s record of experience in a city. The Chinese poem by Lin Ling echoes this experience while carrying the metaphor further into a space of introspection with humanness at its core.
The works can be viewed here.
Malavika Rajnarayan 