Ticket to the canvas
The most interesting aspect of artists’ work is the inspiration they take from the mundane things in life. Be it a door, crumbling stairs of an old house, a haveli in Old Delhi, or simply a bus ticket, artists tell their stories through any object. One such artist is Aditi Aggarwal. This young Delhi University student loves collecting bus tickets, which inspire her art.
“I’ve been playing with colours since childhood. Like any other DU student I travelled by buses before Metro came close to my residence. If one observes closely, the tickets aren’t same for all the buses. What attracted me was the colour of these tickets like yellows, whites, grey etc. and I immediately thought of making a collage out of them. Thereby exploring various pictorial possibilities, these works came into being,” says Aditi whose recent exhibition “On the Threshold of Time” is on display at the Heritage Gallery, Triveni Kala Sangam.
For someone who’s had a habit of collecting things, bus tickets was not new to her collection.
“For me, tickets are a kind of miniature paintings in themselves. They represented my daily encounter with art and an evidence of a journey made and a destination reached,” she adds.
And the paintings first find their place on the artist’s sketchbook and are then painted.
Talking about the inspiration behind her works, Aditi says, “My work is basically inspired by people, objects and environment around me. Sketching for me is a visual record of my experience. Even while painting, I usually take references from my sketchbook. The environment also includes architectural spaces around me. I also try to paint the emotion or intensity of an emotion while sketching people around me (trying to exteriorise the emotion) through their expressions, as it appears to me. My work is basically instinctive and spontaneous.”
It’s interesting to see, how Aditi has used the tickets on the canvas like a collage. “After pasting the ticket on canvas or a paper, I work around the ticket so that it becomes the most important element of the work. It ultimately stands out as an element yet merges with the very surface of it, thereby creating multiple visual layers in the work. For instance, in my work Daily Encounter, the lines are flowing, representing movement. The big ticket on the canvas is actually a left over small piece of canvas cloth on which I painted using acrylic colours and treated it as a big ticket,” she explains.
For someone who likes to work in layers, she concludes by saying, “I like to manipulate the pigment so as to create textures and vibrations in order to enliven the visual spaces and voices in between the forms. To me, painting is not all about the finished product, but the very process by which it is created.”
The works are on
display till June 30
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