They are both artists whose imagery is almost autobiographical. This is not to say that they are so self-absorbed with their fingers and toes that they fail to connect to life beyond it, but only to highlight that they view life through the prism of self. Both these women, who opened their shows last week, are years apart from each other. Their scales, formats and mediums are totally different from each other, and yet a gossamer thread of similarity of experiences binds them.
I have always maintained that the female gaze is different from the male viewpoint, and when perception is different, its manifestation too will be dissimilar. “I don’t depict social issues overtly in my work,” says senior artist Anupam Sud, adding, “My experiences of the world as a woman are shown through symbolism and metaphor.”
For instance, in her sketch titled Fascination, a beautiful woman lies on a couch wearing a mask. “We wear masks all the time. We are playing some role or the other, sometimes of a mother, a daughter, a wife, a teacher,” Sud explains. An untitled sketch, made in 1997, depicts a woman holding two guns in her hand. “This was when I used to ride a bus, and would feel terrified of how unsafe I felt. The feeling of shooting at someone, who even stared at me, made me create this work,” she says.
In yet another untitled sketch, Sud captures female forms inside bottles. “It is my take on how women are supposed to add glamour to anything, be it a family wedding or a professional event. They are thought of as jam and pickle, which add flavour to food,” she adds.
Meanwhile, younger artist Him Rajani is all heart and it shows in her canvases. She thinks from her heart and allows the emotions to wash over her like giant waves. They fuel her creative impulses to explore dimensions of her being, and heart processes to that distilled moment when it manifests on her canvas. And yet this is not impulsive. The works have a thoughtful quality heightened by the deep and almost somber hues that form Rajani’s palette. There is repose with an air of brooding that hovers over her canvas. And yet it is not gloomy, but instead beckons the onlooker into the depths of its being as she allows that glimpse into its core. Rajani positions her characters in spaces that breathe. Or perhaps it is an attempt to expand boundaries to the point where she can see from the top with the benefit of distance. The figures get smaller, as the outward becomes more relevant. And yet the artist as the protagonist is central in the scheme of things. It is not arrogant in the least. It is just the way she is. There are shades of the sensual and almost sexual freedom. The aggression of violence in an earlier work has melted into the sands of the desert as they reappear as the leitmotif from where Rajani soars into her skies.
This is the crux of Sud’s work as well. She found inspiration in both male and female sexuality and identities, as she has been witness to several incidents of how women’s roles are defined and abused in a patriarchal society. Many of these works from her college days till more recent times, are drawn behind invitation cards, in her personal sketchbook and on random pieces of paper and are preparatory assertions from sketch books, where artists often draw their first thought, their first idea, which is then forgotten and discarded once the exhibition worthy, finished work is ready to be shown. The viewing audience rarely gets to see the ideational phase of an artist’s working method; the tentative visual probing (which often takes months) before an artwork is finally realised.
In the catalogue essay, Shukla Sawant writes, “More often than not hesitant, fragmented, unclear and continually self-differing, sketch book notations are sites of confessional outpourings, and are thus rarely shared by artists as exhibitory objects.”
Alka Raghuvanshi is an art writer, curator and artist