Art off canvas

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Just anything can conjure up an artist enough to be a muse. And this time, it turns out to be the unlikely —dressmaker’s dummy.

Standing tall, as they look eye-in-eye were some 20 mannequins-turned-canvases. At the exhibition, “The Mute Shall Talk” at Gallerie Romain, Alliance Francaise, on display were interesting works of art, and each with a socially-relevant message.
While Indian artists are admired globally, curator Renu Rana sees no point confining art onto a wall and that’s why she thought it interesting to take paintings beyond the canvas. “Painting on a mannequin is not easy because of its uneven surface, but we thought it would be worthwhile to do the effort since it’s for a cause,” she says. So, Renu roped in young and veteran artist for the project, the proceeding of which will go to NGO Action India.
Since veteran artist Sudip Roy hasn’t worked on a mannequin before, he took the project as a challenge, and is glad he did. Through his male mannequin, with a woman’s face painted on the chest, and partly covered with a black chunni, he talks about three basic needs of world today — love, peace and nature.
“Krishna is the symbol of love and the blue chest of the dummy signifies him. The woman, but natural has to be Radha. The green colour on the back is for nature. To me, we need to spare a thought to these three things,” says Sudip.
Artist Tuiyarmi Hungyo came all the way from Manipur to participate in the show. The 33-year-old uses tobacco and rice to do his mannequin, which depicts multi-shaded personality of a man. “While no one is perfect, but you are the only one in charge of your thoughts. We all have a capacity of making the right use of our heads and hearts,” he says philosphically.
And the “mindless race for development” was what Kolkata-based artist Prosenjit Saha’s subtly done black and white dummy spoke of. “Cities are fast turning into urban jungles with endless concretisation. Why doesn’t anyone care about the environmental too?” worries Prosenjit.
Among the participating artists are Tapan Das, Sanjay Bhattacharya, Anup Kumar Chand, M.K. Puri and Nafisa Ali Sodhi, founder Action India.
However, the highlight of the show was the headless human figure created out of discarded plastic bottles by artists Sidhant Gandhi which asserted: “We are being headless and brainless to be using and discarding plastic mindlessly”.

The exhibition is on at The Bue Art Gallery, Lado Sarai till July 15