Discovery route

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There is a transition from miniature painting to minimalism in the latest works by Manisha Gera Baswani in her show Hope is a Thing with Feathers that is being showcased at Gallery Espace in New Delhi. The selection on display follows a chain of thought associations starting with feathers and going through various images relating to actions such as flight moving to the colour red and ending with life.

Though linked by image as well as thought process, in terms of treatment and technique there are two distinct categories of works. The first consists of minimal form, usually red with black tonalities, piercing the white surface of the paper. The form is fluid, flowing in all directions, impregnated with small floating tissues like fine thread. There is a suggestion of blood in these, clotting, spreading, amassing, fissuring and becoming. It is the beginning of life or the end of life — the womb and the embryo, and the swirling eternal continuity.
The other body of work is soaked in colour of time and space, made with tea water, pencil and watercolour on paper. Some of the paintings share devices and images such as the red pool of colour with the white dominant works. However, these are one of the many images that saturate the dense compositions. Each work reflects an idea, a journey, and a memory — real and imagined.
The Silk Route is one such work, with rocks and hills reminiscent of miniature paintings, and wings of birds that unite earth and sky, past and present. Under the natural formations is textured surface superimposed on a faded grid of lattices or jalis. Her paintings recall painterly conventions, personal histories and distant journeys through landscape and colour both. The artist demonstrates her strength as a colourist as she delves into the depths of the compositions through the use of tones of subtle colour. Manisha moves from the literal to the metaphoric in an effortless interplay of conceptual and intuitive in her works.
— Dr Seema Bawa is an art historian, curator and critic