Art curator Sushma Bahl and fashion commentator Vidyun Singh have conceived a show Convergence – Art and Fashion that explores the junction between design and art. The paintings and sculptures produced by artists have been transposed onto fabrics and other accessories while fashion designers have produced works of art. The entire ensemble of works on display and indeed the concept itself emphasises the idea that both in design and art, the thought process remains the same but with
different conceptual as well as practical goals and trajectories. Here, the artist and fashion designers are pushing the boundaries of paintings, sculpture, installation, photography, film, video and theatre to create an alternate vision.
Traditionally in India, adorning the body, the self and the cultural product has great significance that has been highlighted in all the cultural prescriptive texts, the shiplasatras as well as actual practice or prayoga as Almakara. In fact, shringar rasa has been devoted to the evocation of the beautiful in all art forms and forms the cornerstone of Indian aesthetic experience.
Bengaluru-based artist Ravikumar Kashi has created a set of paper pulp and missed media sculptures of armour like torsos, Doubting Thomas, in which the motifs such as a finger poking under the skin try to reveal what lies concealed inside the mind and body. The body again comes into play in his T shirts, Inside Out where entrails, muscles and tissues have been painted on the cloth with waterproof ink, transposing the anatomical structure onto apparel that is used to conceal the body.
Seema Kohli is one artist who has used her symbolically rich and dense compositions of her painting while designing her clothes and accessories to maximum effect. Her paintings are intricate evocations of the feminine and the sacred through iconography. Kohli invokes the feminine space of the beauty in the jacket, body suit and clutch bag through intricate and delicate embroidery and digital printing that bring out the colours and motifs of her artistic world onto fabric.
Similarly, designers such as Little Shilpa and Rajesh Pratap Singh among others have tried to push the boundaries of avante garde couture and design by used street fashion as well as tools to create installations and sculptures.
— The writer is an art historian, curator and critic