Home is truly where the art is. Home Spun, as the title suggests is an artist’s spin on the idea of home — as a place, as well as a state of mind. The exhibition encompasses sculpture, painting, photography, video and interactive installations that delve between the desire for sanctuary and the pain of exile while putting into form the tension between longing and belonging.
These works by 36 artists weren’t all created for this exhibition, informs the curator Girish Shane. Most of these were already a part of Devi Foundation’s collection and have been brought together to be seen in the context of home. Spread across three galaries, the curator tells us that the three different levels of the exhibition each dissect a separate sense of home. “The first level is the architectural interpretation — these works\homes are basically defined around the conventional defintion of home. The second level deals with things inside our homes, and has objects like chairs, sofas, TVs, tables that are made with a twist. And the third gallery is what I call emotional or the metaphorical interpretation of home,” informs Girish.
Meanwhile, home, known to us an entity of four walls and a roof, is just one of the contextual interpretations of the Home Spun collection. “An artwork by Atul Dodiya in the exhibition features a simple railway sign with his name on it. Here, he wasn’t necessarily thinking of home; but that is how people identify with their habitat, surroundings or what they encounter daily as commuters. Where you live defines and this can be seen in relation to that,” he adds.
Probe him further regarding other details about the process of procuring such a large body of work and segregating them for three separate exhibits and he says, “In a way I was most pleased with the way the metaphorical exhibit has turned out. It’s all a fruit of painstaking work that went into sculpting the material and the exhaustive effort that has gone into making jute and lace what they are. The weaving and threadwork involved in some of the artworks also give it the khadi ‘spin’, hence the name Home Spun.”
“A bit different from the rest is a Sakshi Gupta sculpture that is representative of the Earth and in it people can perceive our planet as an entity. In this age of environmental consciousness it’ll strike a chord with the audience,” he sums up.
On at Devi Art Foundation, Sirpur House, Plot no. 39, Sector 44, Gurgaon, till December 27.