|
Curatorial
thoughts
“The meaning of a
word is its use in language”
Ludwig
Wittenstein
Multicultural,
multi-vocal contemporary India is not simply
diverse, in a way it is a fecund geography of
postmodern representation. Within this domain, the
paintings of Mini Sivakumar and Charuvi Aggarwal
chart a territory that is singular. The two
artists from two different cultures, two different
educational backgrounds, representing two
different languages, can do many other things
besides picturing of reality. They can give
structure, direction, content and form, in fact,
create all kinds of picturescapes without actually
picturing anything . Mini, a self-taught artist,
Charuvi, an artist emerging from a formal training
of an art school, but in their individual work
practice the two forge ahead with a rare
intensity. Parallels thus become their leitmotif
while the two artists charter their own individual
vocabularies. What engaged me as a curator was the
process of production of the art work itself.
Two years ago when
I had gone to Shantiniketan for a seminar, I saw
the paintings of Mini Sivakumar. I was enchanted
by the sheer vibrancy of color and the dynamism of
a creative outpouring. There was a veritable
upsurge of potent ideas which were bursting forth.
A student of mine, Charuvi Aggarwal cool and
serene on a physical plane had a similar
condition. Her pictures though ‘self ’
obsessed in a certain way had a similar feel and
texture in their visual representation and thus
“Parallels” was born.
Parallels where
equidistant not intersecting spaces are created. I
took the idea of ‘Parallels’ from the genre of
music where parallels describe the movement of two
voices or melodies that match each other exactly
in pitch, while presenting the same interval
between them. In literature ‘Parallels’ is the
grammar of identical syntactic constructions which
also describes two or more phrases or clauses in a
single sentence that has identical syntactic
constructions.
Putting the two
artists together in a show is also about entering
the mindscapes of the two contemporary artists .
An entry both into the production of the art form
through the vehicle of a parallel. The two artists
are in their path of personal excellence, moving
together following their individual trajectories,
distant yet beside each other.
Dr. Alka Pande
Curator
Summer 2006
Click
here to view exhibition |
