Medium: Acrylic on canvas.
Size: 36”. X 72” Diptych.
Medium: Acrylic with transfers on Hahnemuhle paper
Size: 10” x10”
What are maps, but elaborate regurgitations of the world as cartographers flamboyantly imagine it to be? They hold within them the codes to constructing the world from a given point of view. Shalina Vichitra's works are similar cartographic journeys. She follows a specific train of cartography, where all roads lead to and from an assertive centre point. But Shalina's work neither guides nor prescribes: her viewers are required to find their own way around her work, knowing of course, that all routes will lead them to the artist, creator of the paths they steer along.
If, historically, maps everywhere share the common idea of a land, a tangible, geographical place that they describe, then Shalina's works emerge from an in-between zone. Revisiting it offers her a reference to her own maps in the mind, an allusion to the idea of discovery and problem solving, something like the process of art making.
Bharati Chaturvedi
Medium: Acrylic and charcoal on canvas
Size: 52” X 66”
Medium: Pen & Ink, rice paper on Hahnemuhle paper.
Size: 10’ X 10”
GRAIN is a small part of anything… the smallest unit composing a whole. It’s a bit, a piece of, a fragment, aparticle, and a part of... The crux is an individual as part of a whole populace. The entity I refer to is a spec of this macrocosm.
“Deconstructed” is a playful re-construction of the past and present, where fragments of emblematic structures are gathered and presented in the series of stippling pen drawings. The work reflects the alternation between destruction and creation as an existential cycle that brings not only despair, but also reason for hope and strength. the drawings perform a mediating role—between epochs, traditions, and cultures, where the paradoxical qualities between violence and beauty co-exist on the same surface.
Medium: Acrylic on canvas
Size: 48” X 48” X 48”
The notion of relationships, connections, and common acreage is a concept that is naturally occurring in humans and in nature. The process of forming psychological associations and models refers to the act of thinking and an instance in this, can be termed as a thought. Our very existence has various dimensions… the notion of dimension is an extension of the idea that a line is one-dimensional, a plane is two-dimensional, and space has multiple dimensions with endless data. Learnings, experiences, perceptions, emotions, aspirations etc. Since our being comprises of the data within which is an infinite collection of finite sets. Intangible thoughts are perceived as a continuum….where the process seemingly endless, repeats itself to infinity.
Medium: Acrylic &. transferson Hahnemuhle paper
Size: 10” X 10”
Shalina paints imagined borders and countries, inter-mingling with tangible ones. Unsupported by seas, lakes, mountains and neighbouring nations, countries off the map appear to be random clumps of land mass. Her process engages in unpeeling the Earth and letting the magma harden on the surface, masks and unmasks surfaces to create imaginary lands and the boundaries in between them. She reconstructs the patches of land on the surface into imagined entities not within any geo-political net. One can almost hear John Lennon in this fantastical world: Imagine there's no country, it's easy if you try.
Bharati Chaturvedi
Medium: Acrylic &. charcoal on wood
Size: 104” X 16” X 10”
The wheel is a metaphoric reference to the earth as a container. A row of prayer wheels made of wood, painted in parts move on a central axis like a globe carrying signs of the earth. These simple prayer wheels invite viewer's participation with a purpose- to collectively pray for the healing of the earth.
Shalina continues with her aerial maps of the earth that evoke varied associations and experiences related to the sense of place and location. Painted topographies are marked with violations, abrasions and divides inscribed by the invasive acts of mankind. She creates contours on the face of the earth through the suggestion of brutal traces highlight the abusive attitude of humans in the use and consumption of the earth. For effective communication of her concerns,
Shalina articulates her artistic expression using diverse media that strengthens the metaphoric layering of her themes.
Roobina Karode
Medium: Acrylic & Charcoal on canvas
66” X 108”
Among my recent works, I have been engaging with the idea of lived spaces and how communities engage with their environ and aspects of migration and borderlands. It interests me to understand how border people interact with the dynamics of the territory they occupy, the shared realities, the ecological, economical and social commonalities that exist. Borderlands are porous spaces and geographically contiguous regions, having aspects of synergy as well as binary conflicts, security issues and challenges leading to a certain cartographic anxiety that exists in the region.
Medium: Buddhist Khata Scarf, rice paper, unbleached cotton, acrylic, charcoal, digital prints on Hahnemuhle
Size: 30 ft X 13 ft
As part of my ongoing engagement with the mountain land of the Himalayas, I have since 2000, been placing white flags on high altitude sites and along trekking trails. Reminiscent of Buddhist prayer flags or cloth banners strung to bless the vast stretches of land beneath them, and of white flags that are universally understood as a symbol of peace, their consistent placement in the land is a symbolic gesture of peacekeeping as much as it is the planting of geographical footnotes embodying traditions that refuse to die. The act of leaving the flags to disintegrate back into the environ is giving back from where you get and reiterates a cultural sustainability in this context.
The 1000 flags are a reference from buddhist iconography - A thousand forms of Buddha and the markings, symbols speak of the geographies of the land, the perception of Buddha and the essence of peace. The flags are printed, drawn and stamped with symbols and markings drawing from the traditional method of printing with wooden blocks, the materiality further adding to the ethos of cultural sustainability and indigenous practices of the region. For me walking these lands is a material journey where the physical body is immersed in the environment and the terrain. A Thousand White Flags, represents my journey where spatial and temporal ‘presents’ coincide to construct my own process of archeology. Begun as a response to the demolition of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan, the project was first featured at the exhibition ‘And Buddha Smiles Again’ organised by the Masters Guild, supported by Intach and The India Habitat Centre, New Delhi in 2000.
As an extension to this project “A Thousand white flags” was supported by The India Art fair in 2019. It was installed as a 30 ft sanctuary of fluttering prayer flags stamped with symbols and markings, with the sounds of the skies above, leading the viewer into an experiential space. Here the abstract becomes tangible and allows the viewer a space for immediate inquiry directing him to encapsulate his perspective on peacekeeping. Photographs from the previous onsite installations transports the viewers relocating them within a cultural and spatial context. The project reiterates the very ethos of peacemaking, and the act leads to making connections and building involvement.
Currently the project is in the permanent collection of Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) and was part of a show show ‘Inner life of Things- Around Anatomies and Armatures” April ’22 curated by Roobina Karode.
Medium: Ceramic stoneware
Size: 8 ft X 7 ft
Lived spaces communicate our sensorial experience of remembering or imagining a place, as opposed to being within or outside of it. Informed by the multifarious relationships that individuals and collectives have with shelters and environment, the work questions the personal understanding of a place as a filtered sequence of encounters that encompasses its own set of narratives.
“A Space to which we belong” offer itself as a visual metaphor of lived experiences and a tactile archive to address the complex subject of ‘belonging’. It explores the physiological makeup of a shelter and our sense of space within it.
Drawing on Henry Lefebvre’s Production of Space which views life in terms of a loop between human activity and material surroundings, space is configured not as a container, but is continually ‘produced’ through activity… rendering a human like aspect to spaces that cannot be verifiably surveyed, mapped or measured…and so for me the physiological, spatial and temporal ‘presents’ here coincide to construct my own process of inquiry about a space to which we belong…
Medium: Acrylic &. chaarcoal on canvas
Size: 40” X52”
Medium: Mild Steel
Size: 12ft X 6ft (variable)
Mild steel’s susceptibility to rust and change due to atmospheric conditions serves as a metaphor for the ever-evolving relationship humans have with the spaces they inhabit. These changes reflect the organic transformations into a living, breathing entity that evolves with each contribution and the passage of time. This interaction transforms the installation into a living, breathing entity that evolves with each contribution. The rusting process and natural patina development over time will create a dynamic visual narrative, emphasizing the essence of change and continuity.
Medium: Acrylic and charcoal on canvas
Size: 52” X 66”
Medium: Acrylic & Transfers on Linen
Size: 12” X 12”
The series ‘Testimony of Time” are simply chronicles that frames any piece of land, a chunk, markings on its surface, its layers and the patterns in the overall fabric of the Earth… The anonymity of its layers are fossilised and not only offers itself as a visual metaphor of lived experiences but also a tactile archive of the Earths very being.
The Earths narratives lay preserved, in these non-representational topographies. Its histories, what it has witnessed and preserves the memory of what is destroyed all standing through the testimony of time. The visual vocabulary of geographies explores the vestiges of an earlier layer peeping at us from under another…between past and present, with the suggestion of an alternative reality. The impressions of time are palpable and communicate to our sensorial experiences of imagining, a time, or a sequence of encounters.
These pieces function as geographical annotations and recordings that are witness to the natural world and human interaction. It harks to an unknown past owing to the changes in the physical and physiological makeup of the land and our belonging within it. The preserved narratives speak of the fragility of not only the landscape, but also our own existence, and reflects the alternation between creation and destruction as an existential cycle.
Medium: Ceramic stoneware
Size: Variable
