Essays

Negotiating Matters : Roobina Karode

Shalina's inspiration for her recent works comes from her trips to Ladakh where she saw Buddhist monks rotating prayer wheels. Each time they rotate the wheel is a symbolic way of saying the mantras inscribed on it. Spinning thousands of times reinforces their belief and the act of spinning becomes the act of praying.

In her work entitled Prayers for the Earth, 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 inspired by her trekking expeditions that evoke varied associations and experiences related to the sense of place and location. Painted topographical views on the canvas are marked with violations, abrasions and divides inscribed by the invasive acts of mankind. Here, she burns holes on a separate piece of raw. canvas used as an overlay on the painted one. A shiny plastic string called rafia (used in embroidery) is used to create contours on the face of the earth. Her canvases 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 concern, Shalina articulates her artistic expression using diverse media such as acrylic, charcoal, strings, silver foil, and create relief layers that paint cannot achieve by itself. By a thoughtful transfer of everyday tidbits such as cotton cord, wrapping paper, staple pins, sequins, plastic strings, Shalina strengthens the metaphoric layering of her themes.

A place to which we belong : Kanika Anand 

Some places stir a sense of nostalgia. Some places leave us vacant.  Some places delight us while some others disturb us.

 A place to which we belong focuses on forms of mapping that communicate our sensorial experiences 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 their environment, the exhibition questions our personal understanding of place as a filtered sequence of encounters that encompasses its own set of narratives, aesthetic textures and subliminal thoughts.

For Shalina Vichitra, land not only offers itself as a visual metaphor of lived experiences but also a tactile archive. Her paintings function as visceral geographical annotations and recordings that employ the tools of cartography to address the complex subject of ‘belonging’. The fragile balance between natural world and human habitation surfaces through lines and markings that conventionally help organize or delineate. Underlining her practice are moments of movement, of journeying- through paths and routes, across or within boundaries, between past and present, with the suggestion of an alternative possibility. Her work thus, serves as an abstract rendering of a concrete reality.

 There is something subliminal about looking at the world from above- be it from a plane or the top of a mountain. The format of the aerial view divulges a plethora of earth patterns and temporal footprints, continually gathered and ever changing. Within it, Vichitra’s work lays bare the polarized values of high and low- of mountains and valleys, of skyscrapers and low lying buildings, of monuments and ruins, without the consequent knowledge of their respective dwellers or keepers. Her repeated travels across towns located in the Himalayan Mountains have fostered a visual vocabulary of geographies explored in works like Hamlet, Labyrinth and Unknown Origins.

 Peppered with archetypical outlines of people or dwellings, the artist proposes a template of an inhabited world, where man is stenciled into the landscape. The impressions of time are palpable in the treatment of the surface of the canvas, washed and dripping, the vestiges of an earlier layer peeping at us from under another. In Hamlet, as its title suggests, one sees a scattering of homes- or sections of homes, minus any distinguishing features. In Labyrinth, one is confronted with an equal division between the human multitude and a piece of land that is already marked with what appears to be the blueprint of a house on a mosaicked floor. Here Vichitra employs the standard pictorial symbols for ‘Handle with care’, ‘Fragile’, ‘Recycle’ to suggest a two-fold predicament- of responsible action when engaging with the environment, and of cultural preservation of the indigenous community. Most often used on packaging objects for consumption or travel, the symbols’ deliberate introduction reflects the artist’s emboldening intent to reference the objectification of land. With more distance from the surface, the silhouetted shapes of the human form are reduced to specs that together build and sustain a larger ecosystem.  Unknown Origins harks to an unknown past owed to the rapid changes in the physiological makeup of land and our sense of place within it.

 The anonymity and standardized language implicit in the stenciled forms function as place markers of non-representational topographies, so as to assume the work simply frames the surface of land- any piece of land where humans reside. In the twin series titled Endangered, 2018 comprising five panels each; Vichitra builds her composition vertically, like building blocks set one above another. The stacking is an interesting element in her practice, as also seen in the work- Witness, for it relates to modes of construction and development, and reflects a diversity of patterns in the overall fabric of land. The emotional appeal in the works is lucidly translated via their titles, emphasizing the fragility of not only a specific landscape, but also our own existence, for it is the surface of land to which we are bound.

 The nebulous nature of our world is more starkly conveyed in Revisited, 2018. A dense settlement, where the sense of communal bonding is easily imagined, floats against a cloud of gold. The superficiality of the surface heeds a darker reality- of prolific multiplication of dwellings, at odds with the sanctity of the surroundings, and the incongruity of the community wanting to preserve exactly what they are invariably destroying.

 Drawing on Henry Lefebre’s Production of Space which views life in terms of a feedback loop between human activity and material surroundings, space is configured not as a container, but is continually ‘produced’ through activity. The cartographer’s tools of scales and symbols do at times, fall short of rendering the human aspect to places that cannot be verifiably surveyed or mapped. This inadequacy is cleverly resolved with the insertion of pieces of children’s puzzles into two suites of drawings that comment on popular and lost architectures respectively, that in turn attest to voids and structures being actively produced through human activity. The first suite titled Perfect-Imperfect draws on two cities that owe their fame and consequently large visitor numbers to the monuments that are located within their boundaries- the Taj Mahal in Agra, and the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Pisa. In the vein of loss and failure aligned with the intent behind their building, these two sites enjoy rather curious histories and have been at the center of many a controversy. The work is an ironic play on the geometric perfection of these monuments where generic architectural elements like arched gateways, domes, and columns are arranged to comment on the beauty of imperfection.

Destruction often preserves the memory of what is destroyed. Such is the case of the Medical College situated on top of the Chakpori hill that was destroyed during the Chinese invasion of Lhasa in 1959, only to be replaced by a TV tower. Connecting the sacred hill to the one on which sits Lhasa’s Potala Palace are now a string of prayer flags, a visual metaphor that bridges the distance between the lost and existing cultural sites. Deconstruction is a playful re-construction of the past and present, where fragments of these emblematic structures are gathered and presented in the second six-part suite of 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. Both sets of drawings perform a mediating role—between epochs, traditions, and cultures, where the paradoxical qualities between violence and beauty co-exist on the same surface.

 As part of her ongoing engagement with the mountain land of the Himalayas, Vichitra has 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. According to British archeologist Christopher Tilley, walking is a material journey where the physical body is immersed in and therefore, affected by the environment- say by time of day, by changes in the terrain etc. making the person walking extremely self aware. A Thousand White Flags, (2000 - present) represents Vichitra’s journey where spatial and temporal ‘presents’ coincide to construct her 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 organized by the Masters Guild, supported by Intach and The India Habitat Centre, New Delhi in 2000.

 As a final ode to her learning, or ‘an offering’ as Vichitra describes them are a row of nine prayer wheels, patterned in her visual language with an array of symbolic markings that speak of the land she has observed and the land left uncharted.

 Kanika Anand. 2018.

On Art : by NDTV

‘Grain’ : Veeranganakumari Solanki

Shalina Vichitra’s work is about addressing, experiencing and decoding this grain within its characteristics of living situa- tions and urban landscapes, where she deconstructs the whole to examine details. The artist refers to an individual as “an entity, as a speck of this macrocosm.” She bases her works on aerial maps, urban sprawls, constructed spaces, topographic studies, symbols and architectural plans. The grain becomes a metaphor for personal associations, emotions, existence, identities and contradictions which grow to become a part of larger issues. Vichitra translates the dual existence and complexities of Tibetan society, distorted grids and morphed boundaries of territories into the simple pattern of grains that converge into ‘One’.

It is this non-descript grain that creates singular land-masses, which overlay political existence and mannerisms, which displace identity and distort harmony and it is also that fragment which characterises the creation of new form, space and moment.

The labyrinths of individuals and nature represent culture, society, nations and the world. They all converge to form sever- al unfathomable universes, which in turn subside into smaller forms that conversely return to a spark, a splinter, a ‘Grain’.

Veeranganakumari Solanki

Bharati Chaturvedi

What are maps, but elaborate regurgitations of the world as cartographers flamboyantly imagine it to be? In the seventeenth century, Holland's roads and towns were accommodated in the body of a rippling, muscular lion, suggesting strength and freedom. Earlier, in the 12th century, the world was presented as a circle, with Jerusalem at its centre. Neither map could have been used to navigate one's way around, but they hold within them the codes to constructing the world from a given point of view. Shalina Vichitra's works are similar cartographic journeys.  

In her of paintings, Shalina follows a specific train of cartography, the kind found in ancient Rome, 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 they paths they steer along. 

By basing her painting on such notions of maps, Shalina gently critiques the general public perception of the artist, under pressure to be literal and almost illustrative, dismissing the tyranny of expectation and the general understanding of art as a pretty visual that must immediately be recognized. In fact, her work, as this exhibition shows, sets out to challenge this on many counts as she forces her viewers to navigate their own way around her work. 

Like the Constant Gardener in John Carre's novel of the same name, Shalina ploughs away, digging and seeking something she can scarcely define herself. In several works, she lavishly uses muted silver, gold, and bronze: all metals and an alloy mined from the gnawed plant. Through these seemingly random (but carefully planned) sheaths of metal, she holds up the geoid earth, turning it inside out, exposing its rawness before ever reconstructing it all back. It's a metaphor for the act of art making itself: the exploration, the process fraught with exhilaration and trepidation. Shalina realizes the vulnerability of this, an uncomfortable feeling that pushes her to deftly use the metals to serve simultaneously as hot, flowing magma and a soothing, protective patina.  

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, those connecting her trips to Ladakh and return to Delhi. Her earlier paintings found her with strong visual elements from the former. These still remain robust, but she has expanded, deriving now from mud based, horizontal architecture and vivid colours from rare paintings in monasteries perched on mountain-tops. Strips of colour, a new element that are derived from the rich colours of monastery paintings, work here as bar codes, containing dense information about the experience of travel and discovery. 

Each year, Shalina spends long weeks trekking in Ladakh; now she almost knows the contours by heart; 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. Shalina refers to Ladakh, with its rarefied altitude, brown and blue flatness and sheer expanse of unpopulated land, as a terrain which forces her to look at her own inner detailing with new eyes. In this solitude, she begins to calibrate herself, asking if it is valid to map her presence at all vis-à-vis the world. 

Shalina has studied art in Delhi, the big urban metropolis she still lives in, and which is uncharacteristically reflected in her work. At one level, she draws out imaginary plans for the city. Her spatial arrangements include grids, networks and zones, working something like an urban planner and firmly entrenching herself in the urban sprawl in the process. Yet, at another level, she hints at the physical surfaces, marked by the vertical construction and the dense crowdedness of spaces in tiny grids and dizzily crowded points. 

Her painting arises from the difference between this buzz and the Ladakhi solitude.  

As a result, Shalina paints imagined borders and countries, inter-mingling with tangible ones. Unsupported by seas, lakes, mountains and neighbouring nations, even such countries that Shalina has copied off the map appear to be random clumps of land mass. Like the processes where she engages in unpeeling the Earth and letting the magma harden on the surface, Shalina now 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.  

Shalina works in many avatars. First she is like a surveyor, the unrecognized plodder who measures and estimates, the one who knows the feel of the cushiony sands and the marshy flatland that will finally be pressed into the margins of a map. Here, she looks at the terrain, marks it and creates routes where she thinks they exist. Then, Shalina dons the mantle of the draftsman, whose skills are apparent in a single glance. Now, she masks and unmasks surfaces to create imaginary lands and the boundaries in between them. These are reworked frequently, as she applies multiple layers, altering the physical attributes of these formations from layer to layer. This is repeated till a clear route for the painting is charted out. Older spaces are filled up, reclaimed as they are retraced by layering through sheaths of colour and coats of paper. Sometimes, transfer paper offers a glance at what lies beneath. Her use of flat, matt silver, something relatively recent, finds a metaphorical resonance with the metal's gelatinous presence in X-Rays: both enable the hidden innards to come alive on the surface. In this case, isn't it Shalina's own sense of self? 

If her earlier works were ablaze with wonderment, these new ones point to a phase where she is beginning to come to grips with the impossibility of pinning oneself down to one spot. Instead, she's beginning to accept the possibility,

albeit hesitatingly, of including herself as a subject of sorts of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. Her decision to construct a model of a 6 foot by 6 foot mandala, Blessed, reflects her sense of hesitation, confusion and recognition of this uncertainty. Blessed allows the viewer to interact with it only transiently. Here, on the ceiling, it can be seen by those who crane their necks as it hangs steadfastly above them. A step on, and you're away. Given Shalina's own deep, spiritual link with the land, its soil, formations, textures, Blessed invokes a sense of wonder and humility about the Earth. 

This exercise is what makes the body of work what it is: a mix of the controlled and the unfettered, creating tensions and releasing them, inhaling and exhaling. The everyday process of living itself. 

Bharati Chaturvedi