Palimpsests offer visual narratives that cover various geographies. Featuring two artists who are in focus now.
An art gallery in New York is currently the focus of attention where nine contemporary artists of South Asian origin have created a palimpsests of exotic colors and hues while exploring complex notions of personal and cultural identity intertwined with both real and imagined traces of the past. Two are featured here: works from Tripura-born Jayashree Chakravarty (b. 1956) and Talha Rathore who was born in 1970 in Gujranwala, Pakistan.
The dictionary describes a palimpsest as writing material as a parchment used one or more times after earlier writing has been erased. Ideas of surface and depth, of secondary quotations and lost sources - of fleeting and hidden references - and of layering from a lost image are at the heart of this group exhibition.
Jayshree's intricately layered and reworked paintings address the concept of the palimpsest with abstract motifs that present multiple narratives and are at odds with one another. Her oils highlight like a wide-angle lens while focusing on minutea. An artist-in-residence in the early 90s at Ecole d'Art, Aix-en-Provence, France, Jayshree also did fine art in Baroda and at Santiniketan. The artist's faces here tend to hide more than what they reveal - an intrigue that a keen observer sees but does not dwell on.
Talha Rathore's current medium of choice comprises gouache on wasli (hand-made paper, originally created in India for miniatures) and several of his creations have for the background New York city's subway map. Talha, who now lives in Brooklyn, New York, specialized in miniature painting at National College of Arts in Lahore.
Gouache-on-wasli has stood Talha in good stead even as he tries to introduce reds, raspberries and wild elements - all one suspects - a concession to the oeuvre this palimpsest theme offers, specially since the concept can afford to define shifting landscapes in terms of social or geographical compositions.
Here, Talha is either complimenting the intricateness of the gargantuan rail network or reflecting on the amount of "blood, sweat and tears" that are spilled very day by the train commuter. A "strap-hanger" is another word for a commuter who rides a train. During rush hour, mostly riders are hanging on to a strap when the cars jostle and shake and swing with predictable inevitability.
Think imagery and an occasional illusory, contextual presence, and you have these artists revelling in their chosen indulgence.
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(A New York based independent trend writer, Raj S. Rangarajan reports on the art market and auto shows and reviews films for media based in New York; Toronto, Canada; and India.)
RAJ S. RANGARAJAN
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