An emotional dialogue

Amarjot Kaur

By the virtue of their talent, 26 artists from College of Art, Delhi, have come to define their impressions of urban existence in paintings that are intense, deliberate, and experimental. Titled Celebrating the Transit, the exhibition displays over 62 artworks that have been curated and compiled by Punjab Lalit Kala Akademi in collaboration with Delhi College of Art’s Department of Painting.

Professor Jyotika Sehgal, the head of the department, explains the intent of the exhibition. “I think art should always perpetuate a dialogue, or even a polylogue for that matter. We’d like the art connoisseur or even a regular visitor to reach an aesthetic negotiation with artists as they share their creative journey while explaining their works. In Delhi too, we recently organised two such open house events,” she says. 

On display are artworks that provoke one’s intellectual sensibilities, taking it through different creative and emotional dimensions. Saini Barkha, for instance, paints every nook and corner of a washroom and veils its ambiance under an enlarged impression of a thumbprint. “Absurd, is it?” she asks. “I come from Haryana. I was 20 years old when my parents decided to get the house renovated. I saw one of the construction workers going into my bathroom. When I went inside later, I saw my inners all dirtied up. Fearing society, my mother let them go, despite my telling her about the incident. That’s my thumb’s impression,” she shares.

In another artwork made with soot, Yashwant Singh, who is also a student pursuing masters in fine arts, just like Saini, experiments with body impressions. “Where I come from, they use mustard oil in almost everything. So, I collected its soot on a paper and then took the impression of my face and hands on it,” he says.

Driven by nostalgia, Vijay makes the frame and board of his ‘letter box’ painting out of papermache. While the letterbox remains the cynosure of attention, it draws one’s attention to the postcards, written in different languages, pasted around it. “I bought these postcards from collectors. In purani Delhi, you’ll find many people selling old items. I also got these stamps from there (pointing at the frame of his painting). I’ve never written a letter to anyone and just wanted to get the hang of how it must have been to communicate through letters,” he smiles.

While Sahailee’s pen and ink drawings explore the idea of resettlement and rehabilitation of migrant labourers, Shashidhar’s paintings evoke melancholy. In a tryptic, he paints objects in the background, leaving only their hazy impressions, under a coat of colour, for an onlooker to see. In another painting, an upside down headless human body with an arrow-pierced heart rests slightly above a string of thorns. “I broke up recently. Those objects belong to her... and that’s my bleeding heart,” he says.

Fixated with escapism, Sajan Sammuel paints an auto flying away from the traffic in a hot-air balloon, while Sapna, who is actively involved with social work, makes a woman out of waste material. Looking like reel-camera’s negatives, Naveen Kumar’s paintings on people residing in slums are stirring too. In one painting, a woman rests on the floor with a bottle of alcohol by her side and a baby in her lap, while in the other there’s a bunch of young underage boys watching porn. This exhibition is not to be missed.

[email protected]