Exhibition view at Ashvita

'Quiet Conversations from the Courtyard' curated by Rekha Rodwittiya at Ashvita in Chennai opened on the 3rd of February. Ashvita is located in a heritage building in the heart of Mylapore in Chennai. You can visit Ashvita's website for more information on the gallery and all the other ventures it houses.

Malavika Rajnarayan, Sonatina Mendes and Kim Kyoungae were in Chennai for the opening of the exhibition. Karishma D'souza, who is currently on a one year residency at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam could not be present for the occasion.

The presentation of the exhibition was displayed in three rooms of the gallery, each room showcasing all four artists, echoing the theme of the show.

As part of the curatorial brief, each artist has selected a stanza od a poem of their choice that became the point of imaginative departure for their works through this exhibition.

Sonatina Mendes

A city seems between us. It is only love,

Love like a sorrow still. After labor, after light.

The crowds are one.

Sleep is a single heart

Filling the old avenues we used to know,

With memories of dark and dread.

We dare not go to meet

Save as our own dead stalking 

Or as two dreams walking

One tread and terrible,

One cloak of longing in the cold

-Laura Riding

Karishma D'souza

and we know we aren’t ready for answers or for the hearts 

cries, as a web of light is flung across those dim places 

of the body where we hate to hide again.  

-Jayanta Mahapatra  

Kim Kyoungae

One passes by reciting mantras along the street;

for whom did this child pluck flowers?

Who laughed here,

who stretched out his arms

to put a halt to time,

and whose screams are lost

in the deserted street?

-Jagannath Prasad Das

Malavika Rajnarayan

This time, the second time I have come,

I dream no more the vastness.

With hands behind my back,

I walk from one end to the other

I am thinking --

How can so slight a thread tie up a city?

Lin Ling

The exhibition continues till the 10th of March 2012. 

Exhibition at Ashvita, Chennai

Ashvita Presents,

Quiet Conversations from the Courtyard

An exhibition by
Karishma D’souza
Kim Kyoungae
Malavika Rajnarayan
Sonatina Mendes

Curated by Rekha Rodwittiya

Please join us for the Opening of the show on
Friday, 3rd February 2012
6:30 - 9:00pm

at Ashvita
11, Second Street, Dr. Radhakrishnan Salai,
Mylapore, Chennai 600004.
Tamilnadu, India.

Ph: +91 984 009 4412
E: fineart@ashvita.com


The show will continue from February 3rd - March 5th 2012.


Curator’s note

The choice of these four artists arises from their belonging within a circle of communication with one another, where their inter-dependency and interaction is borne from considered deliberation and not mere circumstance alone. Being closely involved with their art and lives, I have witnessed the energies that define each of these relationships in their numerous combinations and permutations; and the spirit of the collective which guides their personal politics.

In an age of aggressive sales-talk and consumerism these small links of intimacy which connect with the spirit of humanism are sometimes hard to find, and often get sidelined with the assumption that they serve no purpose in today’s world of bling-culture and quick-buck dreams. In this diverse and contradictory country that India is, it is sometimes a quiet journey of self discovery which can take us to places of greater meaning for ourselves . Art over many centuries evidences the spirit of meditative ideas that are contemplative and personal, in which inner worlds of reflection echo stories about outer realities. Where a tiny painting of a row of white bottles by Morandi or an ink drawing of Hockney’s lover sleeping, can transport you into a world of many other whispered secrets. In the space of enquiries within these four artists works feminine sensibility is celebrated unapologetically without being ghettoized or pigeon-holed, and the intimate becomes significant as it evokes shared territories of experience.

Quiet Conversations from the Courtyard is a show of four artists who are part of the Collective Studio in Baroda. Each artist has chosen a stanza of poetry as the starting point for the works in this exhibition. These excerpts become the echo that throws back to us the reverberation of intention of their works, and though separate from the works, becomes an integral element in directing us to the nuanced meanings held within.

Karishma D’Souza, Kim Kyoungae, Sonatina Mendes and Malavika Rajnarayan. Four women whose works hold a quiet resonance of difference which beckon your attention, by the silence they command.