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.

Invitation to a lecture by Rekha Rodwittiya

Balvant Parekh Centre for General Semantics and Other Human Sciences

C-302 Siddhi Vinayak Complex, Behind Baroda Railway Station (Alkapuri Side)

Faramji Road, Baroda-390007 Tel: (0265) 2320870

Email : prafullakar@gmail.com; binisajil@gmail.com;

website : balvantparekhcentre.org.in

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Invitation

We cordially invite you to a lecture by Rekha Rodwittiya, a renowned scholar and artist, on the theme, “Indian Contemporary Women Artists: Voices of Strength” at the Centre at 4 pm on Saturday, 12 November 2011. Tea will be served at 3.30 pm.

About the Speaker

Rekha Rodwittiya was born in 1958 in the city of Bangalore. She completed her B.F.A (painting) from the Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S University of Baroda in 1981. A recipient of the Inlaks Scholarship, she did her M.A in painting from the Royal College of Art, London, from 1982 to 1984. She has undertaken numerous residency projects and site specific works abroad; and has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally. She has been actively involved in art teaching through alternative non-institutionalized methods, as well as being a guest faculty at art colleges in the UK, France, Italy, Sweden, Australia & Japan; and is invited as a visiting Professor to Ewha University in South Korea in 2012. She lectures on contemporary Indian art both in India and abroad, as well as writes on gender-politics, issues of identity, curatorial methods and other subjects of concern within an Indian/Global context of art practice, and recently writes a blog. Her art works are in private and public collections in India and abroad. Her solo exhibition titled Intangible Interlocution: An anthology of belonging opens at Sakshi Gallery in Mumbai, on the 25^th of November 2011.

Summary of the Lecture

The writing of any history will always be a chronicled space that must invite critique and re-examination. It is only through this process that we can hope to have a better comprehension of our connection with a cultural legacy. The history of world art, till quite recently, has underplayed the contributions of many women of significance; and so vast passages of time, in which the aesthetics of feminine sensibility has fashioned creative expression, have been left undocumented and unacknowledged. Rekha’s lecture titled Indian Contemporary Women Artists: Voices of Strength would explore a timeline in our cultural history that showcases a selection of women artists. These are artists who have articulated their concerns of identity, and negotiated their own truth within the larger context of a socio-political and economic reality; making art that is therefore strong, impactful, and often radical in intent.

Something to think about...

"Deep inside the forest in a tribal village, when 500 policemen surround and burn your village and there is no TV camera, you can't go on a hunger-strike. You can only fight back. In any case, can the hungry go on a hunger-strike? What does a hunger strike mean in a country where 49 per cent children are malnourished and perennially hungry?"

an excerpt from Arundhati Roy's article that addresses the issue of the Jan Lokpal Bill. You can read the article here.

Malavika Rajnarayan

Group exhibition at KYNKYNY Art, Bangalore

Dear Friends,

My work "Under One Sky" will be exhibited in a group exhibition at Kynkyny Art, Bangalore from the 20th of August to the 9th of September, 2011. Please do visit the gallery if you are in Bangalore around this time.

Malavika Rajnarayan

Exhibition at Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai

Theen Tamasha is proud of its colleagues in the Collective Studio, Baroda - Kim Seola, Schon Mendes and Lee Hayan who will be showing their work in the exhibition Intarsia : Memory Trace at Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai from the 4th of August; 11 am to 6 pm.

Art from the Collective Studio- Sonatina Mendes

Sonatina Mendes