'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
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