Ghostly hands in the dark

Muffled cries, whispers and screams cast a spell on viewers as they enter a small, dark room draped in red at the Harrington Street Arts Centre. In the middle of a round table is a circular video screen that looks like the reflection of a full moon. Ghostly hands touch each other in a saucer of water in the middle of the screen. The whispers turn into a wail that is smothered as the water turns red and then black. This mesmerising video by Joscelyn Gardner, originally from Barbados and now a Canada resident, is on the sexual exploitation of Creole slave women by White plantation masters.

It is part of a large exhibition titled “Stains on my chintz” curated by Paula Sengupta and six women participants from former colonies. As the word “chintz” — the much sought after textile from the Coromandel coast — suggests, the artists address their colonial legacy from a feminist standpoint and interact with the exhibition space inside a magnificent old apartment block.

Archana Hande from Mumbai has turned an entire room into a “shrine” for her work: Landscapes — within — without. The walls are covered with photographs of regions close to the border — Kashmir, Ladakh and Bhuj in Gujarat. On the floor is an altar covered with the badges of fictitious security forces, encircled by a bright yellow LED strip light simulating barbed wire, strangling life within its peripheries.

Lavanya Mani creates a fictitious trading map of kalamkari and embroidered cushions depicting a fearsome spider inspired by a nursery rhyme she had learnt as a child, hinting at the grooming of a girl for the marriage market. Both works have a certain naïve and quaint charm but this idea itself is quite hackneyed.

Feminine frippery is what provided the stimulus for Paula Sengupta’s installations. The night clothes are stained with blood. She uses another colonial legacy — the cookbook — to project her ideas.

Teresa Cole’s installation is a reminder of the times when shikars were in. The stuffed tiger still inside its packing facing the fireplace that has turned into a pool of blood.

Akhilesh, the Bhopal-based artist, is easily identified by his compositions in sombre grey. At his current exhibition at Akar Prakar he has gone fluorescent. His compositions are quite simple — entire canvases covered with small squares on a dull greyish ground. He uses splashes of bright, often contrasting fluorescent shades to offset the dullness. At times the effect is prismatic. At others it seems Akhilesh is playing with the rainbow effect of light on glass. The outcome is quite intriguing.


Soumitra Das, The Telegraph