New Delhi: Call her a prodigy if you must, but there is no denying the fact that having barely turned 21, Bangalore-based Sohini Chattopadhyay has already caught the eye of art connoisseurs across the country. While she has already tasted success with eminent group shows, and especially as part of the art outing in Cairo on a Lalit Kala Akademi platform last year, she is now all set to make her solo debut in India with her exhibition titled Step in Light at Art Konsult, New Delhi. Comprising of twenty-six photography based digital prints on archival paper created over a period of two years, the show will be held at Art Konsult, 23, Hauz Khas Village, New Delhi from July 15, 2009 to August 15, 2009.
Sohini captures photographs with a painter’s eye and then juxtaposes images through varied digital maneuvering to create her own visual world. The entire series of works have been divided into four subsets, the first being titled Time, the dressmaker composed of self portraits and intimate still lives combined with occasional seascapes. The second series comprises of pictures of found objects juxtaposed with landscapes which conceal the identity of the object and create a whole new metaphorical aura, especially in My shadow in the evening has risen to meet me. The third series captures the essence of time with pace and speed resulting in the camera capturing multiple shots of run sequences thereby heightening the idea of detached yet attached freedom in works like To Reach the Blossoms and the Golden Thread series. The fourth series titled Global Quotation juxtaposes the protagonist with various props that have a constant narrative flowing through them.
Time and hope forms the central backbone of her first series titled Time, the Dressmaker, comprising of six intimate compositions, each work capturing a moment of life. Here, she juxtaposes painted self portraiture with seascapes using motifs like a hand, seascapes and clocks. She also introduces and captures infinite space in various sequences and presents the symbolic self portraiture in significant tones of burgundy so as to create a rather personal atmosphere. Explains the artist: “As a cultural commuter, I have been constantly engaged in the sophisticated play with identity. ‘Time’ becomes a constant witness to the ever changing attire that we put forward to the world. Thus, in this series I have made ‘Time’, the protagonist as a Dressmaker.”
The second series of her work, based on photographs of various still lives and landscapes, has a more poetic flavor greatly inspired by T S Eliot. The angle of the photography in this segment not only conceals the identity of the object but rather creates a whole new cognitive metaphorical aura through strategic juxtaposition. My shadow in the evening has risen to meet me is one of the prominent work in the series which is the result of her constant experiments with digital technologies.
The third set comprises a series of images that capture the essence of action and time, arousing the quest, urge and discovery of the human mind. For instance, her work titled To Reach the Blossoms consists of an image in action which shows the great leap towards the known and the unknown freedom. Similarly, Golden thread of Unity Running and Golden thread of Freedom Run shows figures running in a struggle to free themselves from unknown bondage. The overlapping of the aspects of the run in both works and the drapery with butterfly imprints signifies the essence of floating. Yet another work titled Tracing Byways of Freedom, denotes the metaphor of the crossroads where the printed butterflies and floating birds are moving in opposite directions. One notices that printed butterflies which have wings are unable to fly as they are caught in the thread of the drapery and, on the other hand, the birds which are not caught as an imprint of the drapery are also hesitant to take flight with wings closely attached to the body.
The fourth segment is the concluding Global Quotation which is a visual commentary of the current global situation. Dealing with the ideology of protection and overprotection, the work shows juxtaposition of the protagonist with the helmet and images of leaf plates placed one above the other. The work indicates the references to the various questions raised in the context of human existence. The repeated sequencing of the protagonist points towards the understanding of existence taking place as an isolated solitary phenomenon in an uncompromising world. It also reflects on the idea that we create our own human nature through the independent view and the choices that we thereby take.
Explains Sohini: “I have been inspired by various personalities from history and present, especially T. S. Eliot’s poem “The Waste Land” and its significance of the universal global idea.” She also says that Swami Vivekananda’s lecture Maya and Freedom delivered in London on the 22nd October 1896 has played a major role in creating Step in Light. Some other masters who influenced this young artist are authors Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky. She adds: “The evolution of my works have also resulted due to the search of content that is on the face of it abstract, but at a deeper level symbolic, and that content is necessarily philosophical and religious.”
The curious fact present in the midst of all our joys and sorrows, difficulties and struggles, is the fact that we are all advancing towards freedom. In response to our quest “What is Universe?” Step in Light is an exhibition that reinstates - ‘In freedom it rises, in freedom it rest and in freedom it melts away’. Perhaps, an apt summation of an artist’s work who herself is a young philosopher!
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