13th June – 20th July, 2024
Curated by Shreemoyee Moitra, this show features works by Saanthiya Bulchandani, Mehak Garg, Shyamli Singbal and Anirban Mishra at Akara Contemporary Gallery.
Minor Detail reflects, highlights, and lingers on these concepts of personal space, inhibition, intimacy, and psychological and emotional aspects of human existence in an interior space that is often missed in our day-to-day lives.
Saanthia Bulchandani, They Lay in Heaps, Pen and Ink on Paper, 43 x 52 inches, 2024
Our successive living spaces never disappear completely; we leave them without leaving them, because they live in turn, invisible and present, in our memories and in our dreams. They journey with us— Michel de Certeau
Free of an outsider’s gaze, the sense of home or private space has a very significant meaning in human psychology. It frequently connotes the need for belonging, familiarity, comfort, and attachment through personal memories and is also an affirmation of a sense of self, supported by a space. Homes are a spiritual refuge, a bulwark against loss and change, and a deep reflection of one’s inner life. It is a shapeshifter created in fleeting moments, in our own bodies and our own surroundings. Artists have long been fascinated with domestic interiors by looking inward. We often create a home inside our own bodies, redefining what it means to inhabit our own selves within a space.
Home is a space to rest, to feel the pulse of one own’s solitude, to daydream and to take refuge from the constantly moving world. Mumbai-based Saanthia Bulchandani’s intricately done monochrome ink drawings are a study of the constant dialogue between a space and a person. The folds of the quilt, the scattered pillows on the bed, the plant at the corner of the stairway, and the lone woman sitting on the sofa drifted in her thoughts breathes on their own and reaffirm the language of a lived-in place where any inhibition are at rest.
Shyamli Singbal, Mom Eating Kinderjoy, Ink and colour pencil on paper, 5.8 x 8.3 inches, 2023
Goa Born Shyamli Singbal’s idea of home is her loved ones, her people, and the warmth and closeness they share. For her, it’s the people who make her feel at home, not the physical space. Her works are almost like a journal, where she continuously documents and records the raw inhabited details of her people and her surroundings. Often, when she is far away from home and the only way to connect with her loved ones is through the advancement of technology, through video calls, she finds herself keeping a record of it by saving screenshots. She then later painstakingly renders them into frames, evoking a sense of comfort, safe space, and belonging, which is ‘home’ to her. She accomplishes alchemy by freezing and reliving these moments through her nuanced drawings.
The semi-realistic oil paintings and the cluster of miniature canvases are part of Haryana-born Mehak Garg’s autobiographical exploration of her own self and space. With her subdued colour palette, Garg portrays the complexity and dynamism a space and a mind can exchange. Her practice highlights the significance of psychological and emotional aspects of the human being in a domestic space and translates them into thought-provoking and emotionally rich compositions.
Mehak Garg, Untitled, Oil on Paper, 3.5 x 5.5 inches, 2022
The home, even more than a structure, is a psychic space, it bespeaks intimacy. The ornamented rug in the drawing room, the long old corridors leading to the bedroom, the isolated chair by the balcony, the frames on the walls, the aquarium at the corner table are all part of a home that, too, grows old with us and often outgrows us by becoming a museum of memories. Kolkata-based Anirban Mishra’s serene array of watercolour and ink drawings is a vignette of the same. Rooms and planes expose the contradictions between closed spaces and open spaces, often becoming dreamlike landscapes rather than fixed enclosures.
Anirban Mishra, Homealone, Watercolor on Paper, 22 x 28 inches, 2024
ABOUT THE GALLERY
Akara blends the rich traditions of modern art with the innovations of contemporary practice.
Nestled in the art district of Mumbai, Akara operates across two spaces: Akara Modern, one of the leading modern art galleries in India since 2015, and Akara Contemporary, a new platform for the current and next generation of South Asian and international artists.
Across both galleries, Akara centres India and South Asia within the continuum of international art history and brings alternative narratives and realities to the foreground of global discourse.
Through exhibition programming, artist representation, institutional partnerships, art fairs, gallery collaborations, and art advisory, from which it first was established in 2009,
Akara aspires to transcend borders in its many forms, from the artistic to the geographic.
Venue: 3C Amarchand Mansion, 2nd Floor, 16 Madam Cama Road, Colaba, Mumbai 400001
Gallery Timings: 11:00 am to 6:30 pm (Tuesday to Saturday)
Website: www.akaraart.com
Picture copyright to Akara Contemporary.
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