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Colour, Stone, Chintz, Grain and Statue
October 29, 2023 @ 11:00 am - November 5, 2023 @ 7:00 pm IST
With an illustrious presentation of five celebrated artists Gallery Art & Soul, Mumbai is taking over the grounds of Bikaner house with Colour, Stone, Chintz, Grain and Statue featuring Revati Sharma Singh & Raj Shahani, and Act III featuring Vinita Karim, Mahirwan Mamtani and Jin Sook Shinde. Opening on 29th October 2023, it displays the legacy and stories of these five diasporic Indian artists depicting tales of longing, and facets of a life away from the tapestry of visuals and memories that have defined their practices today.
Within the halls of the Centre of Contemporary Art is the dual solo: Colour, Stone, Chintz, Grain, and Statue. For Raj Shahani, a visit to the New York MET piqued his interest in the history of the Apsara. Fluid feminine forms, they are neither celestial nor mortal but they are there to entertain with the objective of their lives open-ended. Raj saw a reflection of himself in the Apsaras. Today’s society still takes time to accept a queer friend, family, or colleague and assigns roles that don’t allow them to feel complete. With statues of Apsaras across museums in the world broken, with mutilated limbs, heads, and bodies, Raj felt an urgent need to complete those delicate poses from the Natya-shastras, adorning their role in metal and stone.
In an ode to her homeland’s memories of collecting grains and harvest, Himachal-born, London-based Revati Sharma Singh transforms her abstract canvases of vivid hues where grains are threaded, cast in metal, and embroidered around like Zari-work across terraced rice fields, on gunny bags and delicate porcelain plates. They become seeds that were cast in precious metals, to be woven. Manifesting her five-decade-long journey she casts a grain in steel making it monumental.
In this dual showcase, Raj and Revati reclaim these emotions for objects that hold their culture through their practices as artists. Experience how materiality finds new meaning in Gallery Art & Soul’s newest dual show Colour, Stone, Grain, Chintz, and Statue.