feminine Intersection
Curated By Rajini Rekha
Date: Feb 28, 2023
Featuring works of Anupama Bijur , P.Gnana, Rajini Rekha
Illustrations , Paintings, Sculptures
concept note
In the exhibition, different expressions and interpretations of femininity come together in an organic way. The artists explore intrinsic responses to their personal experiences, drawing from memory, everyday interactions, and aspects of collective culture to render narrative episodes. Anupama Bijur engages with the mundane aspects of her daily life, using humour and satire to open up a world of experiences to the viewers. Gnana reflects on tender emotions and relationships, particularly those between mother and child, as well as the human-animal connect. Rajini Rekha translates primordial female energies and their meaning, retelling mythological tales in contemporary context.
In this compilation, the three artists bring together a multi-layered palette of sentiments, in varied mediums.
Anupama Bijur :
Ever since she can remember, Anupama Bijur has been doodling along the margins of her school and college notes, on tissue papers in restaurants, and in notebooks that she loves to collect. A few years ago, she started posting her sketches on social media, to create some structure and discipline, with some validation as a bonus. This was while doing the Inktober challenge – an illustration challenge that runs through the month of October where artists are given a word prompt every day to illustrate.
While she always preferred line drawings, she also realised that she liked the line and wash style and started teaching herself watercolour painting. YouTube helped and so did artists like Emma Lefebvre, Shayda Campbell and Clarice Gomes. She has also been learning watercolour painting from Rekha Mavinkurve.
But her love for illustrations remained and she started creating sketches with captions of things she had noticed, experienced or sometimes imagined, combining them with watercolour. A character with a close resemblance to herself is a recurring leitmotif in her sketches. But the themes of her illustrations are universal. Like conversations about the weather, everybody vs the Bengaluru auto driver, or her experiences with covid.
These illustrations are what she would like to describe as slice-of-life illustrations, documenting the ordinary, everyday stories of people like us. Because, there is magic in the mundane. She believes her training as a journalist has helped her observe, document and add context to her visual journal.
Most of her inspiration comes from things she notices on her morning and evening walks.
After 23 years in journalism, she still does her best work at night. During the day, she heads marketing for a financial services firm based in Bengaluru.
P.Gnana: :
P Gnana paints, sculpts and creates conceptual installations as one of Singapore’s leading artists. Indeed, he has obtained a hi-captivated audience in the Lion City and internationally, for the aesthetic and conceptual niche that he has created for himself within the ever-competitive dynamics of urban art- making. This he continues to achieve, by constantly counter challenging or taming the forces that him to dispel his obsessive fascination towards the cow, a recurring symbol in his art since 2007.
It is a fact that exemplary paintings by Gnana are also in the collections of the President of the Republic of Singapore and the Singapore Art Museum of the National Heritage Board Gnana is a recipient of the LASALLE Scholarship of the LASALLE College of the Arts (Singapore), from where he received his formal training in the art of painting. Gnana was granted the honour of being selected (in 2005) to undertake a project commissioned by Singapore’s ASCENDAS to create fourteen large-scaled paintings with abstract expressionist motivation for the International Tech park in Chennai. In 2013, one of Gnana’s larger-than-life sculptures made from recycled materials was acquired by National Parks Board (Singapore) to display in Fort Canning Park. His paintings have been auctioned as part of the Masterpiece Auction House’s Southeast Asian Collection. P Gnana has also been awaited by the esteemed Bhaskar’s Arts Academy as CHITRA KALA NIPUNA.
Moving further int o affair with the cow in his art, Gnana obeyed his urge to venture into creating three-dimensional repetitions of his inspiration. The debut collection of Gnana’s charismatic sculptures was officially launched to the public via his eighth solo exhibition, The Eternal Cow: Sculptures and paintings by P. Gnana, which was presented at the Singapore Philatelic Museum in early 2009.
Experimentation, serious and sometimes meditative, has been one of the key instruments that has shaped Gnana’s creative journey through the years, allowing him to rejuvenate in a world of constant change and fluctuating emotions. Gnana’s fascination towards the technique of collage in his paintings began in the first years of his career. Today, college is back in his art, but this time, on both sculpture and painting. For Gnana, collage is process-oriented with layers and layers of ideas, presenting him with fresh possibilities that emerge on the spur of the moment. With great confidence and an abundance of ideas, Gnana transforms the meaning and purpose of mundane, everyday objects into awe-inspiring expressions merging them conventional media such as bronze and canvas, to resonate the comfort and co-existence between his almost metaphysical cow and the devoted human being.
Most of her inspiration comes from things she notices on her morning and evening walks.
After 23 years in journalism, she still does her best work at night. During the day, she heads marketing for a financial services firm based in Bengaluru.
Rajini Rekha
Rajini Rekha is practicing artist based out of Bangalore. She graduated from NIFT in the rigorous study of Garment Manufacturing Technology and went on to work with Tommy Hilfiger, a multinational company, where her years of experience in developing a primary idea through the artistic process of experimentation, refinement, critique, and presentation, ultimately led her to realizing her dream of opening an art gallery Revesin 2015. She gave up her lucrative career as she believed strongly in the adage “Art can help us become better people”.
Rajini’s first solo in 2012 a series of paintings titled ‘Feminine fairies’ on the themes of womanhood was held at Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath. She took part in many national and International art shows. Recently she moderated a sustainable mural for FICCI with a team, titled ‘Hosathana’ which spoke about the present times and the waste produced by the garment manufacturing sector.
Besides an effervescent artist, Rajini has conceptualized and curated many meaningful art shows. Besides commercial art shows Rajini actively participates in fund raising art shows in collaboration with national and international NGO’s. Having resided in the garden city of Bengaluru for over 20 years, Rajini gives back to the city she calls home by fostering and supporting a dedicated and inspired commitment to Indian art and appreciation.
Coming to the present show, ‘Feminine Intersections’ Rajini tried to associate Shakti and Satyabhama as varied energies and feelings that influence the contemporaty take.
Shakti is the primordial cosmic energy, a creator , caregiver,and at times a destructor . on every plane of creation, energy manifests itself in to forms of matter. Shiva and shakti represents masculine and feminine energy of the universe. The balance and coordination creates the vibrations of the universe.
Satyabhama, is described as incarnation of Bhudevi, she is the warrior wife, who aided krisna in defeating asura. She has mastery in many warfares. she knew many martial arts and walked side by side to krishna in the battle fields.
On the other hand the representation of the dragon flies marks resilience and adaptability – their important role in the cycles of nature. One could actually relate to, and gain from the strength of these delicate beings with transitory lives.
These symbols and metaphors that Rajini use in her paintings, stand as articulations of resilience and transformation.
‘When we idolize someone, we try to imbibe and embody the qualities of the characters. Art gives us the possibility and means to reconnect with our own strength and internal happiness.’ Rajini Rekha
