PRESENTED BY
UNENDING DANCE OF LIGHT RAKS E SHAMS CHENNAI CHAPTER IN SILENCE THE SECRETS SPEAK AUGUST 2016
4/22 Rutland Gate (1st floor), 5th street I Nungambakkam Chennai 06 I +91 44 43090422 I www.galleryveda.com
SEEMA KOHLI
THE MYSTERIES OF SEEMA’S SECRET WORLDS It is in the nature of things that birds will flap their wings, flowers will unfurl their petals, bees will sip nectar, stars will shine, the moon will cast its sheen, the sun will sparkle on water, fish will swim, hearts will beat. It is in the nature of things that love will bloom, children will be born, lovers will age, death will become nostalgia. It is in the nature of things that we will think of things big and small, create, innovate, build, write, think, sing, walk, walk the talk; for it is the nature of things. It is the nature of things that we will smile, laugh, cry, exult, hate, delight. It is the nature of things that we will nurture secrets. That secret that lies in the kernel of a mango seed that dreams of becoming a tree. That secret that makes the earth swell with rivers, pregnant with crops. That secret that connects the temporal to the divine. That secret that makes our feet dance, our ears hear music, our tongues talk, our bodies breathe. That secret that is the soul which we know exists without being seen, a secret that tells us who we are, and why – that secret that you and I keep, but which Seema Kohli so poignantly paints. Seema’s work should not require interpretation, it is there for all of us to see, obvious and apparent. What secrets might they contain, these winged creatures and rooted trees, the birds that soar and lotuses that bloom? What possibly might these colours hide, these pinks and blues, the oranges and gold? In the magical, fantastical world of her canvases and
sculptures, what mysteries lie concealed, where are they hidden, what do they say to us – if they do – that we cannot decipher when we stand before them? I hear wings whisper them to me, the rustling leaves susurrating with messages, the tresses flirting with them, a cheeky waft of breeze carrying them around till all the universe knows, if it chooses to, these secrets that are in our soul, that we carry, that are ours – yours and mine – and which she paints as little details. I look down into the houses she crowds into a cityscape and wonder who lives in them – the house with the open window, the one with the shut door, that where a careless pot is left on a rooftop, the terrace with its abandoned chair… Who is the woman who pours endless (but welcome) cups of tea while hundreds of cups – their brew consumed – lie forsaken, awaiting tending: a rebirth, if you will. Will they find a home, an owner, someone who will hold them with affection, pour fresh brew into them, or will they remain forgotten, a reminder of time passing and time past? Who is the woman so bravely poised, her hair a cloak that stretches into infinity? Look carefully and you begin to notice resemblances. The curls of hair are the same as the waves of water, like the air that flows, the tangle of stems from which lotuses rise. Her body is fertile, fecund, for nature to worship. She is giver and taker, watch for she is the mother in your home, the lover in your arms, the daughter you cherish, this woman who, here poised, can be goddess one moment, a woman the next. She who soars, her wings in flight, in joyous abandonment;
she, who returns, to tend and care; she who is sacred and profane, for where there is beauty, there is ugliness, but all that is ugly is also beautiful – an experience, one to cherish, another to learn, still one to reject. For here is life and death, the chain cyclical, unending, of which you and I are a part, but which is also oblivious to you and me, which exists beyond the ego, beyond you and I – it simply is. Those who have known Seema’s work over the years will recognise changes. Her canvases, also firmly rooted in a harmony of male and female energies, have set her free, cast away from the tethers of subservience, or equality, or gender parity. The joyous canvas still sings, but that song is a seeking of her own self, no longer caring of the world, her own spirit – for, to cage a woman is impossible. A woman is not the sum and substance of her wiles, or her duties. She thinks, she imagines; her mind is free (even when her body is not), she no longer needs the yang to her ying. This sense of discovery seeps through Seema’s recent work, almost a marvel in her free-spiritedness, and I am reminded of her quest and determination when she asks: do I want to walk safely? on a zebra crossing isn’t fear only a line in our head I will cross it there The current exhibition traverses some of the most significant cusps of Seema’s journey, of which Hiranyagarbha (The Golden Womb) set her off on a journey where she moved away from flawed,
limiting labels of feminism (in its Western construct as being obstructionist) to declare the universe as female, the womb of all creation, the seed of birth, the dot into which everything converges. But even more that these contextual subtexts is Seema’s use of mediums that here includes her luminescent acrylics on canvas with gold leaf that leaves them glowing – a technique one associates with her. But here too the delightful twist, for the exhibition includes her drawings and works on paper, those building blocks of an artist’s work – (her secrets!) – that we are rarely shown, but which reveal not such drafting skills and the way the eye moves, the fingers capture, but also the heart and soul of a painter’s universe. There are her paintings using tea from teabags over large scrolls that she showed as part of the Kochi-Muziris biennale, revealing her extraordinary ability to transcend the contemporary, making a leap from the conventional to the experimental. Her sculptural paintings are like trompe l’oeils, created to deceive in a delightful divergence, the merging of sculpture with painting. Then there are her sculptures, almost as though they are plucked out of her paintings, cast in bronze, the figures rooted in their strength but providing a surface for the enactment of nature and universe as they discover the woman as nurturer, now quiet, now meditative, now in the bloom of creation. And, if that were not enough, there is her performance video, alight with the journey to her innermost recesses, as she takes ancient learnings and transfers the understanding to herself, an experiment of the body as well as the mind, a ritual discovery of the self she has privileged us to share. Almost retrospective in its span, the exhibition marks the journey of an artist who refuses to bend to contemporary will, simply
because she finds the strength within her to stay the course she has chosen for herself as an artist. Along that course, she has found a way to express her concerns – as a woman-human, a distinction that she has begun to now savour. Not that she has moved away from the parallel energies that define the universe. Her trees are still rooted – the roots and branches a reflection of her own beliefs that nature – even though she is a woman who creates as well as procreates – is central to our world and being.
in her paintings and sculptures, dribbled down tea bags and disseminated in feathers and wings. It is in transience and in permanence, these secrets that she shares with each of us, in each little curl of wind and breath petal. These, her secrets, because she says: ‘I’ am everywhere, in everything and also anything Who is the ‘I’? That’ a secret you must unravel yourself.
So, you can wish upon a falling star, braid blossoms in your hair, traipse the milky way, frolic among the clouds, but also wield a sabre, the feather becoming a sword. A woman’s strength is in her frailty, but she is also Kali, the slayer of demons, literally and metaphorically. This new salience of strength is a welcome metamorphosis as she takes her looming confidence literally by the horns. A lotus winds around her waist. The residues of life lie like debris – umbrellas and sunglasses, water tanks and lights, books and beings, the constituents of city life. Sometimes she carries an an invocation of pain and frustration that you sense more than you feel, or see, but Seema’s work is triumphant, an overcoming of circumstance and odds, not deleterious. We must remember the secret of the lotus is that it blossoms most when it rises from a swamp. There is little doubt that Seema’s work is inscribed within gender, but also within humanity. But what we remember most is that it is about survival, and hope, and ambition; it is about looking up, and out while glancing in. It is in the many secrets she shares
Kishore Singh Auther, Curator and a friend Aug 2016
Golden Womb II, 54x64 in, Pen and Ink, Pencil and Tea stains on Paper
PAPER
Chausat Yogini Series, 5x5 in, Etching
Golden Womb II, 54x64 in, Pen and Ink, Pencil and Tea stains on Paper
Turiya, 13x15 ft, Pen and Ink, Pencil & Tea stains on Paper
Matsayandranata-In the belly of the fish 8.5x 60 in . Tea stains with Ink and Water color on Arche’s paper
Based on the birth, life and concepts of Matsyanandranatha. He was considered a great yogi, who propagated the Yogini cult and the concept of feminine form as the embodiment of unified energies which keeps on expanding and is busy creating and recycling the Universe. In some scriptures he is also considered as an incarnation of Mahadeva Shiva. Title is inspired from Stella Dupuis book “In the Belly of the Fish”
Storm in my tea cup, 13x5 ft, Pen and Ink, Pencil and Tea stains on Paper
SER IGRAPHS
Navgunjra, 5x5 in, Etching
Soham, 18x20 in, Serigraph on Paper, 1/10 edition
Yogini, 10x10 in, Serigraph on paper, 1/5 edition
Narshimi I, 10x10 in, Serigraph on Paper. 1/5 editions
Yoga Maya, 18x20 in, Serigraph on Paper, 1/10 edition
Balance, 18x20 in, Serigraph on Paper, 1/10 edition
Unborn, 18x20 in, Serigraph on Paper, 1/10 edition
Narshimi II, 10x10 in, Serigraph on paper, 1/5 edition
ETCHI NG
Navgunjra, 5x5 in, Etching
Chausat Yogini, 13x5 ft Etching on Paper
Come play with me, 13x20.5 in, Etching on Paper
Come play with me, 13x20.5 in, Etching on Paper
Power Games, 50x100 cms, Etching on Paper
Wizard of Oz, 50x100 cms, Etching on Paper
Unending Dance of Light- Mahavira, 4x10 ft, Etching on Paper, 1/5 editions
“The time I am not painting I don’t really know what else to do. I get very confused.”
“If someday I should get the chance to paint, my fingers should be ready for it”
S.K.
The abiding themes of Seema Kohli’s life are her art practice and her faith – and they are inextricably woven together, like weft and warp. As a young child she was “put on to painting” on the advice of a doctor. Her parents had taken her because they were worried about their extremely shy, introverted daughter. If paper was not available (and sometimes when it was) she would draw on her body or on her clothes, often the faces of women and their hair. She describes herself as a “compulsive doodler… my hands could not stop.” Even later as a student of philosophy she would leave lectures with drawings all over her jeans, not really sure how they had got there. Her childhood was full of stories: of myths and legends, of the lives of saints and mystics and of her ancestors. While hiding from visitors in the bathroom of her home she would explore imaginary universes: “I used to start entering those cracks (in the limed walls) and there used to be a whole new world…with rooms and rooms inside… and all the stories of my grandfather and my father and the films we were seeing.” Painfully shy of the outside world she thrived in her own imagination. She describes her upbringing as spiritual rather than religious. Her family was Advaita, Arya Samaj. There was no idol worship in the house, but havan (fire offering) and spiritual reading, and the stories. And Seema was a deeply spiritual young woman. At seventeen she left home for the Gita Ashram in Haridwar where she took initiation. Her father
S.K
retrieved her, insisting she live a householder’s life. In the late 1970s Seema studied at Miranda House, Delhi University, where learning something of European philosophy was “like an explosion” for her. Then she took her fidgety fingers to an applied arts course at South Delhi Polytechnic. This is the closest to formal art training that Seema has come. She found the exposure to different media and the training in design helpful and some of the techniques she learnt – such as calligraphy, the use of pen and nibs – are still central to her her work. But it wasn’t long before she realised that couldn’t be a graphic designer, or an illustrator. She had too many stories of her own and was not interested in telling other people’s or in meeting their deadlines. This discovery that she wanted to work as an artist coincided with marriage and parenthood. (Seema is no longer married, but is a devoted and adored mother). For several years time for art making was snatched. At night as the rest of thefamily slept Seema would draw on the dining table, readying her fingers.
Balance - II, 27x48 in, Acrylic and Ink on Canvas with 24ct Gold and Silverleaf
PAINTING
Chausat Yogini Series, 5x5 in, Etching
Golden Womb Series, 24x24 in, Acrylic and Ink on Canvas with 24ct Gold and Silverleaf
Yogini II, 18x24 in, Acrylic and Ink on Canvas with 24ct Gold and Silverleaf
Soham, 18x24 in, Acrylic and Ink on Canvas with 24ct Gold and Silverleaf
Yogini 1 36x48 in Mixed Media on Canvas with 24k Gold and Silverleaf
Golden Womb Series, 24x24 in, Acrylic and Ink on Canvas with 24ct Gold and Silverleaf
Krishna Ras, 17x72 in, Acrylic and Ink on Canvas with 24ct Gold and Silverleaf
Navgunjara, 12x24 in, Acrylic and Ink on Canvas with 24ct Gold and Silverleaf
Vishwaroopa, 36x48 in, Acrylic and Ink on Canvas with 24ct Gold and Silverleaf
Golden Womb, 24x24 in, Acrylic and Ink on Canvas with 24ct Gold and Silverleaf
Golden Womb Series, 24x24 in, Acrylic and Ink on Canvas with 24ct Gold and Silverleaf
Flight Series, 36x24 in, Acrylic and Ink on Canvas with 24ct Gold and Silverleaf
Kalki
Kurmavtar
Varahavtar
Buddavtar
Matsyavtar
Parasuramvtar
10x10 in (Each), Acrylic and Ink on Canvas with 24ct Gold and Silverleaf
Ramavtar
Narashimavtar
Vamnavtar
Krishnavtar
10x10 in (Each), Acrylic and Ink on Canvas with 24ct Gold and Silverleaf
Unending adance of Light, 24x60 in, Acrylic and Ink on Canvas with 24ct Gold and Silverleaf
Kasturi, 36x48 in, Acrylic and Ink on Canvas with 24ct Gold and Silverleaf
Unending adance of Light, 24x60 in, Acrylic and Ink on Canvas with 24ct Gold and Silverleaf
SCUL PTURE
Chausat Yogini Series, 5x5 in, Etching
Kamadhenu series, 13x17x5 in (each), Acrylics and Ink on Fibresglass sculpture with 24ct Gold and Silverleaf
Above Right: Kamadhenu, 41x56x57 in, Acrylics and Ink on Fibresglass sculpture with 24ct Gold and Silverleaf Above Left: Yogini, 56x42x11 in, Acrylics and Ink on Fibresglass sculpture with 24ct Gold and Silverleaf
Devi, 36x48 in, Mixed Media on Canvas with fiber, 24ct Gold and Silver leaf
Below Right: Flight Series, 24x12x17 in, Acrylics and Ink on Fibresglass sculpture with 24ct Gold and Silverleaf Below Left: Flight Series, 16x24x26 in, Acrylics and Ink on Fibresglass sculpture with 24ct Gold and Silverleaf
Yogini, 12x10x6 in, (Each) Acrylic and Ink on Canvas with 24ct Gold and Silverleaf , Plywood and Fibre glass
BR ONZE
Chausat Yogini Series, 5x5 in, Etching
Maheswari, 34x39x19 in, Bronze
UNENDING DANCE OF LIGHT RAKS E SHAMS : IN SILENCE THE SECRETS SPEAK The stimulus for The Unending Dance of Light was the idea of Benares or Varanasi or Kashi – the sacred “city of light” where so many come on pilgrimage or at the end their lives. It is said that to be cremated on the banks of the holy river Ganges takes you not to another birth but to liberation, mosksha, freedom from the cycle of birth and death.Corpses shrouded in cloth are borne on bamboo biers through the narrow streets of the city, hastening to the burning ghats where cremation happens around the clock.
environment and gives herself up to a spontaneous interaction with it and the energies she perceives there. In “Parikrama” (9) she raced around the circle of yoginis at Bheragat in a half trance. In this performance she moves more meditatively, taking props such as the rope from the boat to represent our binding desires. In the video’s second sequence the rope becomes an umbilical cord connecting all beings with the “super consciousness”. The equivalent motif in her paintings is the lotus stem.
Seema experiences this as a “vortex” of energy, a place where the “dance of rejuvenation” is happening in quick time and quite “nakedly”.
Seema draws a yoni in the sand and curls up imagining the coming together of soul and body in the womb. She chances upon a gourd sapling and plants it. She rolls into and is covered by sand in a grave, which is also for her a womb. And at the climax of the film in the darkness against the burning fires of Manikarnika she lights a pyre and strikes more than 100 clay pots with a bamboo rod. These actions refer to Hindu practices – one of the tasks of the chief mourner at a cremation is to strike the skull of the burning corpse with a bamboo stick to release its soul.
Thomas J Hopkins writes “Death is as close to being universal as anything we know… almost as soon as we have evidence of human culture… we have evidence of belief in some kind of afterlife… a sustained assumption that death is not the end of personal existence.” (7) For Seema biological death is emphatically not “the end,” though she doesn’t hold any dogmatic view on what may happen and her research into the death rituals and beliefs of different cultures has been broad. Even if you look at it purely scientifically she says – our bodies are recycled into elements, if buried they return to the earth, if burned to the air – so there is a kind of continuity though not one of “soul”. For the video installation performance “The Unending Dance of Light” Seema performed on Varanasi’s “far shore” – the sandy eastern banks of the river just across from the burning ghat of Manikarnika. The far shore is devoid of buildings and people, dogs roam and birds circle in the skies above, during the monsoon the entire area is under water. The beauty and mayhem of the city is a cinematic backdrop. Soham, 7x3x5 ft,
Seema’s performances are unrehearsed. After detailed research she puts herself into her chosen
It is the first time since 2009 that Seema is showing so many works across such a range of media: drawings in pen and ink with tea stains on long paper scrolls, paintings, etchings, serigraphs, vinyl prints, sculpture, video. The serigraphs and etchings are the outcome of several years of work; two of the etchings are so large (48” x 120”) that she had to geta special press made. (7) In “Death and the Afterlife, Perspectives of World Religions,” ed. Hiroshi Obayashi, 1992. (8) Seema’s 2012 video performance “Parikrama” is in the collection of the Museum of Sacred Art in Belgium. Seema’s painting is renowned for its vibrant palette but many of these works are monochrome. She has banished colour deliberately. “I wanted to explore myself and go back to where I started,” she says. “Line and pen and ink and the single colour was
In “The Unending Dance of Light: Storm in my Teacup” she depicts the churning of the oceans, a well-known story in Hindu mythology. Many elements are here: Vasuki, the king of the serpents who acts as the churning rope, Kurma the turtle, actually god Vishnu who holds mount Meru, the churning pole, on his back. But the whole narrative has been put through the press of Seema’s vivid imagination. The churning of the oceans is happening in a teacup, “the whole universe is arising out of a teacup,” declares the artist delightedly. There are coat hangers, ladders, buildings (Seema’s neighbourhood) a table laid for tea, clocks and egg timers. Whisking eggs for a cake had brought the story to mind so Seema includes her electric whisk (and next to it an ron, to represent the ironing out of her thoughts). Across from these domestic appliances on the upper left side of the work is a deer with horns that melt into roots creating a womb like space, and thence into the Kalpavriksha tree, the tree of wishes, one of fourteen treasures to emerge from the churning of the oceans. The many different leaves signify the allround nourishment it offers. “Storm in my teacup” exemplifies perfectly the overlapping of macrocosm and microcosm, mythology and domestic life, spiritual and material that IS existence for Seema. “It’s all one, it really is… and the churning is constant,” she says.
Charlotte Dugdale with an academic background in art history and indian religion. Charlotte is well placed to work with Seema. She has worked with many artists through her NGO Artreach but this is her first curatorial project.
Unending adance of Light, 24x60 in, Acrylic and Ink on Canvas with 24ct Gold and Silverleaf
where I began as a child and is where I have come back to in this show.”
“Yajnavalkya,” Arthabhaga said again, “tell me – when a man has died, and his speech disappears into fire, his breath into the wind, his sight into the sun, his mind into the moon, his hearing into the quarters, his physical body into the earth, his soul (atman) into space, the hair of his body into trees, and his blood and semen into water – then what happens to that person?” Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, 6th Century BCE.
“We see death as a full stop. But it is not. The energy does not stop flowing at that point. It recoups, re-forms, and moves on. Death is not the end, it is energy changing direction, coursing on again in a different form and space.” Seema Kohli
Left : Untitled, 17x9 in, Bronze
Am I a Myth or Reality Todays reality is tomorow’s myth... Tomorrows myth is yesterday’s reality... I weave a web of illusion I entice create desires... Am I, Terrible, a destroyer, a slayer? Of all that entangles into my web Licking the root of their desires Vanquishing it, Bestowing freedom to all who dare to play with me, I am Maya The fire within is without I am the creator and destroyer Come, Play with me
KHEL
IN STALLATION
Khel, 24x96x7 in, Mixed Media on Board
Photography Marlene Popovic Sakthi Doss Editing Marlene Popovic Sound Design Sahil Vasudeva Line Production Dr. Ratishankar Tripatthi Dr. Rajitshankar Tripatthi Acknowledgement Rakesh Yadav Amit Rai Pankaj Sharma Helpers
FILM
Rameshwar Rekwar Jyoti Prasad Ravi Bola Ramasare
Duration: 43min 30s Copyright@SeemaKohli2014
Chausat Yogini Series, 5x5 in, Etching
SEQ. 1 From the sublime we emerge, to the gross ex
SEQ. 2 We are all tied to the super-consciousness by the same umbilical cord.
SEQ. 3 Body and soul are unified in the yoni She is the place to go and the place to come Then the play of life begins
SEQ. 4 Surprises: the path seen and unseen. Feet carve a journey of their own
SEQ. 5 Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust
SEQ. 6 Golden womb : The first seed emerges
A conversation within a conversation without touching the hearth with the tip of my toe I connect with you from my heart to your soul With the Reds of the morning Blacks of the night Yearnings of the past and the freshness of present All caught up in an amalgamation of the five elements Under the spell of Maya Engulfing, floundering, celebrating it… Enchanting me, seducing me Into her world of magic, a world of dreams And like an enchantress, holding my hand Walking me through this inexplicable experience Influencing me to open my thoughts to greater heights Stringing me into watching the flight of limitless dreams Into the discipline of happening… Making my path… My destination... (Closing) It is a borrowed breath of this earth, water and air of he she and me there is only one truth that is “breath” Performance ( 25 minutes )
IN SILENCE THE SECRETS SPEAK
SEQ. 7 And the journey continues: through fire into air, from air to water and water to earth and then to life.
Written by
SEEMA KOHLI
Movement by Stance Dance Group Music/Sound Sahil Vasudeva
CO MMI SSION
PARK HYATT CHENNAI Park Hyatt Chennai is the 30th hotel in the Park Hyatt collection and the first Park Hyatt hotel to be introduced in the city of Chennai, known as the gateway to Southern India. Thoughtful understatement embraces contemporary design at Park Hyatt Chennai offering discerning business and leisure travellers their new personal address in the city. The luxury of personalised service weaves through an elegant ambience, creating the warmth of a private home. In Silence the Secrets Speak, 10x24 ft, Acrylics and Ink on Canvas with 24ct Gold and Silver leaf
Art, in the hotel is the overarching identity of the property that depicts an exceptional personal experience to a guest, given their take and understanding on artistic depiction. An elegant ‘weaving theme’ runs through the spaces — its manifestations seen in a whorl made from spools of buttery silk on one wall, waffle weave art made from canvas on another. It is the theme that illustrates the true spirit of Chennai, and iterates its position as one of the largest textile hubs of southern India. Objects d’Art, paintings and art pieces at Park Hyatt Chennai take one on a seamless journey of thoughtful elegance that enhances the beauty of the hotel’s interiors. Its minimal and elegant spaces are accentuated with aesthetic highlights that encapsulate a refined take on contemporary art.”
SEEM A KOHLI
Seema Kohli’s works reveal a claiming of feminine subjectivities, an altered concept of feminine sexuality. Her art practice involves various disciplines from drawing, painting, sculptures, installations and performance. The most significant one to emerge out of liner forms and paintings is experiential performances. Decay, death, transformation recycling: Creating new identity; reshaping belongings; intimacy; a dialogue of matter and memory, myth all constituting a visual language of her work. ‘The Golden Womb’ series that originated from a mantra of the Yajur Veda express the constant positive procreation, recycling of energies that function throughout the universe. The spirit of ‘Hiranyagarbha’, an icon of fertility is intrinsic to her work. Literally understood by Seema Kohli as Golden Womb, that, which is self-pervading, engulfs every single element and being. She believes that all creation has emerged out of the feminine aspect of sun. Shakti, Prakriti, Nature is concentrated in the ultimate being, which is the amalgamation of man and woman, but creation is the celebration of the feminine aspect of that Being. Her works are therefore a contemplation of that state or that Being. In her works, she has tried to portray the various experiences that one goes through in the creation and evolution of the Being. It also captures in its entirety the perpetual change, order, strength and fragility, colors and rhythm, melody and exuberance of the elemental world.
It talks about the creation, the cosmic journey, of the oneness of being and the final liberation. The ultimate liberation is an ecstatic state, wherein one unites with the cosmic energies that rule the whole universe and the various elements that comprise the universe to ensure the co-existence of harmony amongst all. It also manifests the entire cosmic cycle--of birth, life, death and re-birth--a profound truth that is inescapable. “Literally it means that Divine Womb which is selfpervading and Garbha for me, is the space where creation happens; the sacred space. It bears all the suns, moons and universes from which the five elements emerge- Earth, Water, Fire, Air and which is neither male nor female, neither good nor bad, neither gold nor silver, is the ultimate being. But the moment it takes a form, no matter which, it gets transformed to Maya or illusion, the feminine aspect of that creative force. Creation is the celebration of the feminine form”. Hence, Kali or Kaal or Time is interrelated in the larger scheme of things in the indivisible and allencompassing energy of cosmic creation. Given this context, Kohli’s work is structured within this framework of physicality, energy, movement and being. “Time” “Kaal” as a factor, is central to her practice, whether it’s a wrapped object or a performance. She uses time as medium, which is extended, assembled and captured in all her media, be it painting, sculptures or installations. The aspects of continuity, repetition, vulnerability, duration, temporality, awareness, situation and public involvement are also inherent qualities that inform her art practice. The process before and after the performance is important and challenging.
Through her works, artist Seema Kohli has brought to light the intricate connections of divine energies in our body and in the Universe. Her devotion in relation to the different cosmic energies, groups of Dasmahavidya’s, Matrkas and Yoginis, are often depicted in her paintings, sculptures, installations, films and experiential live-performances. She has already created a site for Kali on the outskirts of Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India and is now in the process creating a special site, a temple-installation of the Sixty-four Yoginis.
Since last 35 years of practice Seema Kohli has had over 25 solo show in Venice, Brussels, Melbourne, NY, Dubai, Singapore Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore and many more. Has participated in International Biennale (Venice, Shanghai, India), Art fairs (Hong Kong, Basel, Beijing, Madrid, India) Her work can be seen as public art as murals of 10’ x 100’ at the Delhi International Airport, Mumbai International/Domestic Airport, the Defense Ministry, Tata Residency, Manipal University, ONGC, Tata Center of Excellence and many more.
“Myth and fable apart, Seema Kohli’s canvases are layered with many, many stories rooted as much in philosophy as in knowledge gained in modern times, a parable of tales both imagined and real, till one can no longer tell the real from the imagined. Look closely at her canvases and the tapestry of motifs unravels into more legends; turn voyeur and the epics are but a background to the unfolding melodramas of daily lives turned epic. She serves up the Upanishads and newspaper headlines in doses of caffeine. It is this that gives her canvases credible status as a chronicler of narratives past and present, Indian in their essence but universal in their context.
She has had interactive session and experiential performances at Venice Biennale 2015, TedEx Chennai 2013, WIN Conference Rome 2012, Prague 2013,India 2014/2016; NGMA Bangalore 2010, 2012 etc. She has received the Gold at Florence Biennale 2009,1 Premio “Video, the YFLO Women Achiever’s Award, the LKA Lifetime Achievement Award for Women in 2008. Her works are a part of various private and public Museums including Rubin’s Museum and Museum of Sacred Arts, Kochi Museum of Arts and many more.
“I am a mirror,” she says. “When I paint, you see not what I have made but what you want to see.” “I,” Seema Kohli, painter and teller of stories, “am both myth and reality. Pick the one you want, but remember, the mirror distorts, and so the myth might be reality, and reality myth.” Kishore Singh, Art Columnist
Right : Golden Womb I, 36x36 in, Acrylic and Ink on Canvas with 24ct Gold and Silverleaf
UNE N DIN G DAN C E O F L I G H T R A K S E S H A M S : IN SILENC E T H E SEC R E T S S P E A K “Artists, as well as the audiences of art, use aesthetic forms to struggle with sexual, religious, ethnic, racial, and gendered identities; to find forums for healing; to develop socially progressive attitudes; and often to provide environments for the supremely ethical act of laughter and forgetting”. Introduction In Silence the Secrets Speak is a solo exhibition of Seema Kohli’s practice, which includes paintings, metal and fiberglass sculpture, video and performance. Her works have different layers of meanings and there is a dialogue within them that develops from her use of different materials and a bouquet of techniques. She often uses multiple mediums in a painting or a sculpture to create an act of interpretation around the happenings of her life and her central query in her visual journey is her own self discover through different beliefs, which may come from historical, communal systems, but are taken out of received contexts and relocated in one made by the artist. Kohli often utilises mythology as her subject to create visuals which bring into interaction issues of faith, belief and gender. It is very awkward and even unrealistic to propose and place Kohli’s work in a single genre because she has worked and experimented with all possible genres of contemporary art. Her repertoire of techniques includes painting, washing and doodling and using repetitive images. Together, her works display a visual density found perhaps in temple art as well as an ease of movement between visual
registers that is reminiscent of pop art. Her paintings and sculpture are often covered with multiple illustrations which come together as a single painting across a series of artworks. The illustrations have the power of generating meaning as one image and also can perform the task of narrating the entire story. Kohli’s works can perhaps be seen as inaugurating a new genre in Indian contemporary art — “Fantastic Art”— and which then can become a manifesto of symbols for the construction of archetypal femininity. Her work depicts different beliefs through mythological figures; within, they hold repetitive human figures along with rendered patterns together which then paradoxically create an externalised space in the viewer’s mind. This method of illustration with different techniques on the same material becomes meditative. Her depiction of repetitive images within a single artwork and creating a series of artworks with different visionary imagesis an act of movement towards a higher space. It is this character of Kohli’s art which can make it Fantastic Art
1.http://www.huffingtonpost.in/entry/religion-is-alive-and-wel_b_5676134 Retrieved on August 5th, 2016 2.“Fantastic art is a broad and loosely defined art genre.It is not restricted to a specific school of artists, geographical location or historical period. It can be characterized by subject matter – which portrays non-realistic, mystical, mythical or folkloric subjects or events – and style, which is representational and naturalistic, rather than abstract - or in the case of magazine illustrations and similar, in the style of graphic novel art such as manga”.(Manga can be understood as comic created in Japan or comic created in Japanese language) .
Towards Enlightenment, 24x48 in, Acrylic and Ink on Canvas with 24ct Gold and Silverleaf
Passage Artworks such as Mahavir, Narshimi,Yogini,Narshimi-2, ChausatYogini 1, Kasturi,Vishwaroopa, Krishna Ras 1 and many similar artworks deal with the polytheistic beliefs that a person, particularly a woman, can hold within herself. The multiplicity of Kohli’s techniques matches and furthers the polytheism of beliefs that is very much present in all her artworks. The artist interprets different mythological concepts and the philosophies they impart as she constantly works to adopt symbols and themes that further the task of visual narration. Mythology becomes an infinité source of inspiration for Kohli to layer visual, technical, narrative and symbolic meanings in a densely framed, imaginary world3. In the painting
titled Vishwaroopa, the artist has painted and drawn the universal, all encompassing form of the Hindu god Vishnu. She has depicted different incarnations of Vishnu in a circle against symbolic representation of water, earth, and sky to envision the universe as a space in which the Vishwaroopa exists. Her use of ink or pen drawing on the painted surface produces a fine layer of decoration that both distances and makes ethereal the mythological themes she explores. This is the most distinguishing feature of her work. Her rendering of figures in her paintings creates a glazed surface and they appear as extraterrestrial characters that are neither fully
immersed nor identical to their context. Building these layers into her works, Kohli seeks from herself and her viewers a deeper involvement with her images; this involvement then can function as a metaphor for the evolution of her ideas and the theorising of her experiences. Her artworks contain a desire for an unlimited expression for the possibility of freedom: freedom of creation, freedom of imagination, freedom of self-quest. In many ways, the artworks are the refection of her personal journey, which began as a girl whose family settled in a refugee colony in New Delhi after Partition and her continuing quest for belonging to a community and to manifest her spiritual leanings that she has had from the childhood. Such explorations imbue her art as she works to build a place of consonance within the polytheistic world she is making. Polyphony Kohli’s fibreglass sculptures such has Devi, Yogini, Kalki,andKamadhenu appear as three dimensional forms which have arisen from her paintings. Kohli’s bronze sculptures such as Soham, Maheswari, and two untitled sculptures embody almost an unvarying gravity and bear the artist’s experiences in their structure. She uses the same symbolism to compose the sculptures and take a familiar formal language to create fresh designs along the shape of the sculpture. The new meanings within these designs become sublimated into the totality of the sculptural work. Her fibreglass sculpture that is closely related to her paintings has the capacity to produce an uncertainty in the viewer’s mind. This uncertainty is in fact a confusion of belonging - to which community or ethnicity might the symbols in the work and therefore the work itself belong? Perhaps, the confusion also comes from the artist herself as she uses her painting as a counterpart to the sculpture - here the question of origin—“which
came first”— becomes closely tied to the ambiguity of belonging. Her numerous representational sculptures index her other artwork, which then generates a feeling of walking in a house of mirrors but also paradoxically, a sense of a self-generated communal experience. She has created her own symbols and narratives to illustrate, paint and sculpt. Viewers often encounter the female figure floating on the canvas, the female figure in a meditative posture both in paintings and as a sculpture, and the female figure with wide wings attached which resembles the artist herself. At first, this could be understood as the artist dealing with gender-related issues through her art but, perhaps instead it can be better seen as the artist becoming a part of her art or that she is using her own reflection or silhouette to make it. According to Kishore Singh, a critic and art columnist, Kohli’s artworks depict female figures who have ideas, a sense of freedom and flights of imagination and expressions. He also mentioned that Kohli attempts a holistic vision but she also creates a female independence through artworks. “For Singh, the great narrative of Kohli’s’s work is empowerment: “a quest for independence, a search for inner strength, standing for yourself, but not atthe cost of anyone or anything else.” According to curator Charlotte Dugdale who wrote the catalogue essay for Kohli’s 2014 exhibition Unending Dance of Light, the artist perceives all the rendering as real. Over time, this may have led Kohli to use her body and its image to communicate and experiment with other genres such as performance and video. Kohli’s performance The Unending Dance of Light: Raks e shams, happened in Benares in 2014 and it deals with the death, birth and journey of the soul in seven segments 7. In Silence The Secrets Speaks, Kohli’s new 25 minute collaborative performance, she will be reading her own poetry. Besides her, there will be five individuals, who
will be creating movements with their bodies to parallel the recitation which will be accompanied with music and sound curated by Sahil Vasudeva. This performance will be part of Kohli’s upcoming exhibition In Silence the Secrets Speak in Chennai. This will be a conversation that she stages with herself which stands for a more generalisable experience of a self which may or may not be an actual being with a physical structure. In Silence the Secrets Speaks as a performance suggests metaphorical conversations between a divine and a mortal. Her words in her poetry are immersed in her visual creations and allude to her mindscape, beliefs and faith as do her artworks. Her poetry, performance and artworks converge at some points but also stand apart as genres. When they converge, each genre contributes to the making of a dialogue about making of fantastical images.
names that often come from mythology as the titles of her artworks and yet these artworks are critical self- reflections on religion, gender and the faith in thought and imagination even if this happens in an indirect manner. Her artworks create a world in which she can hide or submerge herself, and thus believe in something. Sindhura DM Kolkata and Bengaluru, 2016 for Jackfruit Research & Design 7. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7Rnu-a2LTc 8. https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=wm#search/kohli. seema%40gmail.com/1562c2eb04f13e11?projector 9. http://www.huffingtonpost.in/entry/religion-is-alive-and wel_b_5676134 10. http://db-artmag.com/en/76/feature/question-of-faith-is-there-areturn-of-the-religious-in-contempo/
A conversation within A conversation without touching the hearth with the tip of my toe connect with you from my heart to your soul Kohli has spoken about her faith and how art has become a way of struggle to untangle the several quests of her life9.It appears that in this process of questing, she moves between different genres of art-making, which might lead her to something new - maybe an artwork, perhaps an insight, sometimes both. Kohli’s artworks present symbols and questions of gender, belief and faith on the same platform without any internal hierarchy. It is unproductive to analyse her art and identify a single hook on which to hang an interpretation. Kohli utilises
Kalki, 19x17x18 in, Acrylics and Ink on Fibresglass sculpture with 24ct Gold and Silverleaf
GA LLERY VE DA
Gallery Veda stands for everything you always wanted in an art space. It aims to get art out of the four walls and onto a living, breathing space. Sanjay Tulsyan and Preeti Garg co-founded gallery Veda out of their deep passion for art, with a vision of creating a distinctive space for critics, curators, art lovers and collectors to connect with national and international artists.
Kohli, Arpana Caur and Jogen Choudhury, Surya Prakash and many more have been hosted. Gallery Veda’s, first and original space is nestled in a heritage bungalow off Rutland Gate Road. Over last two years the gallery has expanded to two other locations, one at prestigious Hotel Park Hyatt, Velachery and also at Shipa Architects, an award-winning Architectural Design firm.
With this in mind, several shows have been planned through the year that will not only push boundaries of perception but also question the normal. Starting off with an all-women show ‘Firm Ground Beneath Her’ helps to define its mantra ---- to make art more inclusive, and not intimidating. Chennai, with its wellknown love for the arts, provides the perfect setting for such a concept, feels art connoisseur Preeti Garg, the founder of Gallery Veda. “The need for a distinctive space amid the homogeneity is what urged me to start the gallery,” she says. At Gallery Veda you can appreciate all kinds of art in a not-so-regular setting. Alongside in-depth, focused solo shows, the galleries present a programme of curated group exhibitions that are international in their scope and ambition. Not only this, out-of the-box events are also planned to keep you on your toes. Over the last two years, several solo and group shows of the masters of line including Chandra Bhattacharjee, Seema
Vaishnavi, 17x7 in, Bronze