Indian art is awash with images of deities and demons, and their human embodiments – and artists in post-independence India have often tapped the subversive potential of these images. Incarnate presents a powerful body of portrayals by nine artists.
Bhupen Khakhar, Ram Bhakt Hanuman, 1998
Watercolour on paper
60 x 42 1/2 inches (152.4 x 107.9 cm)
Setting the stage is Bhupen Khakhar’s Ram Bhakt Hanuman (1998). In her essay for Khakhar’s retrospective at the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid in 2002, Geeta Kapur asserts, “This is an intense, almost existential need, this linking of holiness and degeneracy, sin and salvation, adoration and iconoclasm. This could be read as reparation of guilt through a penitent’s acceptance of the sacral order. More likely it is a secret desire to present god’s devotee as a ‘pervert’ that Khakhar cherishes”.
“This time, he (Dodiya) creates a gallery of personifications of the Indian nation-state itself.”
Another epic image in the exhibition takes the form of Atul Dodiya’s Houseboat (2000), from his series ‘Tearscape’. In his essay, Ranjit Hoskote writes, “This time, he (Dodiya) creates a gallery of personifications of the Indian nation-state itself.” He continues, “These personifications translate, in contemporary figuration, the terrifying, even apparently hideous images of mother goddesses and female saints that dominate mediaeval Hindu devotionalism.” Alongside Dodiya’s painting hang two charcoal drawings of skulls by Gieve Patel – a motif that also appears repeatedly in Dodiya’s tear-scapes.
Jogen Chowdhury
Face of a man with moustache, 1984
Watercolour and pencil on paper
11 1/2 x 10 1/2 inches (27.9 x 26.6 cm)
Nilima Sheikh’s Thinking of Akka (1999) is an ethereal ode to Akka Mahadevi, the poet-saint from Karnataka, whereas Arpita Singh’s work draws on the more robust tradition of Indian folk art. The female figure is placed at the heart of the composition within an orbit of people and objects painted in non-naturalistic colour. She re-appropriates the Lotus, sometimes associated in Hindu mythology with Lord Vishnu. Jogen Chowdhury’s pencil and watercolour of a moustached countenance, one eye awry, could well be the remnant of an ancient cave painting.
Arpita Singh’s work draws on the more robust tradition of Indian folk art.
Arpita Singh
Lotus, 2003
Mixed media on paper
18 7/10 x 14 inches (47.4 x 35.5 cm)
In the works of M.F. Husain and Siji Krishnan, human, animal and natural worlds coalesce. M.F. Husain’s Dancer (2000) is set in a Kerala jungle, where the artist’s muse mirrors the majestic gait of elephants. Siji Krishnan’s Lovers (2012), painted on multiple washes of watercolour, are ensconced within the towering stems of a flower.
Siji Krishnan
Lovers, 2012
Watercolour on rice paper
86 x 31 1/2 inches (218.4 x 80 cm)
N. S. Harsha
Sleeping Figures III, 2003
Brush Drawing
8 1/2 x 6 inches (21.5 x 15.2 cm)
It is only perhaps the sleeping figures in N.S. Harsha’s brush drawings that have their worldly possessions around them. They sleep on modest mats, seemingly afloat. Perhaps they inhabit a space between earth and sky.
They sleep on modest mats, seemingly afloat. Perhaps they inhabit a space between earth and sky.