SOLILOQUIES - Dr Ina Puri

‘Inspiration is after all the ability to create a world from metaphorical associations, each symbol or sign that points towards some semblance of unity in the mosaic. The poet or artist’s lifework may be compared to someone who dropped a necklace in the dark and must set about retrieving each stone in order to arrive at an achievement of balance, light and colour.’ (Jeremy Reed)

            The narratives pose a challenge; since defiance and acceptance are two sides of the coin. What the memories wash up are mythical heroines lauded and ridiculed in turns by generations of storytellers who add their own interpretation to the characters that epics had described as sacred divinities or a flawed spirit, unworthy of respect. In Bhalla’s art the silent and saintly portraits are given a new spirit and soul. They speak up and demand that contemporary history give them another chance to explain their motives and to justify their deeds. Ahalya, deemed flawed, Surpanakha rejected for having dared to love the brave heart Lakshmana, Hidimba, Kaikeyi, Kunti, Amba, Savitri are the mythic protagonists who are similarly transported back into the present from ancient pages of Mahabharata and Ramayana, where they had lain for eons, consigned to a fate they did not deserve. The noble characters are aware of their alienation but instead of protesting choose to remain silent often with tragic consequences. It is as if the world of Indian mythology is reimagined and viewed with eyes that are not clouded with prejudice and narrow-mindedness. The classical tropes are discarded and in their place the artist makes imaginative use of glass, thread, fiberglass and canvas,  alongside a minimal colour palate to achieve at lightness that is ephemeral, almost spiritualized.

       The epics had fascinated Sunaina Bhalla from early childhood and like other children she had fantasized about the beautiful Apsaras, the larger than life heroes who fought bravely on the battlefield to protect their honour.  The niggling doubts and questions came later, when she was growing up. One of the primary characters she drew inspiration from was Ahalya and it was while she was reading her story that the artist started to have serious misgivings about the way women were regarded in the epics.  

   ‘The king of the gods, Indra, was aroused by Ahalya; for when he saw her in the hermitage of her husband Gautama, he desired her. When Gautama returned with the fuel and sacred grass, his wife Ahalya hid Indra in the womb of the house, but just at that moment Gautama took his wife into the house with the intention of making love to her. It was then that he realized with his magic gaze that Indra had already been there in the guise of the Rishi. In a furious rage, he cursed Indra and turned Ahalya into stone.’ 

         It is believed that though Indra had tricked Ahalya by transforming himself into the sage Gautama (her husband), she was aware that it was Indra and therefore she was equally culpable. Ahalya was later labeled a seductress and remained maligned forever. For the artist, it as if the characters spoke to her and she began working on a series she dedicated to the characters of women she felt had not deserved their fate. Each work had a story behind it. Ahalya was the inspiration behind the painted torso, the cold surface without any life or warmth of the woman whose beauty caused her downfall. 

                   The material used for the work in the case of Surpanakha is pins and fiberglass, with the entwined figures of a man and woman appearing like a pattern on the inner surface. The artist asks why did Surpanakha have to face such abject humiliation at the hand of Lakshmana? Was it so wrong to desire a man? Within the complexities of the epics, beyond the tales of valour and war, were hidden stories of great pain and great injustice.  In the series she is presenting in the show, Bhalla draws upon the indomitable courage of the characters who dare to declare: ‘Look at me; here I am in my totality. There is nothing to hide or be ashamed of…’

          The first work, Avenge, had been created with Draupadi in mind and with her story began a series where Bhalla used diverse mediums like sculptures, paintings, installations and embroidery. Sunaina was clear in her mind that she would not go the figurative route to build her narrative but work instead with abstract forms to tell her story. 

                      Trying to connect the titles with the work was like working on a jigsaw puzzle and in the end, I just asked her to explain. Over long conversations I gradually understood why a work was (intriguingly) called Gandhari’s Womb and the significance of it’s 101 parts that fit seamlessly together to complete the installation. She explained to me the reason why there were 101 parts because apart from the 100 Kaurava sons, Gandhari had also given birth to a daughter Duhsala.

        ‘The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary can speak.’  The words of Hans Hofmann seem especially relevant in the case of Bhalla’s work.  Like a leit motif, the grandiloquent story of the epic is the source the artist returns to time and again, but the language is abstract and the veiled references remain hidden.

   Over the last many years, Sunaina Bhalla has pared down her palette of colours to red, white and black. Each offers versatility and a range of possibilities whether she is painting, sculpting or embroidering. She had enjoyed working with diverse colours when her art practice first begun but the deeper the involvement went the surer she was that her artistic expression required the colours red, black and white. The appeal lay in their sweet meditative quality, perhaps in the versatility of their nature that corresponded to different moods of the artist. She had been deeply influenced by the Japanese culture and way of life in her 7 yearlong stay in Tokyo. She visited the many Buddhist monasteries and temples, spending hours just observing people, their rituals and ways. Wanting to learn more about their art she took classes in traditional Japanese pottery, then studied Rice Paste printing before picking up Nihonga painting. She did not know the language but devoted herself to acquiring the skills by observing her teachers. Their aesthetic sensibilities were so minimalistic and stark, she recollects. The influences guided her art practice and she used some of the techniques in the body of work she was now creating in her own studio-space.  However, the narrative she yearned to tell was based on the 16 women she had known intimately from her reading of the epics. The sculpture, paintings, embroidered art works therefore are woven from pan Indic mythology but the style and technique  (of her work) is influenced by her studies in Japan. In the instance of Ahalya, the silhouette of an exquisitely proportioned woman has stylized images of a man and woman entwined on its surface reiterating the story of the seduction. In the melding of her readings, travels and studies a body of art has emerged that is luminous and incandescent, her anger and grief at the injustice meted out to women is deftly scripted in. The brutality and violence perpetrated lies hidden in the layers of her art, her angst a part of the subtext. 

In the blackest of blacks, sensuous reds and pristine white Bhalla’s narrative tells us of the women who dared to explore their sexual needs and were not apologetic for their ‘transgressions’. The wounds are ancient and the assaults history but there is no end to the suffering, the cycle just repeats itself and the viciousness of the backlash gets worse. 

  The delicacy and lightness of touch in the embroidered work are subtly blended to resemble historical design tradition. The decorative motifs are elaborately brought together; the imaginary figures and ephemeral forms reflecting a timeless continuity. The images are a series of mirrors; the reflections are stories of pain and loss.  The frames of the mirrors are painted in ornamental gold to resemble the ornate frames of antique hand mirrors, while inside, the artist uses woolen thread to create abstract patterns in red, white and black. Keikeyi, Hidimba or Amba and Kunti have their soliloquies to share, their own memories of what transpired. The mirrors poetically reflect heartbreak, rejection, and the actual interiority of pain. The tangle of thread, beads, glistening surfaces create a delicate nostalgia and it is as if the viewers too can see their own fears and loss in the depths of the gilded mirrors.

   In the intricately layered works, the artist re-examines the mythological stories and places them in another context. What if they were judged differently, she asks. It is time to let the necessary speak.

                                ‘What have the heavenly powers to say of this?

                                 They take afternoon walks, they notice.

                                  Here are we, and over there the so-called kingdom of Nature.

                                  What’s worse, consciousness or lack of consciousness/

                                 Well, there weren’t any mirrors in Eden.’ (Czeslaw Milosz).

Ina Puri

                      Art Historian and curator

   2017