02 March,2020 08:43 AM IST | Mumbai | Dalreen Ramos
First Step, 2019 and Daphne, 2019
In her latest solo titled Breathing on Mirrors, Anju Dodiya maintains that she has confined her work to what she calls "minimal emotional theatre". It's a space where her protagonist echoes the words of the great Austro-German poet Rainer Maria Rilke - "Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final."
The exhibition that opened last weekend at Chemould Prescott Road plays on the figurative and is fuelled by a charge of emotion. Having graduated from Sir JJ School of Art in 1986, Dodiya has always infused pictorial references into her work with sources ranging from Renaissance paintings, Japanese Ukiyo-e prints, newspaper photographs, Indian miniatures and of late, Instagram. This show also explores women responding to their domestic or peripheral struggles; you see strong charcoal lines, geometry and theatrical postures.
Returning with a solo show in the city after eight years, Dodiya views her journey as being sharply linear. "Yet, I feel free to accept a more minimal approach towards representation," she says. Dodiya also adds that the broad themes reflected in the show are that of the idea of the ambiguous image. Offering insight into the title, she says, "The mystery of the haze that follows when you breathe upon a mirror is a metaphorical extension of looking at your inner self and finding uncertain truths.
"I wanted to explore the drama of such possibilities. The hesitation of creativity, meditations on mortality and love are the terrain of my paintings."
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Among her many artistic adventures, Dodiya also worked with charcoal on unbleached cotton with this show, an unconventional medium. Then, there was another challenge. "The difficulty of accepting the image that lingers in your mind and then putting it down on the surface," she shares. Dodiya also clearly articulates the feeling she hopes viewers take away from the show - "a feeling of having encountered a chain of sublime pauses".
Till March 31, 11 am to 7 pm
At Chemould Prescott Road, 3rd floor, Queens Mansion, Fort.
Call 22000211
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