New Delhi, Feb 19 : Emotions found a new definition at the recently concluded "The Open Hand" by the Gujral Foundation, where artists from the Indian sub-continent showcased a series of contemporary art mixed with a touch of science.
The exhibition presented artists Pallavi Paul, Vishal K. Dar, Sonal Jain and Mriganka Madhukailya, Basir Mahmood, and Shilpa Gupta, among others.
Pallavi Paul's series "Burn the Diaries" comprises of portraits of handwritten Play Fair cards used by British secret agents undergoing training during World War II. Her work is engaged in the technologies of poetry.
Vishal K. Dar's project "Antraal" is based on his new idea -- 'in-between' where two beams of light are caught in a dual-spatial field of a deep-green volume, one quivering on the z-axis and the another scanning the xy-axis. Each beam is an object, a deity without purpose between somewhere and nowhere.
Shot in Majuli, an island on the Brahmaputra river, Sonal Jain and Mriganka Madhukailya's film -- "Invocation" shows the celebration of the silence and vitalism of the physical world through observations, which dissolves the physical, mental and the emotional.
Inspired by a true incident which took place in 2011 in Pakistan when a group of people, hidden in a container, wanted to migrate to Europe in search of a better life and died due to suffocation. Mahmood interpreted this incident using three basic elements: ideology (as weight), movement (as hope) and repetition (as belief or ritual).
Using video, film or photograph, Mahmood weaves various threads of thoughts, findings and insights into poetic sequences and various forms of narrative in art titled "In a Move to the Better Side".
Shilpa Gupta's series of work named "Untitled" brings together reflections on how everyday lives intersect between mobility, landforms, informal trade and state divides, drawing from ongoing research in the India-Bangladesh borderlands since 2011. She explores the notions of location and belonging, as against and within the complexities of national identities.
