‘Nothing’ notes

[1]

Shobha Broota is having a solo show — Vesture of Being, after almost a decade. The abstract works are steeped in philosophical contemplation, infused with a profound and beautiful silence and stillness. This does not denote an absence; in fact there is a very powerful, pulsating presence in Broota’s ‘Nothingness’.

The paintings seem to strive towards shunyata — a state of being where self is eliminated. It says in Mahayana Buddhism that, “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form”, in which form and emptiness are not separate from each other but exist coevally.
Oneness, that comes from being whole, that cannot be divided into parts is an inherent attribute of the works. One can discern patterns like the spreading of a ripple over water, the swirls of a whirpool, the whorl of yarn, the expanding sound wave, the aureole of sun, a heap of sand dissolving into a wave. The form is borne of the essence, the core of the painting rather than from line.
Her personal meditative and intuitive experience informs each work that is made, painted and crafted with painstaking detail: using different media like steel wool, cotton and woolen yarn, fishnet superimposed over the painting. These materials are crocheted, knitted, stacked, and stuffed into rhythmic forms over coloured canvas that gives them a textured, tactile quality. The process of painting also eschews the brushstroke and the artist creates each tone, line, wave by flicking colour off a small brush, and this spray gives a diffused effect that is neither harsh nor overtly divisive.
Broota layers colours, feelings and experiences in her deceptively minimalistic paintings. There is movement within the stillness, sounds in silence, colour in its absence, and feeling within non-attachment. Visually one enters non-divisive duality, advaita, in which all dichotomies and dualities are resolved. This indeed is Indian philosophical tradition at its abstract best.