A touch of the surreal

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For an artist to be able to express his or her innermost thoughts on complex subjects of human psyche, environment and geography in a way that resonates with the audience requires much more than a skillful stroke of the brush.

It takes patience, determination and, above all, a desire to offer possibilities to the audience to understand these ideas better.
Artist Sarika Mehta makes an impressionable debut in the capital with her solo exhibition titled, “Born from the terrain”.
The name, according to the 33-year-old artist alludes to the fact that “something that can grow in a desert, cannot grow in a forest”.
Mehta says, “In my work what I am showing as landscapes does not have any name. It is born from the terrain. It’s surreal. It’s my first expression.”
The show, which is being hosted by Latitude 28 in New Delhi and will be on till May 20, includes six oil on canvas paintings, two pencil drawings on art spectrum paper, eight pencil drawings on rice paper, three watercolour sketches and one installation.
Born in Ahmedabad to an architect-businessman father, Mehta completed her diploma in painting from CN College of Fine Arts, Ahmedabad, in 2000 and then worked in a studio space at Kanoria Centre for Arts. Her big break was her first solo show, titled “Pulled out from the roots” in 2008 in Mumbai. “Mehta is a promising, young artist whose journey parallels her apprenticeship as a printmaker and her gradual shift to painting. Her work makes one ponder about demography, dying human settlements and the debris of the past, which is long lost and endangered. For her installation, she has used an unusual setting, the hidden corners of a winding staircase that comes alive with an algae-like composition,” explains Bhavna Kakar, director, Latitude 28.
Mehta’s works are not only sparse, but untitled too. This is because she does not want to restrict the viewers to see her works the ways she does, and encourage them to see beyond the boundaries. “My conscious effort has been to make art lighter, look at issues deeper and specific to human space, and understand the problems that reflect in our day-to-day life and somewhere also offer an individual perspective to those issues,” she says.
Her paintings reflect her enchantment with space and the silence within. For instance, her works depicting a row of roots and a solitary bird derive inspiration from silence and wildness.
Solid objects like sticks, leaves and birds decompose themselves into subtle vibrations within and beyond the work. “Through these I am trying to say that everything is stable till you mess with it, and suddenly it becomes beautiful when it is most unexpected. It is a start; it starts to flow freely and openly like a bird. It’s like discovering one’s individual entity in the middle of thousands of faces,” Mehta explains.
Another work depicts a bunch of decaying roots amidst melting ice cubes. It gives the message that beauty lies in everything, and one just has to have an eye to see and feel it. “Roots are so deep-rooted that one cannot separate them. This work cherishes my inner self when I was three months pregnant, with my baby growing in my womb. It was a mixed feeling. So is the case with the deep roots and the melting ice. In that present moment, they are hidden and also loud, individual yet connected,” Mehta says.
In a work depicting a ladder, the starting point becomes the end point and vice-versa. She describes it in these words: “I strongly connect with the fact that in the current social, political and psychological scenario, we are no longer growing up with a sense of freedom and lightness, but are instead living as captive souls. Each morning we wake up, our thoughts are clouded with tension and panic. But on a closer look, if we can see the beauty behind this chaos, we will notice that every individual space has its own hidden stories. And that leads to a beautiful starting point.”
Mehta believes that this generation is characterised by living patterns of noise, din and clutter. She intends to understand and decipher these patterns, with an attempt to churn out a silent order out of the chaos. In doing so, she seeks out for truth.
In her work that depicts a charpoy and an anthill crawling with ants, the inference is of things that are hidden, but lurk below the surface.
“At a glance, the objects in this painting may seem still. But on a closer look, the charpoy weaves a tapestry of hidden stories and, like an anthill, brims with micro-activities as represented by the movement of ants,” Mehta adds.
Apart from the paintings, there’s also a site-specific installation that flows in an algae-like form around the air-conditioning pipes in the gallery’s staircase. Titled “Flow,” the installation is made from wet towels painted with oil pigments and is a reference to the emotions that are raw and untamed and spread like algae.
Mehta’s paper works, full of playfulness and spontaneity, are equally muted and sparse in their appearance.
Her works have a tactile feeling. “I like to touch and feel the objects in front of me. If I can bring my object in my studio, I always do. Stones, sticks, sand, ladder and natural things will always find a place there. I love to go to my objects, live with them, observe them and understand their character,” she signs off.