Jayasri Burman: Maker of myths and memories

A major new exhibition of the artist's work opens in Delhi, showing us the evolution of her thinking and style

- Somak Ghoshal

It's a chilly afternoon in January, the sky is overcast, but Jayasri Burman has a spring in her step as she walks into Art Alive Gallery, located off the busy Ring Road at a quiet and leafy south Delhi address. A major solo exhibition of hers titled The Whisper of Water, The Song of Stars is in the process of being installed as we meet—it opens to the public today—and it's a busy scene inside.

Stacks of paintings lie on the ground, resting against walls that are being sanded down and painted over by workers. A few large works are unsheathed from their plastic coverings. The 64-year-old artist directs me to a centrepiece in one room, occupying the better part of a wall, depicting a woman in a prospect of cowries and seashells.

"This painting is part of a series of my version of the samudra manthan," Burman says, referring to the mythical churning of the ocean as described in the Vishnu Purana. With her hair open, cascading down her shoulders in wild waves, the woman in the frame looks like Goddess Lakshmi, who emerged at the end of the great churn, guarding amrita, the elixir of life.

Equally, she could be a fantastical creature of the sea, maybe a mermaid or nymph whose existence is intimately tied up with corals and reefs, a figment of our collective imagination nurtured on old wives' tales we heard as children. There is also perhaps a reference to the depredations wrought on Mother Earth by humans, with the feminine force appearing like an oracle to warn us of destruction and annihilation.

"The late artist, Ganesh Pyne, once told me that there is no end to my explorations since I work with myths," Burman says. "Myths are like dreams, he said, they recur and become richer in our fantasies."