Anju Dodiya creates disquieting worlds

Artist Anju Dodiya discusses the ideas, influences and inspiration behind her new solo show, 'The Geometry of Ash'

- Shweta Upadhyay

In her ongoing solo, The Geometry of Ash, at Mumbai's Chemould Prescott Road, artist Anju Dodiya evokes a post-apocalyptic landscape—one featuring fragments and residue in the aftermath of loss and destruction.

But there are also gestures of hope in the form of women reading or relishing a moment of respite before a traumatic event. In the work, The Geometry of Ash, from which the show takes its title, the viewer can see a woman pointing at something, and beneath her hand is a square outlined with charcoal. It looks like a portal of escape.

On view till 26 December, Dodiya's large fabric-on-board works, with compartments or rooms, make use of interconnected narratives to create fractured landscapes of loss and renewal. The use of charcoal with watercolour lends an ash-like hue to the works. The Geometry of Ash also features smaller works on paper, which Dodiya calls "peripheral drawings".

In an interview with Lounge, the artist discusses creating a nonlinear narrative, dividing the pictorial space up and the symbolic use of trees in the paintings. Edited excerpts:

In the work The Geometry of Ash, the portal started as an image that was going to be a labyrinth. When you remove the inner courtyards of the labyrinth, it becomes a portal. At the same time, because of the black paint, the work looks like ash. While making this body of work, I was thinking about the absurdity of life. We talk about loving trees. To fight deforestation, you plant little pots in your garden. You do little gestures, which are very human and seem perfect. But the absurdity is that olive trees, which are more than thousands of years old, have been wiped out in Gaza. That's the sort of imbalance in the lives we lead. We can't stop making useful gestures. You're constantly under threat, but you can't possibly give up.

There are a lot of trees in the show. For instance, in 'Log Women', you show women holding trees in a protective gesture.