Portraying Absence

Exhibits at a group art show in Kolkata examine existence in the absence

- Snigdhendu Bhattacharya

NEI Tai Khachchho, Thakle Kotahay Petey is an age-old Bengali riddle. It roughly translates to: You’re enjoying your meal because of an absence/where would you get it from if it were present?

How does absence impact presence? Dialectics in the Upanishads tell us that existence and void are inseparable. Karl Marx would say that you own more property because some people don’t. Does void create existence, just as existence vanishes into void?

In the case of painter-installation artist Shambhavi, the lost time and space of her childhood in a Bihar village grew deep roots in her mindscape as she moved to live and work in cities. The lost moments of standing beneath a tall palm tree and watching its leaves fall took the shape of an installation, recently displayed at a Kolkata exhibition.

Spread over one and a half walls in a dimly lit room, the seven falling leaves of different shapes, angles and shadows are frozen in motion. You stand there, you close your eyes, breathe and smell the silence, and you may rediscover your personal displacement from your native space, your own lost time buried in busyness. The very old, small Kali temple with a tiny door, nestled beneath the tall palm tree that remained etched in her memory does not appear in the work. It’s the slow-falling palm leaves that represent her whole experience.

Leaves fall and float, while the child witness remains lost in timelessness. Then, one day, the child is lost. The child loses her idyllic time and space because she must make good use of her time and find her own space. She loses herself and rediscovers herself in the absence. Whose absence? It’s about the return to the roots, the roots living in absence.