The quilt as a landscape for stories of the body

In her new show, Bhasha Chakrabarti examines the connections between textiles and memories of the body

- Avantika Bhuyan

Bhasha Chakrabarti's images conceal and reveal at the same time. In Karvat-The Turn (Night), at first you can see a heap of wrinkled quilts. But as you go closer, you perceive a body cocooned within, with its feet peeping out. There is a sense of intimacy—even sensuousness—to the visual created by the artist this year with oil on linen, natural pigments, used clothing, fabric and fibreglass. This feeling, perhaps, would not have been as strong if the entire body had been exposed to the viewer.

In another part of the exhibition space, pieces of found furniture have been transformed into musical sculptures. Titled, Ajaibghar series, the act of pulling and pushing at a cabinet or almirah, reveals paintings and traces of Hindustani music from within.

The Ajaibghar series is being shown for the first time at Experimenter Colaba as part of Chakrabarti's exhibition, Karvat, which is her first solo in this Mumbai space. The show is on view till 20 December. "My practice is generally about exposure in a lot of ways. Some of the pieces that I do are explicit, revealing the whole body," says the artist, who is based in New Haven, US.

"In this set of works, however, bodies are covered with only a partial view. It is interesting to me, the way a covered body can feel more exposed while the exposed body can feel more opaque in some ways."

INSPIRED BY ISMAT CHUGHTAI

Textiles play a huge role in Chakrabarti's practice, and the artist calls herself primarily a "quiltmaker". According to the gallery note, she uses textiles in multiple and synchronous forms: as a support and a subject matter in painting, as a wrapping and a surrogate for skin, and as a metaphorical container for human entanglements throughout histories of oppression and liberation.