CURATORIAL NOTE

 CURATORIAL NOTE

The worldview is drifting and so is the scenario with the arrival and threat of an invisible virus. Our world has undergone lockdowns confining humanity and limiting them within boxes and compartments forcefully. Since our life is more enclosed than open now, are we becoming more self-centered and self-concentrated? Are isolation and confinement playing a definitive role in modelling-remodelling our behaviour and responses? Are we being unconsciously conditioned to the chaos and mayhem outside and internalizing it in ways we don’t yet understand fully? Are we still social animals? Is humanity dying or are we resurrecting? Is this a second coming? We delve deeper into this and more…no solutions provided though.

At a time of pandemic like this, it is but natural to fall back on despair, negativity and meaninglessness of life. All the same, we also see a good number of us treading the path of our imaginative spaces to counter the dilemma, the frustration, the availability of time like never before and so much more particularly for those specifically engaged in the art process/creative fields. Digital/virtual mediums offer much more fluid dynamics than the physical ones right now. Everything is evolving and taking a new format and so are the varied online exhibitions and webinars among many others happening all across the world.

“Ignite–from within the confines-” stemmed from my love for art and literature particularly painting and poetry in this context. It also emerged from the need to address the current situation in our own way leaving an imprint of today’s times for tomorrow. The current times are stirring up people and their minds in ways like never before – realizing, revealing, questioning, and pondering, on aspects of life, work, family, togetherness and what not. It is our responses, reactions to the pandemic and our creativity that is borne from the restrictions and limitations of the current system. All these were prominent in the works currently created by almost all creatives whatever the genre. So I thought of bringing together my two loves and collaborate with artists and poets to form an amalgamation of art and poems.

I present to you 8 artists and 8 poets who have tried to IGNITE – from within the confines – for this particular online collaboration. Each poet was assigned an artist and they were requested to write at least one poem or a maximum of five poems based on one or all five artworks. This collaboration, however, enabled a dialogue amid the artists and poets opening up new conversations and channels and obviously igniting new ideas and thought-processes. We function in different ways and what we gather is unique having a signature of our own. One can see effervescent to sage-like voices here, minimal to utmost, sober and melancholic to funnily apprehensive, futuristic and political. The warp and weft of our situations, environment, memories, feelings and thought-processes have helped spread a pattern of seeming uniformity aloft the chaos. turmoil and torment of the pandemic.

Artists: Ahlam Abbas, Anindita Chakraborty, Devan Madangarly, German Fernandez, Lauren Rudolph, Liz Ramos-Prado, Yamini Mohan and Deepa Gopal.

Poets: Ardra Manasi, Ellora Mishra, Gitanjali Kolanad, Joseph Schreiber, Mini S Menon, Namratha Varadharajan, Radha Gomaty and Sonia Dogra.

  

The Collaboration:

Artists                                                                           Poets

   Ahlam Abbas (Beirut, Lebanon)                                Sonia Dogra (Delhi, India)

                      Anindita Chakraborty (Hyderabad, India)                  Radha Gomaty (Kerala, India)

        Deepa Gopal (Kerala/Dubai)                            Ardra Manasi (Kerala/Manhattan)

            Devan Madangarly (Kerala/India)               Namratha Varadharajan (Bangalore, India)

     German Fernandez (Peru/Dubai)                      Joseph Schreiber (Calgary, Canada)

           Lauren Rudolph (New York)                          Ellora Mishra (Bhubaneswar/ Hague)

       Liz Ramos-Prado (Peru/London)                      Gitanjali Kolanad (Toronto, Canada)

  Yamini Mohan (Kerala/Dubai)                               Mini S Menon (Kerala, India)

Thanks to our Video Editor - Anoushka Sunil (@v1ntagefilm), and our Graphic Designer - Vibhin P C (@vibhin_pc). 

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Curated by Deepa Gopal/ Oct 2020

About Deepa Gopal

Born in India and currently residing in Dubai, Deepa Gopal, is a visual artist and an art blogger. She blogs at Hues n Shades.  She loves working with a range of mediums like acrylics, gouache, watercolour, pen & ink, mixed media, and charcoal; most of her paintings are coupled with her own Haiku/micro poems as titles. She has done her Masters in English Language and Literature and is currently working as a freelance visual artist-art blogger and has displayed her works in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, U.S and in India.