It is not easy to classify or compartmentalize Meera Devidayal. She has been termed a feminist and more so a Kitsch artist. But she does not appreciate any of these tags. For this sensitive artist, her deep artistic sensibility rooted to the social concerns is a yardstick for gauging herself.
Devidayal's artistic choices place her in a definite narrative of Indian art. She was one of those artists from the early seventies who reacted to the strict high modernism of their predecessors by exploring popular and kitsch imagery. Unlike most of her contemporaries, she remains isolated because she has charted her own journey and formed her own agenda. She has chosen rather not to be associated with the self-conscious avant-garde groups of her times. She has relied on her personal experiences and, in the process, has evolved and matured, as an individual and as an artist.
However, she is quick to note that there is a clear emerging trend involving more and more contemporary Indian artists who are now making the adept use of the elements of kitsch in their works. Kitsch elements are resurfacing, and are well on the way to be part of the mainstream art, as she points out.
She adds to say: "When I started off in the 1970s, my interest was kitsch or urban folk art, expressed in so many different ways in India - on buildings, in shops, in living rooms. Since then I have portrayed different simmering issues of modern life as my horizons have widened."
Color, texture and tone are of importance for this artist; yet the pictures are not merely ornamental. They may be read at many levels and are intended to disturb you. Meera Devidayal believes that there need not be one particular message or meaning in a work. Perhaps a picture should evoke diverse emotion in different people and be read on many distinct levels.
For example, a disturbing diptych by the artist portrays a sheet covered corpse and the exposed legs of a girl, presented behind barbed wire that separates the viewers from the subject. It raises perplexing questions regarding its meaning and significance. Equally perturbing is a painting of a reclining woman; is she merely relaxing; is she asleep; is she perhaps dead? It seems the ambiguity is intentional.
Born in March 1947, Meera Devidayal completed her graduation in English Literature from Loreto Convent, Kolkata in 1966. She preferred to study art privately since in those days, art education was not an attractive proposition. Her formal training in fine art was only in 1969 after she married and came to Mumbai. She studied at the Sir J.J. School of Art for three years, and then switched to a part time course.
Homes with intricately painted doors; windows and verandahs with patchworks of pealed paint earlier dominated her paintings, mostly set in an urban environment. Rich colors and feminist overtures dominate her canvas. Her paintings depict the man-woman relationship, sometimes in harmony and often in conflict. She easily identifies with feminist themes - whether it is in the form of women sitting semi-nude with a sewing machine; stitching flowers on a dress or a complete nude just being herself oblivious of a hand with a knife in one corner.
Her show "The Secret Garden" in 1998 based on this theme was well received. The Secret Garden, according to the artist, is a place where beauty blooms in unexpected corners, where fragments evoke by implications, the workings of the heart. Another series of works - Woman's Body: Site of Contestation - that was exhibited in 1995 is a sort of sardonic comment on the work of generations of male artists who had painted the subject of woman and womanhood. Critics term her exploration of the relationship between men and women as a feminist statement.
But she is not restricted to feminist issues. She has raised pointed objections to other social maladies. In one of her works, she has taken a hard look at gambling during Diwali juxtaposing it with exploitation of children in firecracker factories. In her set of pictures on the tenements of Mumbai, she employs mixed media on paper. She cut out film images of couples to create bright spots in otherwise dreary life. The pictures appear to contrast dreams, expectations and romanticism with the harsh reality of chawl life.
Among her most recent shows is "Brahma to Bapu; Icons and symbols in Indian art" at the Centre for International Art (CIMA), Kolkata in November 2002. The artist has exhibited extensively in India and abroad. She lives and works in Mumbai.
Meera Devidayal's latest body of works titled "Dream-Home" captures the quest for that lovely abode that can often drive us to despair. The exhibition is on at Gallery Chemould in Mumbai till March 28, 2003.
(Profile by Saffronart)
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