Unfoldings: The Route Map of Experience, a solo by Jayashree Chakravarty is presented by Akar Prakar, India, in collaboration with Asia Week New York (online), and KNMA, as venue partner. In the words of artist Jayashree Chakravarty, “This particular work, when I see it now, after almost eighteen years, I am pleasantly surprised because of the continuous imagery that I spread out in a very painterly way. The idea I worked with, was that I wanted to paint a land that can always stand in front of me. I was immersed in the act of painting and drawing simultaneously, indulging the over-all surface and its texture, overlapping close and distant views, memories echoing words in the encircling form. In making this, I wanted to create a kind of an interior space, an evocation of a sheltering cave or a womb.

Unfoldings: The Route Map of Experience | Jayashree Chakravarty

March 11 - April 15, 2021

KNMA-NOIDA

Unfoldings: The Route Map of Experience, a solo by Jayashree Chakravarty is presented by Akar Prakar, India, in collaboration with Asia Week New York (online), and KNMA, as venue partner. In the words of artist Jayashree Chakravarty, “This particular work, when I see it now, after almost eighteen years, I am pleasantly surprised because of the continuous imagery that I spread out in a very painterly way. The idea I worked with, was that I wanted to paint a land that can always stand in front of me. I was immersed in the act of painting and drawing simultaneously, indulging the over-all surface and its texture, overlapping close and distant views, memories echoing words in the encircling form. In making this, I wanted to create a kind of an interior space, an evocation of a sheltering cave or a womb.

Roobina Karode, Director and Chief Curator of KNMA, who has previously curated the practice of Jayashree Chakravarty at the Musée des arts asiatiques, Nice, and at the Musee Guimet in Paris, writes, “Jayashree’s works are experiential - they invite touch, the immersion of the body and senses into the enveloping/unfolding monumental form. In this work done in 2002-3, she creates her handmade paper scroll stretched long to paint on an expansive continuous surface. The nearly sixty feet shape shifting wall-like structure made from the composite of different kinds of paper and fabric pieces, superimposed and glued, invites us, the viewers, into its enveloping space with an interior chamber. The work gradually reveals its various layers and overlapping imagery of the flux of life around us.”

Karode adds, “It is indeed fascinating to see her work with a mobile vantage point, animating the gestural flow of whirling spaces painted on both sides of the scroll. What is worth noting in this particular work is how she has assimilated raw textures and colours of building material - stone, brick and mortar as well as those of earth, soot, limonite and red ochre found in natural shelters.”

KNMA Chairperson Kiran Nadar says: “I really enjoy the way Jayashree responds and creates spaces in and around her work.  Her imagery is evocative and affective. It draws the viewer into her multi-layered world. One is lost in the moving and swirling of images that seem to rise and collapse in her monumental scrolls, a remarkable invention in her distinct art practice.”