Hope, feathers and Indian artist
KARACHI: “I’m not a political artist. Some artists are. I’m not. Extremism in any form, anywhere, is not right. The fact that I’m exhibiting my work in Pakistan is special.”
This is what Indian artist Manisha Gera Baswani said in response to a question about the current wave of extremism in India at the opening of an exhibition of her artworks at the Sanat Gallery on Wednesday. The title of her show is ‘Hope is the thing with feathers’ taken from an Emily Dickinson poem. The fact that the artist disassociates herself from political goings-on and uses ‘hope’ as the central theme of her work indicates she harbours a fair degree of optimism vis-à-vis humanity and nature. Looking at her paintings on display at the gallery lends credence to this observation to a reasonable extent.
Early on in the show the viewer confronts ‘Travelnama’ (tea water, watercolour and gouache on paper). It is the first clue to Manisha’s world view, not in the geographical sense though. It is something that she feels on a personal level. The cartographic hint of sorts speaks of an individual’s trajectory — physical and psychological.