Twist in the Tale

Four alumna from MSU—Deepjyoti Kalita,Kartik Sood,Nityananda Ojha and Siddhartha Kararwal will be showcasing their new media art works at Bhavna Kakar’s gallery,Latitude 28,at Lado Sarai in an exhibition titled Urban Testimonies. Their feisty comments on their generation and times will be on display from July 17 to August 18. They have used unusual devices like LED lights,timers,sensors and video projections,along with discarded junk jewellery and M-seal to create art which seems deceptively high-tech.

“The Baroda school of art has always focused on the contemporary and have never let one interpret tradition as getting stuck in a rut,” says 23-year-old Kartik Sood,who lives between three cities: Shimla,Delhi,and Baroda. The nephew of renowned print-maker and graphic artist Anupam Sood,Kartik says he has spent considerable time in shaping his own style. “My work refers to our cultural context and how our traditional past intermingles with the the global. I try to discover this through human intimacy,” says Sood,whose installation Plucking at the Heart Strings consists of ten lit photo-frames collected by the artists in the past 7 to 8 years. The frames are arranged in the shape of a circuit and flicker on only for a split second. “These images have been lurking in my memory and they touch my heartstrings but they only last for a split second,” says Sood.

For Kalita it is “the stillness and steadiness of painting” which inspired him to work with stop motion. “I’m also interested in creating a kind of three-dimensional experience that would make the works more dynamic,” says the 26-year-old artist,whose work Decode is an assemblage of fiberglass,paper and programmed LED lights.

Kararwal’s artwork is perhaps the most intriguing. The young artist dresses up as Kalki,a character in a spacesuit and a set of dentures and smiles at the viewer in an unsettling manner through his helmet. The 26-year-old shot a series of images of himself as Kalki in a dump-yard in Baroda,which will be on display at the show. “I interacted with the locals who work in the chemical factories and dump-yards as Kalki. I spent 2-3 days shooting,” says the artist who has also created a comic book around Kalki. “He lands up at all the abandoned places to discovers earth,” laughs the artist,tongue firmly in cheek.

The exhibition will be on from July 17 till August 18. For details,contact: 011-46791111