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Anjolie Ela Menon comes full circle as an artist
“I think I have a melancholic nature,” Anjolie Ela Menon says simply, responding to a question about the undercurrent of melancholy and contradictory impulses and emotions that runs through the showcase of her works presently on display at Vadehra Art Gallery, Defence Colony in the capital. The exhibition places on view some of her most recent works, painted over the last three years, and marks her return not only to the art scene after five long years, but also to her most loved artistic medium, oil on masonite. “Yes, in this particular show I return to my old love, oil on masonite, and the use of figuration as the compositional basis of my creative endeavour. This, after all the digressions and experiments of the last two decades, brings me full circle in a sense,” the artist affirms.
Aside from melancholy, she points out that nostalgia and a deliberate departure from normative aesthetics are also intrinsic aspects of the works on display, as they are of her larger body of work. “Nostalgia plays a big part in my oeuvre but is transmuted through the experiences and visual matrix of today ’ s inspira - tions. Also, some of the contradictions in impulses are deliberate. For instance, I do attempt in many of these works to escape the tendency to paint pictures that are ‘ too beautiful’. Aesthetics have dominated my work at a time when harmony and beauty had become almost dirty words! So now, I often try to deconstruct a painting, introducing a deliberate element of disturbance,” she explains. The collection of paintings in the exhibition also includes a few chosen from the artist’s “Divine Mothers” series , attempting to take a critical look at the way women are perceived in India. Menon elaborates, “In ‘ Divine Mothers’, I have painted figures such as Parvati and Ganesha, Mary and Jesus and so on. I am interested in examining the contradictions in our country’s approach towards women. While on the one hand we worship the Mother Goddess, the devi, on the other hand we also treat women as lesser beings.”
Talking about some of the other ideas that weave all the works in the showcase together, she says, “Another element reflected in these works is the influence of early photography, where an important event merited an important picture to chronicle or record it. This defines the large triptych ‘ Upanayanam’, which depicts the celebration of a little boy’s thread ceremony. Rites of passage are another recurring theme in my work.”
I am interested in examining the contradictions in our country’s
approach towards women.