This season, Gallery Art & Aesthetic presents work from the studios of two young and observant women artists.
Pallavi Singh’s series Desire to be Desired explores her observations of male vanity and the conditions that feed it. Punctuating the generation of the millennials is easier and faster access to information resulting in renewed socialization and an increased interest in one’s self-image. Singh breaks away from the stereotype by focusing on the urban male to whom fashion and grooming are an important norm. A middle–aged potbellied bald man is her choice of protagonist, comically represented fussing over his physical appearance. The comment is intended to be both realistic and ironic, with Singh ensuring that the viewer steps aside from the work wearing a smile.
Pallavi Singh (b. 1988) graduated with a Masters in Fine Art from the Delhi College of Art in 2011. She has been greatly influenced by English journalist and writer Mark Simpson’s writings on metrosexuality and her correspondence with him has helped develop her sensibilities in art. Her continuing research explores the specified rules of appearance and costume amongst men in Indian mythology and fables. The artist lives and works in Delhi.
Soghra Khurasani’s work on the other hand, is about freedom of thought and draws from a deep angst against unjust social and religious prescriptions. Her large-scale prints are compositions dominated by red: a colour that she feels expresses her rage and despair at the redundant injunctions imposed on common people. By morphing cells of blood into roses through valleys and volcanoes, her art posits the bittersweet moments of free will that survive the hypocrisy and politics of institutions governing our lives. Khurasani’s current series Silent Landscapes reveals a resistance to violence and the telling impact of its trauma in rows, swirls and circles that inform the viewer of a never-ending cycle of repression and defiance.
Soghra Khurasani (b. 1983) graduated with a Masters in Printmaking from MSU, Baroda in 2010. Sensitive to the effects of power play and mass control, she observes and gives voice to minority groups who are constantly shuffled as per the changes in dominant ideology. The etching and stamping of the printmaking process resonates her wish to push aside social stigma and stereotypes, making way for independent and fresh thinking.The artist lives and works in Baroda.