by Bryant Rousseau
After concluding our sit-down interview with Atul Dodiya in the offices of his New York gallery, Bodhi Art, the Indian artist took us on a tour of his current exhibition there, “The Wet Sleeves of My Paper Robe (Sabari in Her Youth: After Nandalal Bose).”
Dodiya created the 30 or so works on view—very-mixed-media works on paper—during a residency at the Singapore Tyler Print Institute. During his six-week stay there, he collaborated with American papermaker Richard Hungerford, learning to make and manipulate the paper pulp that dominates the works.
We stopped to discuss in depth two of the works—all of which were inspired by the Ramayana, the Hindu epic which features as its main characters the hero Lord Ram; his kidnapped wife, Sita; and Ravana, the demon king who has stolen Sita. The Sabari of the title is a minor character, a woman who grows old waiting for one chance to greet Lord Ram before dying.
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Our personal favorite in the show, we told Dodiya, was Day After Day (2005; 66" x 52"; cotton shirt, paper pulp, pigment, vine charcoal sticks, screenprinting ink, Kozo paper, carbon toner, acrylic paint, watercolor, handmade STPI cotton and linen paper).
Pausing in front of the work, he explained, “This was one of the first works in the series, when I was doing diverse experiments with the technique of paper pulp. It’s when I was first told I could [embed] charcoal sticks in these works if I wanted to.
“The female figure that you see came much later. It began as the image of the inverted tree, where the roots were upstairs, as if the tree had fallen.”
And the decision to show the female nude, lying at the base of the base of the tree, with seven breasts?
“The figure has seven breasts to depict her motherliness. If I had depicted only two breasts—plus showing the vagina, as I do—the figure would be more sensual. But by giving her seven breasts, she becomes the mother figure in a kind of epic way.”
The red that dominates the center portion of the work, we noted, was a recurring color throughout the series. Was it meant to symbolize blood?
“Yes, in my head, the red mostly is in the context for blood stains and violence.”
We pointed out that in our earlier interview, he had said the shirts that are so common in these works are a stand in for Lord Ram. Is that the case here, we wanted to know?
“No, in this case, it’s just a bucket for the tree,” Dodiya laughed.
Many of the works in the exhibition, we observed, include either screenprints or paintings of birds.
“Yes, the birds I still have not yet resolved. Someday I’ll do a whole series about just birds.” But the relation of the birds to Sabari? “Sabari left home, and she renounced her family and everyone. And in doing so, she almost became a part of nature; she would talk to birds. Of course, the images of birds also represent the lightness and beauty of the whole series.”
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We moved on to another work, Portrait of Ravana (2005; 66" x 52"; gold leaf, Tyvek, acrylic paint, synthetic hair, cotton shirts, paper pulp, flocking, screenprinting, cast paper, handmade STPI cotton and linen paper).
Many of the works in the series, we observed, are compositionally quite dense. But this work is much looser.
“That was part of the collaborative aspect of the works,” Dodiya said. “Being Indian, I tend to do everything too much, talking too much, too much color, too much form,” he laughed. “With this work, I worried there was too much white, that I needed to put in more color. But [printmaker] Richard [Hungerford] told me, ‘No, there’s no need for more, who told you that? It’s fine, leave it. You don’t have to have too much.’”
Like at least a half dozen other works on view, this Portrait of Ravana includes synthetic hair. In this particular work, Dodiya explained, the hair represents Sita being whisked into the sky in Ravana’s chariot, her locks trailing behind. In some of the other works, he added, the hair represents Sabari. But Dodiya said the hair is also a more general homage to the woman of India, whom he said, despite definite recent advances, still suffer political, religious and cultural suppression.
And those 10 label-bearing shirts lined up along one side? “Ravana had 10 heads, so I used 10 shirts.” Keeping the labels visible, he said, “add a contemporary touch.” The blood-dripping sword completes this portrait of the demon king.
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