Curriculum Vitae

Vasudha Thozhur is a painter who is currently based in Baroda. She was born in Mysore in 1956 and educated at the College of Arts and Crafts, Madras, and at the School of Art and Design, Croydon, UK. She worked in Madras for many years, between 1981 - 1997.

Besides participation in exhibitions in the country and abroad, institutional work has involved lectures/teaching/workshops as visiting faculty at MSU, Baroda, NID in Ahmedabad, and IICD, Jaipur.

A recent grant from the India Foundation for the Arts, Bangalore, supported a research project, ‘The Himmat Workshops’, that looked at ways of rooting art practice in ground realities as experienced in India. It involved collaborating with Himmat, an activist organization based in Vatva, Ahmedabad.

Other interests include writing, and music.

Chronology 2009 – 1996

In 2009

‘Bapu’ - an exhibition curated by Gayatri Sinha and shown at Saffronart, Bombay

In 2008

Workshop at the media lab, Uttarayan, Baroda.

Working on a new body of paintings through the year.

Seminar/workshop organized by Majlis, Bombay, at Pondicherry entitled ‘Logistics of Perceptions: Images from Contested Zones’

Residencies ( illustrated talks) at Vidyasagar Art Centre, Hyderabad, curated by Rasna Bhushan and supported by Max Mueller Bhavan and Alliance Francaise.

In 2007

Solo shows at Sakshi Gallery Mumbai and Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi.

New Narratives: Contemporary Art from India, curated by Betty Seid for the Chicago Cultural Centre.

Tiger by the Tail, curated by Elinor Gadon, Wendy Tarlow Kaplan and Roobina Karode for the Women’s Studies Research Centre, Brandeis University, Waltham (Massachusetts) US .

Horn Please: Narratives in Contemporary Indian Art, curated by Bernard Fibicher and Suman Gopinath, at the Kunstmuseum Bern, Switzerland.

Edge of Desire, curated by Chaitanya Sambrani, travels to NGMA, Bombay.

Experimenta 2007 ( Bangalore and Bombay): Screening of ‘Cutting Chai’, one of the films edited from video footage shot by the participants of the Himmat Workshops, a collaborative project funded by the India Foundation for the Arts.

Participation in group shows.

Has served as external examiner, Painting, MSU, since 2004.

In 2006

Residency at Khoj, New Delhi, to compile the output from the IFA funded project.

A package of six short videos were edited from footage shot by the participants, and a trial exhibit mounted at the Khoj premises in October. Audio-visual presentation at Khoj and at The School of Art and Aesthetics, JNU.

Edge of Desire travels to New Delhi and is shown at the NGMA.

Participation in group shows.

In 2005

Fieldwork, (in Vatva, Ahmedabad) in relationship to a collaborative project together with Himmat, an activist organization funded by the India Foundation for the Arts. The project aimed at building a visual archive, post - 2002, in different media, created by a group of survivors of the communal conflict early that year. This involved monthly trips to Ahmedabad between January 2005 – June 2006.

Lecture at Mica Mudra Institute, organized by the IFA.

In 2004

Traveling show “Edge of Desire: Recent Art in India” curated by Chaitanya Sambrani and supported by Art Gallery of Western Australia and The Asia Society, New York

Audio visual presentation at the Little Theatre, NCPA, Bombay.

Audio visual presentation at the UGC National Seminar “Issues of Art and Activism: the Artist and the Historian” at The Dept.of Art History and Aesthetics, MSU Baroda.

Grant from the India Foundation for the Arts for a collaborative project ‘ the Himmat Workshops’.

Visiting faculty at IICD, Jaipur between 2002 – 2004.

In 2003

‘Diverge’ curated by Geeta Kapur and Chaitanya Sambrani at the National Gallery of Modern Art, Bombay.

‘Sub-terrain’ curated by Geeta Kapur at the House of World Cultures, Berlin.

‘The Story of Five Posters’, at The Canberra Contemporary Art Space , as a guest exhibit in relationship to ‘Witnessing to Silence: Art and Human Rights’, an Australian National University Humanities Research Centre Project.

In 2002

‘The Banyan City’, Nazar Art Gallery, Baroda.

‘Transfigurations’, curated by Yashodhara Dalmia at the Habitat Centre, New Delhi.

‘Creative Space’, curated by Sakshi Gallery, at the Habitat Centre, New Delhi.

‘Voices Against Violence’, Faculty of Fine Arts, MSU, Baroda.

In 2001

Solo Show ‘Secret Life’, at Art Inc. Gallery, New Delhi and

Sakshi Gallery, Bangalore.

Visiting Faculty at NID, Ahmedabad.

TEACHING RESIDENCIES AND WORKSHOPS (selected) before 2001:

In 2000

Visiting artist (audio-visual presentations and tutorials) at art schools in France, in :
Cergy Pontoise
Caen
Tours
Le Havre
Chatellerault

In 1999

Workshop at the School of Architecture, Ahmedabad.

In 1998

Workshop in the Department of Painting, M.S. University, Baroda.

In 1996

Cumbria College of Art and Design, Carlisle.
Charlotte Mason College, Lancaster University, Ambleside.

GRANTS (selected) before 2001:

In 1996

French Government Scholarship.

Charles Wallace Grant to work at Gasworks Studios.

In 1989

Ministry of Culture Fellowship for Artists.

In 1988

Central Lalit Kala Akademi Research Grant.

ARTISTS' RESIDENCIES (selected) before 2001:

In 2000

Khoj International Artists’ Workshops, New Delhi.

In 1998

Kuona Trust (Nairobi National Museum), Kenya.

In 1996

Cite Internationale des Arts, Paris.
Shaddon Mills Visual Arts Centre, Carlisle.

Charlotte Mason College, Lancaster University, Ambleside.
Gasworks Studios, London.

Other interests include traveling, writing and music.

Untouchable

http://picasaweb.google.com/vasudhathozhur/Untouchable#

The following text collages fragments written over the years, since 2002.

It was compiled in February 2007, and is by no means complete.

February 2002

A Letter

In relationship to the conversation we had, some thoughts on what I am doing now - as a starting point? The best way to begin, as far as I am concerned - sorry about the length, but necessary for precision.

A run through -

My show in March 2001 was entitled Secret Life. The accompanying text in normal circumstances would have been in the form of a catalogue. Instead, I made an audio CD, of readings from my journals over four years, 1997-2001. They are reflections on work, life, anecdotes, bits of poetry, and other excerpts from my own writings; meant to be heard through headphones (in the gallery) so as not to intrude into viewing space. Not quite secret, but as something between two people.

They were also meant to make the vital connection between life and art, easy to forget during times like these when the kind of visibility demanded of the arts exerts a pressure to remain onstage till performance deteriorates into posturing. I was amazed that it was so much cheaper (!!!) than printing a catalogue - the visuals were the paintings themselves - a perfect solution to lack of funds.

My next body of work will be entitled Untouchable. The idea was spontaneous, but in India the term carries with it a heavy semantic load, focusing for the main part on caste taboos. I implicate these connotations but widen the context to include other forms of marginalization/ exclusion/ subordination. My thinking includes the notion of the 'untouchable' as someone who falls outside the hierarchy/convenience/status of classification but is used as an intermediary who provides access to the darker, mysterious forces of life (there are various social practices and interactions which bear out this relationship of the outcaste to society).

I have just completed the first painting in this series - framed within the familiar(in India) act of self-immolation. The context emanates from the self - a personal history which is partially narrated in symbols within the painting, possibly the most inscrutable area. The impulse is not initially an intellectual one, but one of those things which occurs in a flash, a visual flash in the context of painting, a vision to use a more dramatic word? The analysis comes later, but I notice increasingly that if the matrix/structure is strong, there is a convergence of perspectives, and I see it unfold through my practice. A collective reading is also possible through the use of images which in India would be identified across all economic and social hierarchies.

Revulsion and awe/worship render the object of either beyond access; extremes create dualities that actually collapse divisions and exclusions. Symbols of sati and other rituals of purification, rites of passage into states of deprivation, renunciation - the entry points are therefore multiple social, personal, topical, fantastic and historical, both in the artistic and temporal sense.

An arc of hands bearing stigmata spreads above the figure in benediction- hands/touch/heal/untouchable/redeem the unredeemable/ - touch - love or defile the sacred? Stigmata carry specific religious associations; there is an overlap with mudras as in classical dance.

Contentious ground, and I wouldn't take such liberties with an image other than my own.

The next painting - the self-image framed within the context of widowhood/sacrifice/loss of sexuality through the shaving of one's hair - part of a group of four, with the peacock as the central motif. The first panel is a piece of text; a letter, to be precise, in vermilion and gold.

The second panel is based on a press photograph, which appeared in the newspapers during the months after the earthquake in Gujarat, of a man whose hair is being shaved off by a barber in preparation for rituals of death and mourning. I have substituted my own image for his in the painting.

The third panel is a painting of a peacock.

As for the fourth - one of the most moving stories that I read early in 2001, during the aftermath of the earthquake, was of a young girl who was crushed under the debris of her own home. As rescuers toiled to pull her out, she scratched a plea on her bare leg, with a piece of the rubble - do not stop one who wishes to go.

The peacock as a national/notional bird is an intended cliché, I recalled later the fact of his being male. There are two broad aspects to this panel - one is personal loss, the other is the nation, or rather the play of forces that seeks to define it in exclusive terms - embodied by the aggressive display of opulent plumage, and the seduction that it intends.

The third painting will be constructed around the fountains of the Brindavan Gardens in Mysore, the city of my birth. And so on.

The clichés are as much ideas as repositories of brilliant colour. The 'catalogue' for this body of work will be a book/books of poems in braille, (it tends to be a lengthy affair, longer than the written word) also with the same title. They would be chronologically ordered, dating from 1995. Braille is written by puncturing the paper to produce an embossed script and can be read with the fingers, by touch, which also brings with it possibilities of healing. I do not seek to set a precedent, merely to materialize something which is intrinsically connected with the concepts that I work with.

I would through the course of my work make things which could possibly initiate a quest, as extensions of a larger, deliberate event such as a show. For me it would be a quest for a different conceptual space than the one created by mainstream practice, which is an assertive act - I exhibit my work and in a way demand its viewing, demand a critique. The objects/books/CDs which I will make will be limited in number and free from compulsion or self-consciousness of any kind. They would exist as authentic, subliminal records of processes related to work, but would in fact be easy to overlook; those wishing to access them might be put to some effort and the giving of time. The impulse which could actually prompt their discovery could be curiosity, or the conviction that it might be worth one's while to attempt to break the code - an open question, to which I have no answer. Of course it becomes possible to present these due to an existent viewership. The objects however are largely autonomous and from the moment of their completion increasingly independent of control - I set them free to go where they will, to remain undiscovered or to be found. Discovery would involve communication, not through confrontation but through compassion and understanding - and journeys into unfamiliar spaces. Like a treasure hunt. The personal property of whomsoever it may concern. They could be duplicated on demand.

I would like to work with recorded text transcribed into morse code. I have not yet decided on the text, the idea is still in formation. Have to see what it sounds like and in what way it would hold the attention, if it needs to be modified, additional inputs, voice? Would like to actually see the machine which produces the sounds, see where that would take me. The idea of working with outmoded technology interests me.

I make work from a routine which clarifies my senses and gives me peace, it is demanding of my life but will not kill it. Regenerative as opposed to degenerative. I would want it to remain that way.

September 2003

Lost Years: A Reconstruction is a portrait of Vishnu, my son - the missing component in Secret Life. It has developed from a complex set of associations - a photograph which Valsan, his father, took of him, and from Vishnu's stay in Mysore, my own birthplace. The fountain is one of the star attractions of the Brindavan Gardens just outside the city: the subject of many postcards, available in digitally enhanced colours, designed to attract tourists. It is also the site of magical memories from childhood: of nights, lights, chill sprays of water carried by the breeze, the sheer scale of the fountains and their landscaped surroundings.

In time, though physically related, it stands outside the earlier body of work, Secret Life. I had hoped to make it the predecessor to a project involving five children, survivors of the massacre at Naroda Patia, now rehabilitated in Vatva.

The project has run into trouble; the current series of paintings, entitled 'Untouchable', begun in 2001, continues. I had envisioned 'Vishnu' as a powerful strand which would strengthen other continuities between two succeeding bodies of work; the precise nature of this relationship will only be revealed in time.

There also arises the question of interpreting a loaded theme - one belonging to a cabaret of national proportions, spectacles of enticement, repeatedly, desperately paraded to gloss over extreme deprivation. How does one therefore paint, or choose to paint a fountain, a peacock? And why? With the many languages now at our disposal, given a particular kind of training, a set of skills which are irrevocably hybrid from a purist point of view, can one dare to look for an original impulse? How can one reclaim that fascination in the face of so much violence, and weave it into a narrative of wonders, intimately related to one's own life ?

January 2006

Of Journeys and Emptiness : A Painting in Thirteen Parts

(From a statement for a catalogue)

2005 - I began the year on a note of emptiness, wondering, for no immediate reason, where I in particular and artists in general fitted into the scheme of things.

My friends Robin and Ranjit were organizing an artists' workshop in Pachmarhi. I did not respond to the invitation initially, due to the demands of a recently initiated project. The time frame offered by most workshop situations does not correspond with my work process, nor with the concept of continuity and interconnectedness that supports this process.

I agreed to go however. I began with thinking in terms of long walks and treks, and of recording, in photographs, the paths that these would take. It seemed closest to the reality that I would experience in Pachmarhi.

I took along two boxes of small canvases measuring 1 foot by 1, in case I felt the need to paint.

My sketchbook began to fill with random images - landscapes, flora, fauna - a groping towards coherence in a situation that was empty of prior meaning. I decided to present them as they were, but rendered in paint, almost like studies.

On one of the walls in the courtyard beside my room was a chalk drawing of a strolling donkey followed by a trail of misaligned strokes, resembling question marks, each assigned a name - representing several unsuccessful attempts at pinning a tail to the donkey's backside, blindfolded. The remnants of a bygone birthday party - it seemed an apt metaphor. I spent an afternoon sketching it exactly the way that it was.

Put together like a set of 'hieroglyphs' as Pushpa put it, a story did indeed emerge.

I was reading a book about pigments at the time, entitled the Story of Colour. It was interesting to collate the text with the rock paintings of the region, and to work this relationship into the narrative.

The main keys are of course the primaries, in three frames, and moving through the others in a series of tonal variations. There are moments of dischord with the introduction of a sharper and more strident pitch - two old posters, digitally reconstructed, that I unearthed in the shops outside the Mahadev caves. The content is correspondingly potent.

On my return to Baroda I examined the photographs that I had taken. I was surprised. A parallel set of equations seemed to emerge, inclusive of the colour relationships - but one read love and the other, death.

September 2006

Four Ways of Reconstructing Pain

As far as the title is concerned - the idea of variations and multiple ways is in keeping with the possibility of accommodating differences, the inclusiveness that is also spelt out in the sequences that I work with.

At the Khoj International Artists'Workshop in 2000, I constructed four pieces collaged from layers of newspaper and nylon sarees from the local market at Modi Nagar on the outskirts of Delhi. They seemed to me like subaltern Tankas, as opposed to the silk/ brocade/material and sacred content of those traditional scrolls. I had intended to embed, in the centre, miniature portraits of the staff who maintained the Modi mansion where we were housed.

The two weeks that we had were insufficient, however, and the work remained incomplete for several years.

By 2005, I had completed four 'self-portraits' (not in the strict sense of the term, rather they were enhanced in order to extend beyond the personal into areas of common relevance) of epic proportions - in terms of physical dimensions as well as the range of experiences that were embedded in the imagery.

I had found the core - the iconography could be transferred from the painting and set in the heart of the scroll, amidst the maze of text and fabric. I wondered if it could be painted directly, or separately and then superimposed onto the surface. Neither would work, considering the state of deterioration the scrolls were in. The sheets were brittle and had begun to crumble, further, they were bulky and gathered dust. I had often thought of throwing them away.

Years ago, while traveling in Germany, I had visited an exhibit of a project documentation by students of one of the universities - I don't quite remember which one. It involved digital reconstructions and light projections of the synagogues that had been destroyed during the Nazi pogroms. To see them rise again in all their beauty, if only in reproduction - it is a memory that has stayed with me; I remember thinking even then that technology could retrace - as opposed to a ceaseless forward motion that never looks back - the path to 'progress' in order to discover value.

I decided to scan the scrolls directly, and restore the damaged areas digitally. The available scanner could not accommodate the size of the scroll; Azra (the technician) and I cut each piece into several sections, scanned them separately, and reassembled them on the computer. Strips of newspaper and fabric were extracted (on photoshop) from the original, in keeping with the manner in which the scrolls were originally made, and used to replace lost bits. The portraits were extracted from photographs of the paintings and superimposed.

A revelation - it was the layering, physical, temporal and in terms of memory as implied by the temporal - that was integral to the work, more that the medium itself, which was merely a means of rediscovering or affirming the concept and the process of its actualization, at a different point in time. Medium as an outward manifestation of inner process, which makes use of whatever is available in historical time; therefore divested of pre-eminence or hierarchy in terms of artistic value, or of the 'new'. The work itself something of a document that bears out the processes of its making - the term 'document', in this case, all the more significant considering the time involved - five years.

The work itself, though materialized digitally, is beyond medium. Through the process of layering strips of newspaper and fabric, pieces of text emerged or survived in a manner that created new meaning; one of them read - 're-casting cybermaps for the old economy'.

Sanctum: An Explanation

Sanctum is the title of a painting that I made as a student in 1979. One panel in the present group is a re-construction of that painting, it had been one of my favourites. Among the memories that it evokes is of hours spent at the Tate in London where I was studying at the time, and of wandering into the room with the Rothkos - and somehow linking it with the theoretical study that I had so recently left behind in India - of temple architecture in the south of the country. The plans had fascinated me, even visually, as plans: they revealed a structure which was somehow obscured in viewing the actual monument, by virtue of the sheer scale, weight, and the ornamentation encrusting the surface. They also revealed a philosophy and a spatial and sculptural organization that transformed movement through those spaces into enactments of passage.

I found a resonance, in the Rothko room, in the colours, the reds and maroons, and in the mysteriousness of the interior spaces from which they seemed to emanate.

The original painting has subsequently been destroyed by time, damp, and termites - and I wanted to bring it back to life.

In 1998, I had conducted a workshop at the School of Architecture in Ahmedabad, where we had worked around the idea of shadows; my contribution was an installation where I traced out the silhouettes of my hands, spelling out my name in sign language, one among those that are used by the hearing/speech impaired. I drove nails into the hands. Red beads, in the shape of drops, were suspended from the nails by pieces of string.

I had, at the time, recently moved to Baroda from Madras, and had been struck by the profusion of rust-red splashes on the walls of buildings - on staircase landings, convenient corners - caused by the habit of chewing paan and spitting (or rather squirting) out the juice.

I had, for long, wanted to make an artwork around that rather strong visual impression. I splashed red paint on the wall beneath the hands, and then nuanced it with another splash of gold - to create the duality of desecration/ worship, among other things. At that moment, a piece of saffron-coloured paper floated into the room and settled on the floor beneath. I pasted it on the ground, exactly where it lay, and splashed it with red/vermilion. I had taken a photograph of this installation and again, had been wanting to re-create it, as it would eventually be painted over.

The central panel is adapted from a photograph taken by a photographer and film-maker, Gottfried Junker, who spent a morning in my studio. I was seated on a dhurrie with an intricate pattern. Looking at it later, I wasn't quite sure how I would paint it, much of it was not really visible. When it finally worked itself through, it was a combination of attempted rendering, and tracings from the actual carpet which were printed on the canvas and then re-worked. Layers emerged, decorative as well as script-like – cobwebs, bits of tattered lace - like preserved but crumbling body tissues. I was facing a blank canvas in the photograph, which I covered with inscriptions that grew into a tree - a banyan tree with roots of blood.

Looking back, other correspondences emerge. At the time that I started working on the first panel (with the hands) early in 2005, I had completed a series of paintings which saw me through very painful times. I had also begun working on a public project which I saw as a vital responsibility. Unfulfilled, it would render my practice as a painter meaningless, and there still seemed such a long way to go. I needed to see some sort of manifestation of faith within my own studio as well, that forsaken space - a writing on the wall, even if it was nothing more profound than my name, nothing more than a pledge: Vasudha.

The photographer had appeared unexpectedly, leaving me with the beginnings of the second panel.

The sense of ease that I then began to feel enabled me to look back and reclaim other things of significance gathered but not quite resolved in earlier years. It was something of a triumph- with so much destroyed, that one could still regenerate the best from the worst, and watch it grow.

Himmat: Sequence of Workshops/Modules 2006-2007

http://picasaweb.google.com/vasudhathozhur/HimmatWorkshop02#

April 2006
Video Filming /Resource person :Johanna Hoyne

This module was conducted with the help of Johanna Hoyne, an art student from the Australian National University . The girls learnt how to handle a video camera, and created footage related to whatever was current in their lives – the plays that they had produced, learning to ride a bicycle, visiting the darga, interviewing each other about the project that they had been a part of. Six films have so far been edited from this footage, most of them of a documentary nature. The editing was done during a residency at Khoj Artists’ Workshops in Delhi . The longest film, ‘Cutting Chai’, is about visiting their homes in Faizal Park . It has been screened, independent of the other exhibits, by Vikalp in Bombay, and been selected for an experimental film festival, Experimenta 2007, to take place in March at Max Mueller Bhavan, Bangalore and Bombay.

May – June 2006
Embroidery on Fabric / Resource person :Santa Rakshit

This being the last formal session in terms of the sequential development of the project, the idea was to be able to translate the drawings, paintings, and other forms of visual output into motifs and narratives on fabric. They could then be sewn into cushion covers, curtains, wall hangings: functional household and other accessories that could be sold to generate an income. The girls learnt to work with the traditional kantha form of embroidery. An important aspect of this module is the originality of the motifs and other elements used, evolving as they did entirely from the girls’ work – thinking about the market does not necessarily preclude creative expression arising from the experiences of a community. They can in fact enter the commercial stream as personal expressions which have the added component of sustainability in the financial sense of the word, while still remaining an authentic record of an evolving cultural consciousness. We framed the cushion covers because they were rich in imagery and narrative.

September 2006
Completed four books using written documentation compiled via the project: The Story of Five Posters, Mahakali versus Megacity, The Project, and Bibi Tere Naam Himmat.

October 2006
The Quilts / Resource persons: Neha and Deepa Sharma
With the samplers that the girls had made while learning different stitches, and with pieces of hand block printed, vegetable dyed fabric, we created two quilts that are installed along with the other exhibits. Deepa Sharma runs a boutique, “Arankri’, in Delhi , which creates and sells vegetable dyed/hand-printed/ handwoven fabric products.

Sepember 2007
Paintings (for After-Images, at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda , curated by Ranjit Contractor)

A four-day workshop was conducted at the centre, and three paintings were exhibited at the show. Two were bought by Sakshi Gallery.
All the original pieces in this archive will be preserved as a resource from which things can emerge.

Himmat: Sequence of Workshops/Modules 2005

http://picasaweb.google.com/vasudhathozhur/HimmatWorkshop02#

January 2005

Posters
The first couple of sessions that we did dealt with colour – we started with marbling on
paper, some tie and dye, some drawing, printing with vegetables, collage with fabric – we made bookmarks combining the vegetable prints and fabric collage. There were sacks full of scraps of waste fabric at the Centre in which we used.

The girls were given notebooks that they could draw or write in, so they could keep records of the process.

We went on a visit to the Kanoria Art Centre, where we met Sharmila Sagara, who invited us to participate in the art festival that was scheduled for February. We also visited NID, where the staff took us around. We had the benefit of short demos in every department, and interactive meetings with the students.

Azra Khan came over from Baroda on the last day as a resource person and showed the girls how to make stationary, and showed them some simple book binding techniques.

With the output from the first session, these posters for the sale of garments which Himmat had organized in Bangalore and in Goa . Later, we sold six of these to Oxfam and with the proceeds, we started literacy classes for the girls. A local resource person, Shahana, was willing to conduct the classes, for an hour and a half every day.

The girls began their sessions and by May were able to sign their own names.

February 2005

Participation in Annual Festival of the Arts, Kanoria Art Centre, Ahmedabad
Madhubani painting / Resource person: Shatrughan Thakur
Batik with vegetable dyes /Resource person: Pravina Mahicha

The second session took place at the Kanoria Art Centre. We were invited to participate in the annual art festival there. Tahera, Rabia and Farzana were in the Madhubani workshop. The selection was made on the basis that the three had a reasonable good hand, and were more fluent with drawing than the others. It was conducted by Shatrughan Thakur. The idea was to use the Madhubani tradition as a teaching aid, to help them to arrange elements spatially, on a flat surface - the girl’s level of perception and expression of the physical world corresponded with the strong decorative sensibility of folk and tribal forms. They were also familiar with mehndi patterns, which appeared frequently in their drawings.

The other three, Tasleem, Shah Jehan and Rehana did batik with vegetable dyes with Pravina Mahicha. They were inhibited about drawing, and the medium and the dyeing process were intended give them a sense of freedom and tactility. They later did a three –day workshop with Shatrughan at the Centre.

April 2005
Fabric collage/Resource person :Sharifa

We were finally able to begin working in our own space upstairs, convenient for several reasons.
We began working with fabric, and Sharifa, one of the older women, was our resource person. She could work on the haat, was expert at embroidery and basic appliqué,
She showed us how to transfer our cartoons on to fabric, and guided the girls whenever they needed help.
We a made a set of purely experimental pieces, with appliqué and overlapping areas of transparent fabric. It was also an exercise in colour-mixing.
The work extended over two sessions, into May.

Fabric/Embroidery /Resource person: Roumanie Jaitley
We worked with the running stitch on a set of six pieces of fabric which were originally meant to be cushion covers, but they seemed significant in that the motifs were recurrent in most of their work. They are framed and presented in a manner that is in keeping with a more complex narrative.

May 2005
Mayday Rally Placards
1st of May coincided with Himmat’s birthday – there was a Mayday rally that Himmat was participating in. On the last day of April, the girls made a set of placards, very quickly, which were later taken out in procession. The slogans were composed by Monica Wahi.

June 2005
Collaborative Painting

The girls painted six small canvases, 1ft by 1, one each. In October 2006, at a residency in Khoj, New Delhi , I added seven more of my own. This was meant to be a partial fund - raiser for some of the framing that needed to be done for a trial exhibit in Delhi . The work was acquired by Vadehra Gallery: the proceeds distributed in a manner that works towards sustainability for all concerned.

June-July 2005
Ahmedabad Hamara / Resource person :Shahrukh Alam

Shahrukh Alam, a lawyer associated with Action Aid was involved with a stay order vis a vis the demolition of bastis in an area that is called Mahakali, after a mandir that is built there. We asked her if she could conduct a few sessions that would work towards rights - based empowerment. To begin with, she decided to do a film based module whereby the girls would learn to critique what they were exposed to in terms of advertising/media and the visual language in general.

Between June and July Shahrukh did six sessions with the girls.
A VCD was hired, and set up in the centre. Shahrukh screened different kinds of films - documentary, Bollywood, activist - there were discussions afterwards which were very lively. The discussions culminated in a set of collages, using old newspapers, magazines, around some specific themes – Ahmedabad Hamara ( a topic that the girls chose) from different perspectives – male, female, rich, poor. The collages were in the form of collections of photographs relating to these issues.

August 2005
Silk-screen printing / Resource person :Shatrughan Thakur

Tracings were made from the photo montages, the choice of images was left to the girls. This process simplified the forms. They were rearranged as compositions pertaining to the above topics; they were guided as to how to convert the completed drawing into a graphic black and white format suitable for silk screen reproduction. We were thinking in terms of an affordable graphic medium, requiring hand skills that the girls could learn.

The drawings were scanned and printed on transparent film. The image could then be transferred on to the screen through a simple photographic process.

Shatrughan Thakur offered to help us, as a resource person. Sharmila Sagara gave us permission to print at the studios at Kanoria Centre for the Arts. In September, we made six editions of 12 prints each. The posters are also about building a relationship with the city, and affirming a presence within it.

September 2005
Pen and ink drawings / Resource person: Shahana

We had developed a methodology –Shahana discussed issues with them during the literacy sessions, and helped them make small sketches in their notebooks. They also wrote about what they had drawn. They had developed a good understanding with her, based on shared experiences during and post – riots. One of the themes that they had worked on was the floods during the monsoons in 2005, they had drawn and written about the absence of a drainage system and the resulting difficulties.
During the screen printing session we made larger pen and ink drawings using the sketches as the basis.

September 2005
Paintings by Tahera and Farzana /Resource person :Santa Rakshit

Tahera and Farzana completed their printing session before the others, and one of the young artists working at the Kanoria Centre, Shanta Rakshit, took them out for some sketching and painting. Tahera made a painting of the façade of the School of Architecture , and Farzana of the sculpture on the grounds of the campus.

October 2005
Four ‘Pats’ / Resource person :Santa Rakshit

Santa Rakshit conducted a module with the girls, the theme chosen was ‘Mother’. They made scrolls in the tradition of the Bengal ‘pats’, and the narrative speaks of daily domestic routines, difficulties, struggle - also related to the aftermath of the riots of 2002 – looking for work, lining up outside the government office where the death certificates were issued, visiting injured relatives at the hospital.

15 Paintings / Resource person: Monica Wahi
Monica Wahi conducted a session with the girls – based on three questions that they were to ask each other in private. They made rough sketches based on what they told each other, about their families, details of their daily lives; and those who died during the carnage are included in the family portraits. Apart from other things, this was an exercise in bonding; the session would help to build closer relationships amongst the group.
Fifteen paintings were made on the basis of these drawings, in enamel paints (industrial) on canvas.

November 2005 -March 2006

The Drishti Fellowship / Resource person – Prem from Soumya Joshi’s troupe The girls won the Mirror Amdavad Fellowship ( for two months, to be followed by an exhibit/performance) after intensive interview sessions with Drishti. The concept combined painting with performance in the form of four long painted scrolls on canvas, the script of two plays written on four khadi scrolls. The plays developed from discussions within the group. Two broad themes emerged, one around the non-availability of water, the other around education. Prem, from Soumya Joshi’s troupe trained the girls for a few days. They were performed at the Centre. The scrolls were toured locally, in the neighbouring bastis, as a narrative piece, and also taken out on a rally. When mounted in an exhibition space, they take the form of an installation.