reena saini kallat

With a range of painterly interests that has enveloped politics, femininity, and evolutions in the human condition, Reena Saini Kallat’s artistic practice images the popular and iconic with conscious attention to historical and contemporary narratives. Since graduating from the J.J. School of Art with a B.F.A. in painting in 1996, Kallat has held numerous exhibitions in India and abroad, and lives and works in Mumbai.

In her inaugural solo exhibition, “Orchard of Home-grown secrets,” held in Bombay at Gallery Chemould and Pundole Art Gallery in 1998, Kallat engaged issues of home and identity in mixed-media architectural constructions, which were presented alongside paintings of figural elements and household objects. For “Skin,” an exhibition held in Delhi and at Gallery Chemould, 2000, Kallat alternated saturated, focused imagery and distanced abstractions of organic structures like ‘gastropede molluscs’ and ‘moss gardens.’ An ongoing theme in her work since then, these works questioned how resolved, prettied surface appearances can belie the problems for many in procuring basic necessities like food and shelter.

Overtly political concerns emerged in Kallat’s 2002 Bangalore exhibition, “The Battlefield is the Mind,” in which the artist integrated images of historical public figures, traditional symbols like a raised hand and lotus, and iconic Indian goddesses and images of nude women sourced from the Internet. “Hard Copy,” a joint 2003 exhibition with Jitish Kallat in Calcutta, developed the trope of violence and aggression in Liquid Air, a 22-piece portfolio of assorted Mughal daggers and modern weapons bracketed by two palms facing us in the fear-not gesture, abhaya mudra. Her series’ Liquid Flame and Triad Tautologies, for the same exhibition, translated common representations of female deities into reinvented icons, re-inscribed with the burdens of contemporary politics.

In “Black Flute,” Gallery Chemould, 2004, reprised as “Black Flute (and other Stories)” in Delhi, 2005, Kallat juxtaposed her ongoing interrogation of portraiture and iconicity with paintings of faces set atop internal organs and personalized attributes - often weapons painted in individual horizontal registers. “Rainbow of Refuse,” a 2006 exhibition in Bombay, broadened similar themes and introduced large-scale sculptural projects like Memoria Corona (2006) that engaged with history and post-colonial identity.

Beth Citron