Me-mom
October 17 - November 15, 2008
Tanujaa Rane is a printmaker, who has pursued the technique
of etching today with a meticulousness that is rare in today's
world of art production.
Printmaking is a subject that several artists take up while
in art school, but the continued practice is now somewhat rare.
Making of prints is time-consuming; it can be expensive and
laborious. In India the concept of having studios where specialized
printmakers help the artists to produce limited edition, hand-pulled
editions, is also unknown. A hand-cranked printing press takes
up studio space that one might not have to spare. All these
combined factors make the medium a rarity in the art world of
contemporary India.
Tanujaa faces all the travails mentioned above, but continues
to makes etchings despite that. Although prints need to fit
into a fixed paper size that a machine is able to take, Tanujaa
extends her imagery way beyond that. She is ambitious in scale,
and makes prints that extend into 4 parts, 8 parts and even
16 parts. The imagery moves from one sheet of paper into another,
extending the story, constructing panels and grids that lead
the eye from one onto another.
In the current body of work, titled, Me-Mom, Tanujaa becomes
the narrator of stories, of myths, and of legends from the past
to her new-born son. But she also becomes the one affected by
the depth of cosmic power that his presence awakens in her.
Stories of leadership, of good vs bad, and of assiduousness
are told through popular tales. Her son listens intently and
wisely, but is the all-knowing from another world.
She seizes on what is a precious time: before her son begins
speaking. From then the dialogue will be moved into the realm
of questions and answers, questions of the details of the world,
questions that will cloud the directness and transcendence of
fables and myths.
In Pink Horse, the story begins with the audacities and inextricable
dark sides of life being juxtaposed with the plush comforts
of childhood. On one side of the piece: a stuffed pink horse,
on the other, its counterpart on the battlefield. The plush
source of comfort becomes the harbinger of destruction: a blotted
out image of a horse in battle pulling the chariot of Krishna
and Arjuna into battle. The piece functions to introduce her
new-born son to the absurdity of destruction in the world: in
sharp focus are insects battling to a senseless death not for
food but for hate, a battle continually mirrored in the wars
of human history. But on closer inspection the viewer finds
the image of Krishna, the divine authority, guiding the seeming
chaos. We can imagine this baby-boy, this angel from another
world, clutching his comfortable plaything as he slowly becomes
aware of its role too in the ugliness of the world, but a world
none the less ruled by the laws of the divine.
The limits of our knowledge are approached in Dinosaur, where
Tanujaa communicates to her son a multifaceted meaning: the
need for imagination, and the fleeting manner of our existence.
In a sense she wishes to tell a very straightforward story:
these huge reptiles roamed the earth millions of years before
we did. But she also seeks to communicate something else: what
do we really know of this time? All we have left is bones from
an entire world that came before us, and from these bones imagination
has brought to life an entire story of which we have no real
knowledge. She seeks to communicate the poetry and wonder of
such a situation.
In Lion Emperor, she speaks of leadership. Seated in an old
carved South Indian Maharaja's chair sits a stoic lion, above
him, a crown floats in the air. In a world of Prime Ministers,
Legislators, Parliments, and Presidents, instead of Maharaja's
and Kings, the crown will no longer be worn. The crown exists,
but it is no ones to posses.
In Target, Tanujaa revisits the familiar tale of the tortoise
and the hare, and a lesson in discipline and patience emerges.
The hares, in their haste, loose their forms, disappearing into
clouds. They appear everywhere, but touch one and they vanish.
Their eyes look back at the detailed image of the tortoise,
worried for what lies behind them, and in their fury they miss
the colourful, opaque target, flying beyond where they set out
to reach.
The last two pieces in the series, Me-Mom and He-Dad, have evolved
from doing the work itself. They speak to the difficulty of
living up to our own expectations of ourselves; of the mechanizations
of the artists own emotions, and her yearnings to return to
time spent out of time with her son. It speaks of her own misgivings
of her life becoming too robotic, special moments and special
feelings shared with her son being brushed aside in the name
of getting her work done.
She realizes in time, that in narrating these tales, she the
mother, and her husband, the father, (Me-Mom and He-Dad) become
mechanized receptacles of events of the past. He Dad carries
on him a powerful tool that exists outside the definition of
weapon or magic wand, but as some sort of manifestation of the
power of the head of the family: representing his seemingly
magical powers to protect and to make wishes come true.
Tanujaa looks ironically at her role as a parent through the
stories she tells. The legends carry their own satire, where
the all-powerful lion awaits his crown, the racing hares "miss
the point", the transformation of the horse from the battlefield
to soft-toy. The "all knowing parent" gets reduced
to a robot looking to her newborn for wisdom and clarity. Her
son is the star that comes from a very different world - a cosmic
world of abstraction and creativity and carries with him the
universe within.
It is now her turn to listen to him.
View Works 
