Shakuntala Kulkarni
Stuck in the shadow, 2021
Charcoal on handmade khadi paper
49.5 x 35.5 x 1.74 in
125.7 x 90.2 x 4.4 cm
125.7 x 90.2 x 4.4 cm
Confined within her home, discovering large handmade paper and charcoal pencils in her studio, these materials were a (surprise) gift for Shakuntala Kulkarni between 2020 and 2021. Previously there was never...
Confined within her home, discovering large handmade paper and charcoal pencils in her studio, these materials were a (surprise) gift for Shakuntala Kulkarni between 2020 and 2021. Previously there was never a definitive plan for what she would use these materials for. In the months of lockdown, there was a new purpose in them.
She started by pinning these large sheets and began to make rough forms. She began by drawing the bodies of women who had passed their prime - bodies that made new shapes: sagging breasts, stomachs swelled – the charcoal along with the space the large white sheets provided, allowed for voluminous forms!
This is when those forms invited her to dress them up! For a long time Kulkarni would be looking at the work of the well known Japanese designers, Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto, she loved the clothes of Alexander McQueen. She went back to several of Rei and Yohji early collaborations. In one of their Paris shows, she was stunned by their use of black. Sharp forms, sometimes bulging, sometimes ballooned - they felt as if floating in space. The black charcoal came to instant rescue aiding the costumes that her women began to dress in – with their dark, dense, and heavy shapes, creating an opacity that felt unexpected and joyful in their 'non-colour'. They began to take their own forms, sometimes butterflies, sometimes bats, or other times ducks and swans. Like clouds, one has the freedom to let one's imagination fly in making one's own shapes with these women in their erstwhile designer clothes!
She then began to look at hairstyles –from Freida Kahlo, hairdos from old Biblical images, ancient Roman, Greek to the woman on the street that she saw daily who’s unwashed hair created its own matted style that haute couture models would find hard to imitate: hair became an imperative statement in Shakuntala's parade.
About the same time as she was making these forms, Kulkarni was addicted to watching a Chinese ice-skater who won the 2014 competition. She watched with fascination her swirls and twists and turns; Shakuntala was onto a new kind of movement, a distinct new energy that she began to give her aging-women forms.
There was something joyous happening in the process. If the artist was constricted within her home/studio, these women she drew, felt freed, uncased, uncaged, ready to fly - here the women feel emancipated, unperturbed in their confidence, and commanding a new body language which they clearly began to own. There are moments if they are about to topple - almost falling out of their own shadows only to be saved by their immense sense of balance.
When things fell apart in that collective period that the world encountered, the artist felt rescued by her imagination - it felt as if for that brief moment, Shakuntala Kulkarni was emerging out of her own previous body of work – Of Bodies, Armours and Cages.
She started by pinning these large sheets and began to make rough forms. She began by drawing the bodies of women who had passed their prime - bodies that made new shapes: sagging breasts, stomachs swelled – the charcoal along with the space the large white sheets provided, allowed for voluminous forms!
This is when those forms invited her to dress them up! For a long time Kulkarni would be looking at the work of the well known Japanese designers, Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto, she loved the clothes of Alexander McQueen. She went back to several of Rei and Yohji early collaborations. In one of their Paris shows, she was stunned by their use of black. Sharp forms, sometimes bulging, sometimes ballooned - they felt as if floating in space. The black charcoal came to instant rescue aiding the costumes that her women began to dress in – with their dark, dense, and heavy shapes, creating an opacity that felt unexpected and joyful in their 'non-colour'. They began to take their own forms, sometimes butterflies, sometimes bats, or other times ducks and swans. Like clouds, one has the freedom to let one's imagination fly in making one's own shapes with these women in their erstwhile designer clothes!
She then began to look at hairstyles –from Freida Kahlo, hairdos from old Biblical images, ancient Roman, Greek to the woman on the street that she saw daily who’s unwashed hair created its own matted style that haute couture models would find hard to imitate: hair became an imperative statement in Shakuntala's parade.
About the same time as she was making these forms, Kulkarni was addicted to watching a Chinese ice-skater who won the 2014 competition. She watched with fascination her swirls and twists and turns; Shakuntala was onto a new kind of movement, a distinct new energy that she began to give her aging-women forms.
There was something joyous happening in the process. If the artist was constricted within her home/studio, these women she drew, felt freed, uncased, uncaged, ready to fly - here the women feel emancipated, unperturbed in their confidence, and commanding a new body language which they clearly began to own. There are moments if they are about to topple - almost falling out of their own shadows only to be saved by their immense sense of balance.
When things fell apart in that collective period that the world encountered, the artist felt rescued by her imagination - it felt as if for that brief moment, Shakuntala Kulkarni was emerging out of her own previous body of work – Of Bodies, Armours and Cages.
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