Summer Residency 2022: Gurjeet Singh | Rithika Pandey | Tarini Sethi

Gurjeet Singh is a 27-year old Chandigarh-based artist who specialises in hand-sewn portraiture and soft sculpture. He grew up in Algon Kothi, a village in North-western Punjab. His mother and sisters inculcated in him a flair for art and the craft of embroidery and stitching. His father nurtured his fascination for the Sikh miniature painting tradition. Even though school wasn’t for him, he worked tirelessly though his teens and earned his bonafides at Chandigarh’s Government College of Arts. As a student there, he was recognised by the Punjab Lalit Kala Academy and won an award for his soft sculptures.

Where one might see a trash-pile of discarded materials and objects (the more imperfect the better), Singh sees a treasure-mountain of possibility. A possibility to playwith colours and shapes, to give vent to his emotions and narrate to his heart’s content on a three-dimensional scale. He might start with an idea as a result of chewing on a story, but his freewheeling, instinctual approach allows for many detours in the process of stitching and sculpting. Sometimes, the work talks back to him as it takes shape

Rithika Pandey’s roots place her in Varanasi — an ancient site of funeral rites and sacred waters. Her protagonists enter onto this stage. Painting is used to create a theatrical space where more-than-human entities enact complex, dynamic rituals in the chasm between life and death. Amongst these entities are Pandey’s Bloomdidos — nomadic, dark-skinned figures, fashioned after the fierce emancipatory goddesses, Kali and Dakini. The Bloomdidos converse non-verbally with other entities on their stage in the interest of compassionate inquiry. An awareness of – but not necessarily adherence to – mortality is pervasive. Her entities bleed, secrete and eject. Birthing, dying, healing and regenerating endlessly.

Tentacular and purgatory super-species — plant-like, animal-like, anthropomorphic and absurd — reach through almost every plane illustrated. Informed by Donna Harraway’s ‘Tentacular Thinking’ and the ‘Chthulucene’, these tentacled lifeforms stand for the other and the non-human. They ask us to explore expansively and somatically, by implementing a way of existing and seeing that isn't two-armed, two-eyed, two-eared and one-brained, but many-armed and many-brained.

Born into an artists’ household, Tarini Sethi has been exploring themes of sexuality, bodily autonomy and world-building in her art since her early teens. Her intricate works often center goddess-like women in unabashed poses. They are nude, multi-limbed, and accompanied by chimerical animals. The worlds they inhabit are also surrealistic, complex and layered. Columns and staircases, windows and balconies, each hosts a different scene. These may appear crowded at first, but upon observation, the viewer can discern order and stages to the storytelling.

Primarily working in metal, ink and acrylic, Sethi makes fantastical works that push the limits of mainstream imagination. Her art reveals those early folk influences from her childhood as well as a latterday fascination for Shunga, or Japanese erotic art.

Over her decade-long career, Sethi has moved from a focus on portraiture and the human body to now placing these bodies within intricate architectural forms and bustling social settings. In her work, the viewer will find a sense of liberation, madness, desire and ecstasy.