Papia Ghoshal
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Papia Ghoshal |
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RECENT EVENTS:
GROUP SHOW PARTICIPATION (OCT 31- NOV 15)
GALLERY ATELIER - LA CAFE, DELHI
LONDON MISCELLANY- MONSOON EDITION - LAUNCHED
at Bangla Acedemy, Kolkata,
on
Oct 15, 2009 at Bangla
LAUNCH OF PAPIA GHOSHAL'S THIRD POETRY BOOK, 'SECOND SIGHT', ON OCT 15, AT BANGLA ACEDEMY, KOLKATA 2009
EXHIBITION AT GORKHY SADAN, SEPTEMBER 2009 ,KOLKATA, INDIA
RECENT PAST:
ONE MONTH EXHIBITION COMMISSIONED BY BROOKS GALLERY, AT GALERIE LAPIDARIUM- RAMOVA 6, PRAGUE -1
GROUP EXHIBITION STARTED FROM TUESDAY 4 AUGUST 2009.
group exhibition by commissioned by Brooks Gallery, GALERIE MANES, PRAGUE, ART PRAGUE 2009
LAUNCH OF LONDON MAGAZINE'S SPRING ISSUE AT THE LONDON BOOK FAIR, ON APRIL 22, 2009
PARTICIPATION IN EXHIBITION ORGANISED BY CELIA PURCELL GALLERY FROM APRIL 28, 2009
PAST EXHIBITIONS
THE HABITAT CENTRE, NEW DELHI, MAY 20-27, 2009
HOSTED BY THE CZECH EMBASSY DELHI.
THE GOETHE INSTITUTE, COLOMBO, SRILANKA
THE FOYER, INDIAN EMBASSY, TAGORE HOUSE, INDIAN EMBASSY BERLIN alongwith ICCR, BERLIN. INAUGURATION: 27TH NOVEMBER 2008 GALERIE LAPIDARIUM: PAPIA GHOSHAL, PRAKASH KARMAKAR AND YAKUB CHITRAKAR NOVEMBER 3-NOVEMBER 23, 2008 GALERIE LA FEMME, PRAGUE, 14OCT-15NOV, 2008 NARODNI GALERIE: NATIONAL GALERIE, PRAGUE, INTERNATIONAL TRIENALLE OF CONTEMPORARY ART, 2008 (JUN-SEP 2008) OBEROI GRAND MUMBAI, INDIA- July, 2008 group exhibition on 'Ganesha'2008------------------------------------------- GALLERY ART DESH ( AUGUST 21-SEPTEMBER 15) THE ART PRAGUE , MAY 2008,GALERIE LAPIDARIUM ROUTES THROUGH BENGAL TO THE ROOTS OF INDIA at THE NEHRU CENTRE LONDON. also with sculptor Ramkumar Manna & folk scroll artist Yakub Chitrakar SOLO EXHIBITIONS AIFACS, NEW DELHI, FEB 1-5, 2008, HOSTED BY INDIAN COUNCIL FOR CULTURAL RELATIONS, NEW DELHI LAUDERDALE HOUSE, LONDON, SEPTEMBER 2007 GALLERY LAPIDARIUM, PRAGUE, AUGUST 2007 MANY COLOURS OF ASIA(REPRESENTING INDIA), PRAGUE,2007 JOHN BLOXHOM'S GALLERY, LONDON, 2006 WOBURN GALLERY, LONDON, 2006 ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS, KOLKATA, INDIA, 2006 ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS , KOLKATA, INDIA , 2005 CHITRAKOOT ART GALLERY, KOLKATA, INDIA, 2005 THE NEHRU CENTRE, LONDON, 2005 DIORAMA ART GALLERY, LONDON, 2004 GENDER STUDIES , PRAGUE, 2004 LALIT KALA ACADEMY , NEW DELHI, 2004 ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS, KOLKATA, INDIA, 2003 AWARDS: WORLD PRIZE OF SALVADOR DALI, 2009
EUROPEAN CIRCLE OF FRANZ KAFKA AWARD VENUE: KAFKA MUSEUM. PRAGUE DATE: APRIL 26, 2008 EUROPEAN UNION OF FINE ARTS AWARD AT GALERIE MIRO, PRAGUE, CZECH REP. AUGUST 28, 2007 BHUNATH MUKHOPADHYAY AWARD AT BANGLA ACADEMY , KOLKATA, INDIA, 2005 About Papia .... Papia likes to see the distorted realities around her through the filter of her personal fantasies. Being born in a traditional, orthodox Hindu Brahmin background, she has come a long way to express her mind and desires. The artist Papia has a wide degree of creative latitude. She is a painter by PASSION. All her expressions are strongly rooted, both in her paintings and her poetry. The most favourite word in her life is ' PLEASURE'. Her life is all about pleasure - pleasure in painting, drawing, writing, reading, designing, dancing, singing, cooking, photographs, theatre, films..or, STEAM TRAIN DRIVING. She happens to do all these at ease, like a normal course of one's daily life and in each of these fields she is quite a remarkable example and name. She feels all these art forms are intrinsically linkedw ith one another and they have to be expressed when 'they' demand to be expressed. The rare union of mind and fantasy finds expression in RITUR DINGULO (The Days of Menstruation), the book of poems by Papia Ghoshal, translated by English poet Christopher Arkell, in English. Her imageries not only overcome the dangers of excessive subjectivity, but also skillfully fashion her own laws as the architect a new feminine logic. In her paintings Papia takes a free and open look into the MALE WORLD. A bold and deliberate attempt to break through the boundary between desire and reality. PUBLISHED BOOK OF POEMS: DAYS OF MENSTRUATION( 2003) TEXTUTATION(2007)a sms poetry dialogue between Papia Ghoshal and Christopher Arkell.
My new series of paintings, Flow, are a development of work done for my collection of poems, Days of Menstruation, published
in January 2003. The poems which eventually formed that collection were the result of a long meditation on the meaning of femininity. I
drew, of course, on my own experience as a woman, whose flow of blood islands her each month from the males around her. Yet
my experience and the clarity it brought to the way I saw myself in my world, was also the experience of every woman born,
and of no man whatsoever. A woman’s menstrual flow is so easily seen as a river of separation by men. They have traditionally interpreted it
as a sign of our weakness, our uncleanliness, our humiliation. For that we have suffered purdah, and forms of imprisonment
not only physical but mental. Only very recently, in some parts of the world, have we begun to break out of such confinement,
but our liberation has, in truth, scarcely begun. Menstruation is a word which can still, even in the year 2009, infuriate
and disgust men who are considered by society at large as ‘liberal’, ‘sensitive’, ‘educated’.
Through images which the menstrual blood inspired and which it opened for me – because of its power, its pain, its refreshing
flow – I tried in the poems of Days of Menstruation to offer for any woman reader an escape out of the mental cage in
which we have all for so long been locked, and also to show all readers, female or male, the transformative qualities that
I felt are present in the menstrual cycle. The Flow series takes the ideas from my poems and combines them with the paintings I have been making in the last seven
years. Each of these new works is painted using my own menstrual blood. I have thus drawn from my very core images of the
world around me. An art critic once described my artistic approach as ‘transcreative’. I think this is an apt
word to apply to my new process. I am transcreating my inner self, at its most intensely female, into the sinews and muscles
and rhythms of the world we all share, thus feminising it beyond the interpretive reach of the male. I have also shaped penises
from my own blood, with a deliberate intention of imposing my creative dominance on this most widely worshipped symbol of
male authority. I believe one or two female artists have already worked in the medium of their menstrual blood before; but I think I am
the first to mix into my blood – in a further exploration of the transcreative processes which so fascinate and empower
me – the flow of male semen ejaculated specifically at my behest for me to paint with. That union of blood and semen
is for me one of the few that approaches real gender equality. I offer my Flow paintings to women everywhere – as tokens of our determination to gain a true and permanent liberation
from our age-old confines. Papia Ghoshal Ó Papia Ghoshal February 2009
The human body is a temple; it is always, also, a prism through which the different shades of society can be perceived. In Papia’s work one can sense the twin aspects of devotion and investigation, as exemplified by the creative interpretation of the male anatomy. The vibrant use of colour as also the creative distortion of the human form endows the paintings on view with a mesmeric quality. These
are strange forms, weird even, and Papia is unashamed to flaunt their singularity, combining and coalescing their inherent
shock value with a quietly philosophic exploration into the transience of a fragile, post modern world. On occasion, geometric
balance and a meticulous attention to detail has dovetailed into a more fundamental exposition of the nature of human existence. Papia’s
paintings have an experimental quality; at the same time, there are some universal values which she upholds, preferring to
combine traditional motifs with a creative interpretation of sexuality. In effect the provocative nature of the works on view
leads to a kind of cerebration, a rare phenomenon in today’s world. In
everything, Papia shows the courage to invent and interpret without becoming a slave to tradition. ASHOKE
VISHWANATHAN Filmmaker.
The Explosive Paintings of Papia Ghoshal
A revolution has been under way for quite sometime- a revolution in human relationships, attitude, moral, institution, perspective. It has yet to find sufficient expression in the organised life of societies and nations. However, its presence and power may already be felt in music, literature and Fine Arts, which are the antennae of the race. I sense in Papia Ghoshal's paintings vivid intimations of the revolution. They are a total rejection of the patriarchal or male-dominated complex of taboo-ridden cultures and civilizations that have in force for several millenia. But she is not an ideologue. Unlike Mary Wollstonecraft on Kate Millett, her medium is not words or revolutionary prose, but like one colour, or the art of painting. She rejects all taboos and imparts to her visualisation of sexuality on canvas the power and pain, an ecstacy and agony, the thrust and the tortuousness, the mystery and the ''bad faith'', that this primal desire of our existence contains inalienably within itself. Papia seems to have chosen as her signature KALI, the fearless nude goddess of freedom and power, the timeless dancer whose wild looks rule the winds of heaven, at whose feet lies her consort SIVA who, in the patriarchal scheme, was the omnipotent Lord of all space and time, the quick and the dead. Shorm of his reveals its amazing resources to the equally resourceful and dynamic Yoni. Papia has worked on this explosive theme with a rare sensitivity and a remarkable command over line and colour. I admire her daring nearly as much as technical skill and evocative power.
Sibnarayan Ray
Former chairman, Indian Studies, Melbourne UniversityFormer Director, Rabindra-Bhavan, Visvabharati University Emeritus Fellow on LiteratureDept. of Culture, Govt. of IndiaFormer Chairman, Raja Rammohan Roy Library FoundationFounder-Editor, Jignasa, a journal of ideas and enquirySenior research Fellow, Indian Council of Historical Research.
When we reflect upon paintings by Papia Ghoshal two major
tendencies are revealed to us. First, we can observe remarkable continuity with Indian tradition of painting, which is rooted
in artist’s personality and secondly, we locate her works in the context of contemporary world art. And that is a timely perspective. Appreciation of Papia Ghoshal’s vibrant colours, for example, reminds us
of bright, particularly pastel and crimson tones of historical Pallava dynasty paintings or intense colour-tones of We appreciate Papia Ghoshal’s sense of plasticity and her work with form
since we recognise long Indian tradition of sculpture and relief plastic, a part of Indian cave architecture as in the temple
at Tanjore and in other locations. We can equally value the dynamic compositions of her female figures and dance elements,
which again are to be found in the history of Indian art, e.g. in representations of Shiva absorbed in cosmic dance or in
images of female temple dancers. Erotica is also deeply rooted in Indian art as evident, for example, from sculptures in Konarak,
a temple dedicated to the God of Sun. We mention these facts to point out deep aesthetic roots of Papia Ghoshal’s philosophy
of painting in the history of Indian art. Only then we will understand that her works are not driven by a fashion. In paintings of Papia Ghoshal
we are moved by transcendental knowledge, or jnana in Sanskrit. The viewer gets pleasure from eternal life, as the fourteenth
mantra goes. We experience a state of fulfilment, or Samadhi, when mind is detached from material activities and we are able
to perceive our self by the pure mind alone. The colours on canvasses of our painter are full of energy since cosmos is full
of energy according to tantrism. Reflecting on Papia Ghoshal’s
works in the context of contemporary world art we conclude that they are, in the words of American art historian Susanne Langer,
representations of feelings in symbolic form where music has an important role to play in painting. We can find tonal analogies
to emotional life in the works of our painter. American aesthetics also helps us to understand values of so called virtual
time in paintings of Papia Ghoshal. Her paintings form a part of
world postmodernist movement, which bears features defined by French philosopher Lyotard as emphasis on plurality and experiment.
Moreover, we stress two other qualities of artistic thought in the works of our painter: heterogeneity and incommensurability.
And also graciousness which presumes experimentation and demands representation of the invisible. Post-modern aesthetics
and philosophy is after all closely linked to Indian philosophy, transcending it at the same time towards disciplining of
senses. Prof. PhDr. Miroslav Klivar
of Art , CSc. Prague
University of Art |
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