ART AND THE CODE OF TEXTILE PART I
Textile is that crucial node of the civilizational narrative that engulfs, rather emanates the being of beings in the chapter of human life. Be it the nets, basketry or the fabric produced as the result of the interlacing of the reeds. One of the earliest codes that illustrates the knowledge of civilizational progress. Textile, literally means to weave that is derived from the Latin ‘textilis’ and the French ‘texere’. Whatever its contextual histories be, this seemingly delicate act is capaciously tensile, laborious and potentially seductive, desirous and fluid. Popularly known and accepted within the category of fibre in the realm of visual arts. This article shall engage with the work of two artists – Mrinalini Mukherjee and Monika Correa whose artistic brilliance has twirled this act of weaving; redefining its form, function and significance.
Mrinalini Mukherjee belongs to the beat when the ascendancy of narrative painting was at its peak. Having studied painting and murals under the direction of K G Subramanyan at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, found herself inclined towards sculpture. Mukherjee encountered jute ropes during the annual art fair in Baroda. Her experimentation with fibre began when she was awarded the British Council scholarship for culture in the year 1978, allowing her to study at the West Surrey College of Art and Design in Farnham, UK.
Mukherjee’s knots aren’t suggestive or a metaphor or even fantastical; they are existential. It is the assimilation of millions of knots that makes one sculpture appear. They are biological. The corporeality of her hemp and jute sculptures tote sensorial capacities. The 1991 work, Woman on Peacock, is stimulating at first sight. One may choose to call it anthropomorphic or hybrid. Perhaps a hybrid of a phallus and a vulva? While the title of the work is almost suggestive, the bare knowledge of a woman riding a peacock is a testimony within the forms of sculptural expression. This work like all of Mukherjee’s works are counter to the existing craft, monumentality and knowledge of sculpture in relation to her contemporaries. The woman is woven in charcoal black, indigo and earthy green. Her mouth paused, perhaps at the moment of locking or may be the crucial moment of a cry. The free standing sculpture lands in the folds woven in mustard yellow.
Van Raja I (1981), is interlaced in cavities and folds of enigmatic fertile green. Standing when suspended through a rope is vegetal, animalistic and authoritative. His limbs confiding within its own form yet charged with grace. Van Raja I is a gateway to Mukherjee’s universe of myth and fantasy. It is interwoven with the minglings of modern sensibilities and the sacred. The monumentality of the sculpture is injected with the softness of the alternative techniques and materials she chose. Mukherjee’s woven sculptures are laborious meditations that are knotted and entwined with various fibres by hand. Dare one encapsulates her sculptures as domestic! Those prolific knots liberate the feminine. Voluptuous and subverting conventions.
While Meera Mukherjee’s pedigree cannot be undermined, it was Monika Correa’s admiration and her position that allowed her to pursue her love and passion for the warp and the weft. A graduate in Microbiology, Monika Correa found her way into the world of textiles when she accompanied her architect husband, Charles Correa to the US in the 60’s. It was then where Correa met Finnish-American textile artist Marianne Strengell who was the head of the textile department of the Cranbrook Academy of Art. Returning to India, Correa pursued a course in textile at the Weavers Service Centre, Bombay, between 1964 and 1965.
Her works are constructed allegories generated through the intricate geometry of the loom. Textural elegance defines the tactality of her tapestries. A self customized loom has been Correa’s significant tool over the time that is responsible for the distinct textile language that she has arrived at. Original Sin (1972), a cotton dyed tapestry demonstrates Correa’s technical brilliance and her mastery over the craft of weaving. An abstract composition as it is, a circle in hues of reds and pink dominates the composition. The striking vertical lines in black distorts at the same time balancing the entire composition.
Despite the rigid architecture of the loom, Correa has achieved in creating free flowing forms, almost liberating, converging into the forays of nature. The fabric thus produced is not a mechanical production of the image conceived on a graph but a poetic interaction of the horizontal and vertical axis of the yarn.
“The technical ingenuity that Monika began to experiment with, i.e. removing the reed during the process of weaving, enabled her to switch, within the body of the piece itself, from the structured order of conventional weaving to the relative chaos of the unreeded areas. This technique became an important determinant of her aesthetic improvisations. She inculcated into her work elements of a minimalist abridgement of nature’s forms and, above all, a kinetic quality – moving branches, flowing water, mingling shadows, whistling wind and a magical play of shadow and light.”
– Jyotindra Jain
It is the act, the desire to weave that has generated a distinct form of sensibilities in the practices of Mrinalini Mukherjee and Monika Correa. It is their rigorous engagement that has contributed immensely in how we understand and perceive textile in contemporary visual practices. Whether sensorial hybrids of Mukherjee or the subtly romantic weaves of Correa as could be experienced through Dudhsagar Falls (2019), their contribution is way ahead of times. It is the play of the fibre that makes their work artistic, intellectual, innovative and monumental.
Text by Kuldeep Patil
Image Courtesy: Jhaveri Contemporary, Monika Correa and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Find more about the featured Artists and Gallery:
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/mrinalini-mukherjee-met-breuer-1575232
https://jhavericontemporary.com/artists/mrinalini-mukherjee
