Blurring The Line Between The ‘doer’ And The ‘object’
Experimenter presents “Making Visible”, a solo by Ayesha Sultana that is also the inaugural exhibition of Experimenter – Colaba. It is Sultana’s first solo in Mumbai.
Ayesha Sultana is an artist who was born in 1984 in Jashore, Bangladesh and she currently lives and works in Atlanta, USA. In India, we first got a chance to see her work in 2016 at the India Art Fair at Experimenter Gallery’s booth. For the first time a solo show by the artist has come to Mumbai and it unfolded in Experimenter’s new Mumbai gallery on September 23.
“The exhibition stands at the precipice between two moments in time, paying attention to neither experiences in time, but only to the relationship between the two moments,” says the gallery statement. If one is left to decode the statement, one could say that Sultana’s work has a timeless feeling to it. The solo features her new paintings, drawings and sculptures that connect a wide range of interests, unravelling a metaphysical understanding of ‘space, architecture and emotion’.
Attention is drawn to a floor sculpture in hand-cast concrete which holds within it, areas of a void, reflecting and folding upon itself. The work is extremely minimal, as is most of Sultana’s work. It brings forth a geometrical experience of continuity and interjection.
Sultana seems to explore this ‘relationship’ all the more through another body of work using paper, spliced and folded in steady gestures. The repetitive and almost meditative nature of the folds blurs the line between the ‘doer’ (the artist) and the ‘object’. It concentrates once again, on the action of doing, neither focusing on the paper nor the graphite nor the hand. One is transported into the world of line and action. In fact, one can even forget that it is made out of graphite but imagine it to be a metallic sheet.
We are told that for Sultana the act of ‘mark-making’ and ‘repetition’ is at the crucible of her practice. She often refers to her work as a ‘verb’. These deliberations are revealed through the drawing series, Breath Count. Emphasising awareness of her breath through scratching the surface of clay-coated paper are personal explorations of mark-making and corporeality for Sultana.
They are a contemplation of the interconnectedness of her body to larger systems. What this means is that we as viewers may connect the making of marks by the artist as a way to connect to our own lives, her life and the systems that govern those lives. It leads one to a Zen-like contemplation. Sultana cuts into the surface of the paper, in a manner that reveals patterns, it represents a delicate inward probe using time, rhythm and removal in breath. The show thus contemplates the void between thought and action, inhalation and exhalation, twilight and darkness, and how such momentary interludes may offer possibilities of holding space as an emotive force.
Another body of paintings comprises the sea and a seemingly infinite space beyond. The works refer to her personal emotions as well as to a constant return to looking at water as an amorphous, shape-shifting medium. What is most mysterious about the sea is that it holds much more than what is apparent on its surface. For Sultana, the sea may be interpreted as a place that conceals deep within it, a space of void. The artist sculpts the metaphor of water as in its ‘rigidity’ as well as its ‘fluidity’ through glass, aluminium and brass in the exhibition.
The artist is known for pushing the boundaries of the materials she works with, ‘testing them to their visual and functional capabilities and limits.’ These manifest in forms that emerge from experiments in visually attempting to expand the interstices of her thoughts into material exploration.
Ayesha Sultana Making Visible Experimenter – Colaba, Mumbai September 23 – October 29, 2022.
Text By Georgina Maddox
Image Credit: Experimenter and Ayesha Sultana
Some Related Links
https://www.thedailystar.net/arts-entertainment/news/musings-artist-ayesha-sultana-2036049
