Curtains part to give entry into the scene of the Last Supper when Christ discloses that one of his twelve apostles will betray him. The scene is characterised by chaos and cacophony, suspension of volume and depth and a severe compression of pictorial space. The figure of Christ looms (picture above: Last Supper. Reverse painting on acrylic sheet, 48” X 72”, 2010. Image courtesy-Seagull India) large occupying the centre of the composition. The posture and the iconography of the figures remind the viewer of a kathputli performance contributing a hint of movement as well as stiffness to their bodies.
Strangely, windows open to reveal spires, crosses and domes while the face of a woman emerges from the nook of two larger apostle heads. Madhvi Parekh’s solo travelling show titled Last Supper at the Visual Arts Gallery, India Habitat Centre; New Delhi in association with Seagull India is a delightful re-rendition of the tales of Christ interspersed with personal mythology in an unmistakable style unique to the artist. Her first solo show in New Delhi after a gap of eight years comprises of works executed over a span of six years using the technique of reverse painting on acrylic sheet and a few with charcoal.
Translating her travels to Paris, London, Greece, Mexico, Moscow, Israel, Egypt and Prague into a visual narrative of sorts, Parekh has extended her earlier theme of appropriating religious iconography to assimilate and illustrate local fables, myths and stories related to Christ’s life bathing classicism with an effervescent child-like visual vocabulary .A distinct universe of motifs accompany Parekh’s works- the anthropomorphic sun, the moon, the stars, identifiable and unidentifiable winged creatures, the staircase and the cross. Her colour palette is rather luminous with a generous use of white contrasting pale faces with grey or blue background. A two dimensional use of space, tightly knit composition, use of multiple perspectives hierarchical scaling, compounds of geometric shapes and a childlike scrawl characterises Parekh’s works.
The Wise Man. Reverse painting on acrylic sheet, 30” X 30”, 2008. Image courtesy-Seagull India
Madhvi Parekh’s practice is punctuated with profuse medium experimentation. Beginning with paper and oils, she learnt watercolours in the 1980’s and has in the recent decade moved to the technique of reverse painting. She took up this new medium inspired by the surface richness in Tanjore paintings and egged on by the works of contemporary artist like KG Subramanyam and Nalini Malani. Parekh has won over her initial difficulty of painting on a glossy, slippery surface to a natural advantage. The hashing and rehashing of lines and the re-workings which often can be seen through the work leaves behind a trace of the artist’s labour giving a certain raw quality to her work.
Parekh’s work employs a circuit of wide ranging influence. The use of vivid colours and acute frontality recalls stained glass painting in early Byzantine churches while the construction of faces suggest kinship with African masks. A self taught artist initiated by her artist husband into drawing using Paul Klee’s writings on art pedagogy at Bauhaus, Parekh’s works have often been cited as “folk” or “naive” borrowing heavily from the crafts and textiles of Gujarat. It is likely that the Bauhaus art and crafts movement as well as her husband’s training in textile design might have egged her to explore the rich textile embellishments and crafts tradition of Gujarat in her works. However, the overarching association of women’s art with textile arts and crafts is a vexed issue deepening the divide between “fine art” and “folk art” on the lines of gender.
Journey of Christ. Reverse painting on acrylic sheet, 48” X 96”, 2007-08.Image courtesy-Seagull India
The narrative style, denial of a single point perspective and pictorial depth, surface decoration, simple compositions, presence of anthropomorphic forms have led many to associate her style to a child’s art. But Madhvi Parekh is a painter of memories. Her childhood growing up in Sanjaya, near Ahmedabad in Gujarat, the village revelry and celebration she witnessed, the Rangoli decoration, Ramayana murals in the Swaminarayan Mandir at Vadtal have time and again leaked into her art. Her art may certainly have a child-like curiosity about it but it is the contemporaneous rendering of mythical and personal events that gives Parekh’s work a modernist sensibility.
An element of play dissolves the sacrosanct nature of the work giving it immediacy and everyday reality. Devoid of classical divine paraphernalia like a halo, Christ looks like a village shepherd or a wise man whose life is inextricably tied to the well being of his people. The sun and the moon co-exist as does the dome and the spire in Parekh’s harmonious world while the cross looks like an extension of the three pronged nose. Religious iconography and symbols is married to phenomenal objects from Parekh’s intimate world straddling boundaries between myths and fables. Parekh has never read the Bible. The Biblical scenes she paints are memories from her travels, stories she heard from locals and anecdotes she heard from her friends while growing up. Of course the artist’s intention has never been to document a sight or its people but to tell a tale that exceeds inquiry into its temporal and spatial origins.
Christ Travelling with his Disciples 1. Reverse painting on acrylic sheet, 36” X 48”, 2009.Image courtesy-Seagull India
Parekh’s show at the India Habitat Centre raises an important question into the reception and interpretation of works of art. Parekh’s work was shown earlier in February 2011 at the Chapel of Bishop’s Training College, Kolkata where they were displayed in worship. It is interesting to note how the seemingly secular and playful rendition of a Christian myth viewed within a secular gallery space would have assumed a different function and reception with the change in its spatial location to a site of worship.
The story of Last Supper-a tale of betrayal and humility, of friendship and love has travelled centuries and continents. It has been engaged with time and again throughout the Renaissance and continues even today with contemporary artist like Andy Warhol, Salvador Dali, Damien Hirst, Mary Beth Edelson, Hermann Nitsch,Krishen Khanna, Vivek Vilasini, Jamini Roy presenting an aesthetic and critical adaptation of the tale.
It is in the hybridity of textual and stylistic sources, the demonstration of rural and folk influence as well as contemporary views, the witty re-appropriation of an ancient theme and the essential humanism that her art captures that gives Madhvi Parekh’s show an edge over modernism-a brilliance that begs departure from the tradition-modernity discourse as a strict binary.
Habiba Insaf is a postgraduate student of Arts and Aesthetics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her writings have been previously published in Art and Deal, Open Democracy and Emaho Magazine. She has interned with Mehrangarh Museum, Jodhpur, India Art Fair, New Delhi and Volte Gallery, Mumbai. She is a freelance researcher for an online start-up for modern and contemporary South Asian Art and also writes for a New Delhi based artist.