Anju Dodiya’s worlds lie between the real and fantastic

In her ongoing exhibition, Breathing on Mirrors, Anju Dodiya turns to German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke’s articulations of anxiety, introspection, and the process of creation that relate to her own preoccupations with the artistic process and human condition. The exhibition features Dodiya’s characteristic figurative paintings, rendered primarily on mattresses that are made of unbleached cotton fabric and stretched on padded boards, using watercolours and charcoal. The numerous references that construct Dodiya’s unique vocabulary showcase her archival instincts as she draws from diverse sources across time and space. In this body of work, Dodiya highlights the moments that precede the intense act of creating. Her works embody a sense of rigour that shows through in her highly distilled compositions. In an interview with The Hindu, she expressed striving in these paintings to arrive at a “minimalist form of representation,” that is, allowing fewer gestures to convey more meaning. She succeeds in conjuring theatrical images of beauty and terror through carefully-contrived arrangements.

28 June 2020