“I never paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality,” wrote the 20th century Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. Shrimanti Saha has espoused a will to paint her reality too, with a series of small-scale autobiographical oil paintings, where the artist is seen as a protagonist engaged in different activities. And just like Kahlo, Saha’s reality is not restricted to the physical realm, as one can see in the large scale works which are more ambitious and reflect the aftermath of what has happened in the studio.
Reveries in the Atelier features an assortment of narratives with references ranging from science fiction to mythology and everything else in between. Designed as a collection of untold stories, the exhibition is deeply personal to Saha. “For a while, I had been trying to put together a body of work that would focus on painting. Everything that you can see has accumulated over a span of the last two years,” she says. “The overall show is conceptualized keeping in mind the studio as a space of utmost importance. My attachment towards the space was more intense mainly during the lockdown; when the feeling of being confined to an interior space was lurking all around.”
