Standing in the middle of the auditorium, the exhibition felt like a musical note. Each of us, with our own pitch came together to celebrate differences in the most beautiful way. As I listened to the voices of my fellow artists, I felt as though harps were playing. Each string had its own trajectory, own journey and own tune yet running parallel to each other. Sometimes the tourists engaged in ‘Mumbai Darshan’ filtered into the gallery in large numbers, but usually it was the agonies and the ecstasies that crowded around the canvas, watching what we had made out of them. At this point I wondered, who else apart from the artist is the true medium of art anyway?
Motherhood spilled out of Puran-polis. Camaraderie came out of freshly baked cakes. Vibrant discourses over sandwiches and concerns pacified by cups of coffee and the smell of ittar rejuvenated our spirit each morning! Like the Mumbai-sky, we lowered our guards and revealed our own clouds. For seven days we forgot the modern day-shrewdness needed for survival. The humane in all of us rejoiced when our fellow artist’s work was appreciated or sold. What a beautiful moment it was to witness! How could it not rain, then?
Exhibitions do give us a platform. How we use it is up to us. What we take back from such platforms is up to us too. For me, this week of August was all about meeting and knowing people who didn’t give up!
I take back stories I heard from this exhibition. Such tales will remind me of the spirit of not giving up, no matter what!
And to the ones who had set up the whole orchestra, kudos to you! May Romartika roam around the world with its own oeuvre; may we all make each other proud; may we all be examples to the next generation that life is worth living when we choose art over many other things.
I look forward to our paths keep crossing each other’s in future!
About the author -
Saranya is an artist whose paintings were part of the 'Shades of Passion' Group show at Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai between 9th to 15th August '22. A canvas, for Saranya, is a meeting point of myriad experiences that an artist undergoes while creating, and those that flow out of a viewer on the other side. It is a melting pot of subjective perceptions that we carry and collect. To state a subject is to put words on feelings. She prefers not to analyze art in words but let it flow and sweep through the artist as well as the viewer.
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