Entrapped - Exhibition of Paintings by Somya Satsangi at All India Fine Arts & Crafts Society, Delhi
Emerging from a childhood enlivened by books and art, Somya Satsangi’s painterly practice draws upon her own world of symbols and metaphors to create moments in perpetuity. In her artworks, one can see the repetition of certain figures, spaces and the engulfing sky and sea, which hold together feelings of contradictory presence. Inner turmoil becomes a ‘pathetic fallacy’, a term used by Victorian writer John Ruskin to describe poetic tendencies of externalising emotions onto our environment, imbued in the atmospheres created in Satsangi’s paintings, where she explores her own subconscious world. Books, art and her creative encounters have also been a space of refuge for the artist, where she finds meaning in exploring the world of artistic expression. Forests, theatres, fields, ponds, and dining rooms all appear as spaces from an expression of being within and without. A core emotion in Satsangi’s work is that of ‘communion without community’ as she describes it, where vast spaces become that of loneliness but also discovery, contradiction and epiphany. Animals and birds appear as symbols of the human connection to nature and the paradoxical state of entrapment that is created by man’s action upon wilderness. Birds appear to be free but their caging is nigh. In this bitter turmoil, animals appear clothed, women sit on the branches of dead trees, and ibises take centre stage. Conditions of belonging and alienation repeat themselves as the distance between the characters in Satsangi’s paintings and their atmospheric counterparts becomes miniscule. The nun appears as a figure derived from the artist’s childhood days in Catholic school, where the metaphor of a uniformed presence of piety and adherence to a set of principles becomes one of being apart from the world. The penguin similarly appears in the same register, and of the same palette, creating a synchronicity between the man-made and natural worlds. Rife with symbolism and metaphors from the artist’s personal journey, this exhibition brings together a selection of works that explore the inner world made visible. These paradoxical settings within the frames of Satsangi’s paintings determine a constant battle between inner and outer worlds, and that of the disjunct and possible harmony. The exhibition will be inaugurated by Rajeev Sethi, Padma Bhushan, The Asian Heritage Foundation along with Guest of Honour Saurabh Srivastava, Padma Shri, VC, Angel Investment and Nayanaa Kanodia Senior Artist, Pioneer of L’ Art Naif (Naïve Art) in India followed by talk with Mira Gupta on Craft Curation, Digital Narrator, Heritage Revivalist on April 18th. (Disclaimer: The above content is a press release and PTI takes no editorial responsibility for the same.). PTI PWR PWR
