Reena Kallat and Hema Upadhyay’s new works

Reena Kallat, born in New Delhi, received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Sir J.J. School of Art in Mumbai. She currently lives and works in Mumbai. Her ‘Lunar Notes’ and the accompanying photographic installation, ‘Anonymously Yours’ is on view at Richmond Art Gallery. It grew out of the artist’s fascination with what she calls 'lovegraffiti'— testaments of affection in the form of names or initials scratched on the walls in public places.

Her work often incorporates names, which act as the stand-ins for personal identity. Lunar Notes consists of hundreds of bonded-marble beads, each carved with names of lovers, “strung vertically like raindrops” into a curtain. From a distance the beads can be seen to form an image of the Taj Mahal, the now public monument built as the ultimate (private) symbol of love. Like the Taj Mahal, Lunar Notes balances between the public and the private, the monumental and the intricate. Yet, where the mausoleum has traversed from being a private declaration to a national symbol, the curtain has conjoined the two realms, in a sense democratizing it, by literally inscribing the image with individual names.

Hema Upadhyay’s ‘Loco-Foco-Motto’ is part of a series she has been working on since 2007. Constructed of thousands of un-ignited matchsticks assembled into elaborate chandeliers, these pieces embody a trend in her work, which explores violence co-existing with beauty. A nascent violence is implied in these works, a commentary on the hostilities, intolerance and cruelty that touches so many lives throughout the contemporary world.

At once delicate, nostalgic and yet dangerous, the disparity of creating a chandelier out of matchsticks takes the object out of the realm of logic and situates it firmly in the metaphoric.
Hema Upadhyay, born in Baroda, received her Bachelor of Fine Arts and Masters of Fine Arts from the Fine Arts Faculty of the Maharaga Sayagirao University Baroda in 1995 and 1997 respectively. She curently lives and work in Mumbai. Her work often reveals a concern with issues of migration and displacement, gender, and class.