Latitude 28 presents Anupam Sud solo

New Delhi based Latitude 28 presents artist Anupam Sud’s solo. Providing a backgrounder, an introductory essay by Shukla Sawant explains: “One indirect consequence of the valorization of the exhibition worthy, finished artwork is that the viewing audience rarely gets to see the ideational phase of an artist’s working method; the tentative visual probing (which often takes months) before an art work is finally realized.

More often than not hesitant, fragmented, unclear and continually self-differing, sketch book notations are sites of confessional outpourings and are thus rarely shared by artists as exhibitory objects. Small in size and often tucked away as a reminder to be recalled when struggling for mental triggers, these visual markings signify a state of flux over the stability of the realized work; the very antithesis of completeness.

The preparatory sketch thus offers insights into a work that is akin to entering into an open ended conversation with an artist, through which nuggets of information regarding the creative process may be gleaned. In case of an artist of the stature of Anupam Sud; with decades of work behind her — ranging from monochromatic etchings to intimate watercolors and monumental canvas paintings, the works on view offer a thread of continuity between each method.

As a variation from her meticulously executed etchings using the starkness of a black and white palette and the precision of an engraved, or her densely built up canvases, a look at her watercolors and sketches, reveals an exploratory, fluid, questioning process.

In making public her sketches and drawings, which prefigure her painstakingly, elaborated paintings and etchings, she offers us insights into how she has developed her figurative lexicon over the years. Her drawings of women confined in bottles or else huddled into a fetal position; retreating into a protective space, are metaphoric evocations of the social closures which often confine and bind women down.

On the other hand, in her mediated response to her social world: the publically known body of work — her etchings and paintings, in their preparatory drawings, she emphasis on women and their place in the world, their fleshiness —their constantly changing, protruding, sagging, shorn of hair physicality, their way of glancing/not glancing/ being subjected to invasive glancing, their physical comportment within the social landscape.

Here, each image challenges and tests the patriarchal practice of confining women to the home and corralling them to preserve their ‘virtue’ and limit their potential as active agents.