Traversing ‘Comfort Zones’

It’s probably the most ubiquitous shape of the post-middle age female that the artist finds in her country: It’s the mother’s body, a body, which wears the all-encompassing dress of motherhood. It’s also a comfort giver’s body; one located beyond the set norms of sensuality, one made (a)sexual through the protocols of ‘motherhood’, a body confined to giving unconditional love now , this body of the mother that defies usual commodification of femininity or sheer fetish objectification of spiritualized beauty. It's a form too stark.

Here is an artist clearly fascinated by her mother’s body, a body that refuses to tire; refuses to let go of the monumentality of its presence. Saggy breasts, fleshy belly, heavy thighs and thick hips,come together to form this uncompromising shape of the woman, as part of a showcase at Kashi Art Gallery, Kochi. The artist Anoli Perera from Colombo presents her new series at the venue.

She honed her art skills at the Visual Art School of Princeton for Continuing Education, New Jersey; and Studio Three, Santa Barbara City College, California. Among her selected solos are ‘Quveni: 'The Queen of Lanka’ (2011); and ‘Goddesses Descending’ (2003), apart from participations in a number of group shows over the past decade.

The artist traversing ‘Comfort Zones’ in a series of paintings and sculptures, mentions in an accompanying statement, “Sutured and marked with pain and pleasure through its many phases of fecundity and left alone to stand silently observing the life/lives she procreated go beyond her grasping to find their own destinies. A sense of loss overlays her presence, and that loss is not totally her own. It is also a loss for the comfort giver and loss for the comfort taker.”

Her monumental presence anchors one to a sense of belonging, and even from a distance her gaze still holds the power of scorching scrutiny. Even if this monumental form might seem passive, it certainly is not. It churns numerous memories and it instills guilt in me for all the comforts I have enjoyed and the nostalgia I feel now for those moments in her embrace, the artist elaborates.