Reclaiming lost voices

Soghra Khurasani’s new paintings evoke a reverberation of a dismal hope to stay alive and change society

Soghra Khurasani, a Baroda-based artist is featuring her second solo show at Kalakriti Art Gallery. At the outset, Soghra’s work looks like fields of roses but the etchings and woodcut prints say that her work is all about interiority. “Red is the colour of passion and that’s what I see around me. All my work is influenced by my personal experiences around gender, aesthetics, and the role of women. I feel flowers have a wealth of meanings, generally evokes a metaphorical sense of bound and boundless acumen into spaces,” she said speaking about her influences.

“Flowers unlike erupting volcano, tornado, crater and thunders are fairly melancholic expression of geographic entities. It brings with it the urgent need for sustenance and care; and in the absence of them, the risk of extinction. The melancholy lies in the fact of human exploitation and violence has set this earth on its way to an inevitable decline, and its course is tolerant and irreversible in nature,” she adds

She uses red roses and other flowers spread in ‘Silent Fields’ like red blood cells flowing inside and outsside the body, coursing with anger, frustration and passion.

The short film ‘I want to live’, presented by her was very impressive. Soghra complexes her thoughts through the medium of earth and documents the interactive installation. “I want to live” were the words said by Nirbhaya in December 2012.

“Me and my friends in Baroda came together to pay homage to the paramedical student. Her words to her mother after the incident were ‘I want to live’. We dug deep graves in the ground in the shape of these letters, placed wooden logs and set them on fire, almost like setting her on pyre, I made as part of this work,” says Soghra.

“The Hindu cremation custom as there last requiem. Of the Hindus believe in the law of karma which states that each individual passes through a series of lives until, depending on the actions of previous existences, the state of moksha, or liberation from the cycle of birth and rebirth, is attained. Consequently, death is not understood to be the end of a process, but is merely a stage in the long chain of transition. It is this continuity, extending beyond the limits of any single lifetime, which is enhanced and focused during the elaborate mortuary rituals. This action depicts the nocturnal period of distress lit in fire and I presented via video installation,” explains Soghra.

One can see more of Soghra Khurasani’s work and say that her work evokes a reverberation of a dismal hope to stay alive and to change society, so that, people will no longer desperately try to escape their consciousness in the world of happening.

(The exhibition is on till November 30 from 11 am to 7 pm at Kalakriti Art Gallery)