Exploring the past and connecting with the present

As a part of the 10th anniversary celebrations of ‘Iconart gallery’ presents eight artists whose works explore in drawing, painting and installation formats, memories of childhood, migration from rural to urban, changes due to matrimony, exploring the past and connecting with the present changing plateaus.

Artist Avani Rao Gandra’s work ‘Exist – Exit’ is a mixed-medium on canvas using coconuts and cotton cloth, “The movement in human energies comes out of intense struggle, an existential equation laced with anxiety. The cycle of prey and predators playing their game – the eagle in prey of a fish that can turn into a boat and swift forward to a no man’s land. A metamorphosis that carries it forward towards the unexplored. Like coconuts that float from one coast and set root in another land, a coconut that bound by a red cloth becomes a ritual of faith to keep ones hope alive,” she explains.

“The painting and installation are a metaphysical symbols of life s quest for migration and transition, in the process of a higher evolution,” she adds.

Ajit Kumar Mahato says, “People world over displace to earn bread and butter, education or for many other reasons. I moved to Hyderabad for higher education and monetary sustenance. And my work ‘Nou’ (Boat)is mainly based on displacement related to time. So, the title of this installation can be interpreted in both the ways – ‘Nau’ (Boat) which signify the journey and ‘Now’ which represents present time.”