Events of the week

Figurative abstraction

What: A new group of works on paper has been created by the artist Dhruvi Acharya during the lockdown titled ‘Evaporating Voices’. Confined within our homes, unable to socialise for a period of three months has been a startling experience for most people. The vocabulary of Acharya’s paintings and watercolours has been developing consistently for the past 20 years. She continues a long reign of figurative art which has dominated India for most of the past 100 years. This vocabulary of the figurative has concentrated on female subjects and eschewed any tendencies towards the saccharine, the amiable and the jovial. In fact, Acharya’s depictions, in general, can be said, verge on the psychologically uncomfortable. Hence it comes as no surprise that Acharya’s art during this period of isolation has become more abstract, her actresses disembodied and vanquished by repetition. Acharya’s colours portray a heavy mist that hangs over her subjects, tremulous and fugitive. In some works, the background of an abandoned city stands in stoic repose.

When:  25 September – 25 October

Where: Website of Nature Morte

Poetic seance

What:  India has been blessed by the presence of several poet-saints through centuries. Among the most revered and popular from North India are Hazrat Amir Khusrau and Sant Kabir. Both created several styles of poetic expression and covered a large spectrum of subjects through their verse. Banyan Tree’s ‘Khusrau-Kabir’ – a music festival — aims to celebrate their rich legacy. Well-known singers of India bring alive the rich poetry of the two on the same platform with their musical expertise. The contemporary classical and semi-classical instruments connect the ancient works with the 21st century. This 12-year-old festival has received an overwhelming response from the music lovers of Delhi and is going digital this year. The concert will be available for 24 hours from the showtime for streaming online.

When:  3 October (6:30 pm)

Where: Register at BookMyShow

Dodiya’s canvas

What: With a collection of recent small-scale oil paintings, some of which are being exhibited for the first time, Vadehra Art Gallery has put together the works of artist Atul Dodiya. In these works, Dodiya meditates on the solitary figure in a landscape; a romanticised, idealised landscape, sometimes barren like the Biblical deserts and sometimes lush like in Indian miniature paintings, inhabited by protagonists in gestures of intensity and exaggeration. The dynamism recalls a plurality of art-historic contexts – the Indian Modernist painters and the Italian pre-Renaissance masters. They carry the artist’s interests in the mystical quality that nature both conceals and reveals, evoking the pure and beautiful.

Where: Website of Art In Touch

When: 22 September – 9 October