Art in Isolation

Kedar Dhondhu turns towards a visual representation of the
isolatory lockdown, presenting a series of pencil drawings in Lonely Residents. The artist invited people to send him an image of themselves along with a note on how they are
passing their time in quarantine. He then transforms these images into pencil
drawings on paper, turning them into an archive of residents surviving this
difficult and challenging quarantine in their homes.  He says, “Being an artist, I found the situation tense as
most people face great difficulty in living indoors for such a long
period. This project is a study of people
adjusting and adapting to life indoors. I feel that by giving importance to
‘Lonely Residents’ in the form of art, I hope they will feel good and happy
about it, forgetting about the tense situation. I also hope that people can
use this time to try to reinvent themselves.”

Tanya Goel presents hauntingly beautiful images of nature
in The Virus in the air, is abstract. The work consists of
a video series of nature taken by the artist as she spends time in her garden
during her present precautionary imposed quarantine upon her return to India.
For Goel, the videos are a way to give form to a virus that till now remains
abstract. Nature at first hushed, later awakens. Deeply existential, the work
turns into a sublime recording of her curfew. Audiences are invited to dip
into nature and to share their sensations, memories as they contemplate its beauty.

The introspective artist writes, in Notes from “Spring
in Curfew, Sounds in Spring, “During my tate-imposed quarantine, I am
biding time, making ‘video stills,’ as the disease is sublime* and art is
just the passing of time. These video stills of nature* chronicle time while
spring and we are together mutating, into something we do not know yet.

“These video stills, begin as an ode to Tarkovsky, but slowly,
through the passing of time, and prolonged looking, but also, mostly by
chance, capture, the surrounding sounds;  sound of trains, airplanes and
conversations, that document the current state of our lives in a strange,
abstract and inexplicable state of suspension while I am longing for
equilibrium.”

(*Sublime, here, refers to a subjective reading of ideas of
the Sublime, as suggested by Kant- Longinus- Costa.

*Nature, here, refer to ideas propagated by Hegel, Marx and
Darwin.)

Ipshita Maitra uses the medium of photography to deepen her,
and the viewer’s perception of the world during isolation. In her photo essay
series, Metaphor of Contrasts, she invites us to learn about colors present in our everyday
spaces. As we glance over the images, Maitra encourages us to identify
gradually contrasting palettes. The artist feels that being in
lockdown – our windows become portals to the world outside. When we
begin to sharpen our gaze, we too can open our windows and repeat the action
by recording colors that surround us. As we look out, everything changes
as we begin to recognise color and perceive its harmony.

Through various media, and in
their own uniquely individual ways, these four artists are creating works
that capture the imagination and create interesting immersive worlds. It is
indeed a good time, and maybe an equally rewarding time, to think of ways that
beat the prohibitive lockdown by unlocking one’s creativity and going deeper
within.