Soliloquy or Ventriloquy?

 

Work by Rinku Choudhary

‘A Soliloquist’s Journal’ is a solo exhibition of paintings by Rinku Choudhary, curated by Prima Kurien at Shridharani Gallery, New Delhi. I have mixed views about the show in particular and its layout in general. At the same time, I do not want to be ruthless in my assessment of what is perhaps a young artist’s first solo exhibition.

There is a familiar puzzle: “The person who makes it, sells it. The person who buys it does not use it, and the person who uses it does not know that they are using it.” You know the answer: a coffin.

As mentioned at the beginning, Prima Kurien is the curator, but she has not written the catalogue text. Shankar Tripathy has. The text is dense enough to scatter visitors rather than draw them into the exhibition. To make matters worse, it is printed on a crimson-red background in terribly subdued greyish-brown type. The sharp light falling on the red wall nearly blinds the viewer.

The result is rather like the riddle: the person who writes it sells it (he must have been remunerated, after all); the people who buy it—the gallery and the curator—do not use it beyond the convention of displaying a wall text; and finally, the artist who is supposedly being interpreted by it does not seem to know much about it. I say this with some confidence because the Instagram reel in which the artist explains her work does not reflect what is written in the catalogue text. I agree that a critical text can, and often should, differ considerably from an artist’s own account of their work. But here the gap seems particularly pronounced.

Rinku’s large paintings are obviously ambitious. She speaks at length about the existential dilemmas she experiences while being confined to a room with her dog and the loneliness that accompanies it. The paintings do depict a confusion born of being simultaneously listless and restless. Her own figure is rendered in what might be called a haphazard manner, though the accompanying text itself qualifies her posture as “haphazard.” She appears in various states of sitting, lying down, or hovering somewhere in between. Her face is often submerged in a jumble of lines that conveys both the animation of her body and the turbulence of her thoughts.

The only concrete image that repeatedly emerges is that of a dog, responding in various ways to its human companion, perhaps sensing something of what is taking place within her existence. The protagonist of the paintings seems to yearn for a connection with the world outside while simultaneously feeling threatened by the very possibility of such encounters.

What could be suffocating her, one might ask?

There are not many things today that are soothing or consoling. The daily dose of news and reels seems to offer little beyond spine-chilling terror, fear, abjectness and an overwhelming sense of helplessness.

One could therefore say that Rinku submerges herself in the yarns of her own making, entangling her existence in the web of an invisible predatory creature. Its immanent presence—manifested through social injustice, gender disparity and political uncouthness—cannot easily be avoided or hoodwinked. Rinku becomes Chagall-esque on the one hand and Kafkaesque on the other. Her figures float, as though levitation were inevitable under such circumstances, and at times they stand before the system—represented here through domesticity—clueless and disoriented.

I could not find an artist’s statement, nor could I find anyone particularly helpful in the gallery who might offer some direction regarding the artist’s intentions. Although soliloquy—the externalisation of troubling internal thoughts through mumbling articulations—seems to be the dominant mode of the exhibition, I am tempted to call it ‘A Ventriloquist’s Journey’. I have little reason to believe that the artist is speaking entirely in her own voice through the texts that surround the works.

What amused me greatly was the presence of a ‘response canvas’, a sort of graffiti wall in the form of a large canvas that had already been filled by young viewers. A closer look revealed that Gen Z, carrying a considerable amount of political angst, had already visited the exhibition. They had expressed their minds through phrases such as ‘Free Palestine’, ‘Modi…’ and so on.

Perhaps that response canvas tells us something that the catalogue does not.

If you have a critical eye, you may still catch the exhibition before it closes tomorrow.

JohnyML