By Siddhi JainNew Delhi, Sep 15 (IANSlife) Baroda-based Indian artist Raju Baraiya, who has been the artist-in-residence at Glenfiddich International Residency Program In Scotland in 2019, will open a month-long exhibition of his art works inspired by the pandemic and the rural life.
He was also chosen as Glenfiddich’s Emerging Artist of the Year 2019.His upcoming exhibition titled ‘Social Gathering’ at Art District XIII in Delhi’s Lado Sarai, will open at September 17, and will continue for a month.
“My art practice springs out of this shift from a strong rural background to an urban one.Villages for me are unique spaces holding their intrinsic character.These spaces demonstrate an inherent belief about “what they are” in the “way they are”.
Although with easily available technologies and ever-spreading urban boundaries, there has been a gentle merging of the two for the sake of communication and advancement.This nevertheless does not deprive the rural of its rural character.
One can easily find rural traits in people migrating to cities for various reasons.This rural character remains intrinsic and contradicts the urban.My inspiration comes from observing, correlating the rural, the urban and vice versa.
“The continuous push and pull between the rural and urban makes me wonder and trigger the visual intrigue.The nature and complexities between the two spaces give me, innate sense of the vulnerability that I feel being in the city and being away from my native town becomes a matter of the question of my vulnerable existence and to further emphasized by the past year struggling to combat the Coronavirus.I find my effort of locating myself in my paintings as a very synonymous act.There is a constant struggle to redefine and relocate the self in the painting through marks, gestures and superimposing images,” said Baraiya about his works.
On exhibition are art works that play with the idea of masking and social distancing, with a mixed media on paper work titled ‘Remind me of my childhood’ drawing parallels between the imageries of the circles in a game of hopscotch and the chalk-drawn ones that ensure social distancing in public spaces now.
There are also acrylic paintings titled ‘Evening Tune’ and ‘A Season of Plastic’ that use the motif of the Indian human body to transfer onto canvas what a regular everyday scene in a rural or semi-urban city would look like.
(Siddhi Jain can be contacted at siddhi.j@ians
.
