The image of an untitled oil on canvas showing a girl tackling a deer’s horns with firm determination in her eyes sets the pace for an interaction with Rekha Rodwittiya. The Baroda-based artist was in Delhi for the launch of her first solo show at Vadehra Art Gallery and I was headed towards my first ever interaction with her. I was looking for an entry point into her world and I knew that the image on the invite was just what I needed to talk to the artist who is an unapologetic feminist, deals with the issues of body and identity deftly, and does not refrain from calling a spade a spade through her art, or, a rose a rose. “I was a much desired girl child and come from a family of strong women,” says the artist explaining her personal ideology that culminates in her art in a brilliant balance of a strong thought process and rich colors. Born in Bangalore in 1958, Rodwittiya says that her family empowered her as a young girl and a woman much more than what was the norm in society and she spent her growing up years trying to negotiate the disparity. “My concerns have always been liberty and freedom and to find my space ideologically in the universe where equality is one of the biggest imbalances. It tests the ability of my mind to realize the imbalance and decipher it,” says Rodwittiya. “My practise is to understand it all and then to think of ways and means by which it can come into my space, my art.”With each passing exhibition, with each passing year and decade, that understanding has reached Rodwittiya’s bright canvases with stunning clarity of thought. There’s an on oil on canvas with a woman’s figure that has a steam-spewing kettle on top of her head. It reminds me of a Slyvia Plath comment on why should men read the papers when their women, no matter what they did professionally, had to make the morning tea. Rodwittiya smiles and says, “Yes! I know what you are referring to. It’s all about the condenscension with which even liberty is granted to women. It is not something that she has to be given by a man as a generosity, as a patronising ‘encouragement.’ I hate the word ‘encouragement.’ I hate the ‘promise to be understood’.” Rodwittiya’s women on canvas are beyond the ‘promise to be understood.’ They are firm, strong, and know what they stand for because they don’t flinch — neither in their body language, nor in the way they look at the viewer, straight in the eye. For they have nothing to be ashamed of, certainly not of the fact that they are women. Like their creator, they are also not apologetic about wearing their feminity boldly. It shows in the colors that Rodwittiya wears herself, and chooses for her women on the canvas. “Why should I be awkward about my choices?” she asks, and adds, “When I went to London to study, I took my ghaghras and didn’t think twice about how would I look. I may have looked like a peacock, a poor bird escaped from an aviary, especially in a sea of only blue and black on the London tube. But those things get absorbed easily in an art school.” She is referring to her time spent at London studying at the Fulham Institute and the Royal College of Art; prior to that, she had completed her B.A. (Fine Arts) at the Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S. University, Baroda. That also explains the rich color that her canvases and photo works come decked in. She is not apologetic about using color, just as she is not apologetic about veering towards a totally different palette in some of her photo-based works. She refers to these details as “strategies within my work. I use ornamentation to get people into my work. I trained as a photographer while in college [under Prof. and eminent artist Jyoti Bhatt], and know the frame within which the eye will come to rest,” she adds. Rodwittiya has an amazing way with words and when I ask how she expects viewers to look at her canvases, she says she would like them to come ‘unprepared.’ I prod her further to get to the root of her sublime engagement with the language and unearth the reader that she is [that is why, perhaps, her blog too is such a delight to read]. “If anything that has suffered in my life over these years, it is the habit of reading. I’m not getting to read as much as I would like to,” she says and adds beautifully, “When you read, you carry an openness to be touched. That’s why I like to read Maya Angelou, and have a book by her near me. It’s like touching my cat, at any time, it gives a kind of reassurance to turn to my book of visuals.”That’s so beautifully said that you suddenly start understanding the numerous layers that go behind the making of a signature Rodwittiya work – honest, proud and not ashamed of being what it is – just like its creator.– The exhibition is on view at Vadehra Art Gallery, D-53, Defence Colony, New Delhi, through March 18, Monday to Saturday, 11am – 7pmFollow@ARTINFOIndia
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