Kinesics

Kinesics curated by Arijit Bhattacharrya, who is currently pursuing M.V.A. from The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda is exhibiting works of four students from the same university. Here three artists are in their final year of B.V.A. and the fourth has completed his M.V.A., Adhika Ferdinand, Divyesh Undaviya, Shyamli Singbal and Ashish Dhola respectively.

In this exhibition, all four artists foreground gesture as the site of questioning and expression. Our lives are lived with gestures. Our gestures are abstract. It is our socio-cultural environment which makes the associations that give gesture meaning. In the larger context, these very gestures determine some crucial situations that shape the society we live in. Like when a certain group of people understand that there is another group of people separated by ‘caste’ whom they are not supposed to ‘Touch’, the simple gesture of ‘touching’ another human being is compromised which can lead to death. In a crowded bus or in a lonely lane or in the bed room, Grabbing, Pinching, Pushing, Pulling become gestures of violation. The gesture of holding a phone or sitting in front of a laptop changes our course of history. Our social, cultural, biological, political changes happen because of our gestures.

The artists while keeping in mind the various gestures demand a new means of perception and thereby fundamentally challenge the spectator, on how they perceive. Like in Dhola’s sarcastic and interactive pieces that interrogate the futility of social strata or how Singbal examines the generational gap through installations, audio-visual works, murals and drawings that are enhanced through found objects. Undaviya questions physical spaces through interventions and manipulations that break predetermined notions while adding metaphorical tangents. And in Ferdinand’s works we see the depiction of women in contemporary socio-cultural structures.

Through these diverse practices, Kinesics showcases the various gestures in these artist’s works and how they disrupt, destabilize and reimagine lived realities.