Reinterpreting beauty

Art is considered an expression of thoughts, emotions, intuitions and desires but very rarely in contemporary terms referred as beautiful. Ongoing exhibition titled ‘Revisiting Beauty’ featuring 10 artists from India and Pakistan deals with the changing perceptions of beauty in the contemporary world. Eminent artists like Gulam M. Sheikh, Manjunath Kamat, V. Ramesh, Zahra Hassan and Aisha Abid Hussain are invited to critically examine the aesthetics of beauty from their own individual standpoints.

Explaining the concept, Tunty Chauhan, gallerist and curator of the show states, “Over the past few years, I have seen beauty as a concept being missed or ignored by the contemporary art world. But in reality ‘Beauty’ is one of the central tenets of aesthetics. While beauty in itself may not have changed, the lens of viewing has. It is this swapping of lens that led us to this interesting idea and made us question: Is our perception of beauty being clouded because of an increased dependency of endorsements from western museums and curators Who is to say what is beautiful and what is not It is the point of view that sanctifies.”

This exhibition presents each artist’s unique sensibility and perspective, that may serve to disarm entrenched biases against notions of beauty that uncomplicatedly delights the heart and mind even as it restores to today’s artistic experience a living, transformative and aesthetic component. “As a gallerist also it gave me a certain vantage point to understand the concurrent dichotomies at play — the artistic vocabulary and the dynamics of the art market with regards to the subject,” shares Tunty.

Artist Desmond Lazaro moves with effortless ease between the worlds of the East and the West through his body of work and talks about the idea of home, London-based Pakistani artist Zahra Hassan uses traditional methods, materials and techniques in her work with a trans-disciplinary approach, while Aisha Abid Hussain’s artworks demonstrate how life extends beyond its own subjective limit. Aisha often tells a story about the effects of global cultural interaction over the latter half of the twentieth century by creating a satire by exaggerating certain formal aspects inherent to our contemporary society in her mass-media artwork. Tunty explains, “All the artists have tried to interpret beauty in their own space. Artist Ghulam Sheikh associated beauty with what we experience in our daily life with his work ‘Thinking Beauty in the Times of Terror’. His work talks about Kashmir where everything good, including beauty, is in retreat, leaving the field bare for unrest, violence, terror. There are images of stone-pelting youth, and figures cowering with fear and Pundits resigned to their fate, while a terrifying div-like creature holding a dagger advances, heading for the centre. Nilima Sheikh also talks about the present-day political unrest through her work titled ‘The Dust Still Uneasy on Hurried Graves’. The beautiful landscape reveals gloom on closer inspection. Painted with the prevailing unrest in Kashmir as the backdrop, it has grieving mothers kneeling, river beds running dry while villages are left abandoned. Though artists are talking about the political scenario, the works emphasise ‘peaceful living’.”