As the weather, ever so quietly, turns a few shades colder and the fragrance of the Saptparini flowers fill the evening air, the capital city gets ready for the onset of autumn. There is also a buzz in the city’s art scene as it gears up for numerous art shows all over the town. One such art show, that catches attention due to its theme and content is Dasht E Talab (A Forest or a desert of Desires),a series of mixed media artworks by a Delhi based artist Ms. Jyotsana Dwivedi at the Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi.
The Exhibition was inaugurated by eminent artist, Shri Satish Gupta, in the presence of many esteemed guests. The exhibited works combine drawings and paintings in charcoal, watercolors, acrylic inks and photography to delve into the theme of time and aging in plants and humans.
The exhibition explores points of interactions between the artist and nature i.e. the plants and develops fiction around it. At one point in time both, the artist and the plants are flicked off on different trajectories, a point where the plants seem to return to an eternal regeneration and humans do not, which is the point of aging and death. This point becomes a forest and a desert of desire, as the artist stands there with an insatiable hunger and desire for life and wrestles with temporariness. It is a space where the artist is able to reveal herself as she feels the emotions of anxiety, hunger, love, desire and fear in the backdrop of cyclical return of the spring and blooms in nature. It became a Dasht-e-Talab.
Speaking about her experience of exhibiting her first ever art exhibition, Jyotsana Dwivedi, says, “Firstly, I would like to thank Satish Ji for taking out time today and visiting the exhibition. In these art works, I try to unravel the feelings of not being able to find resonance in nature for my experience of the impermanence of life and of ageing. At times I question the idea of a benevolent ‘Mother Nature’. Nature seems neither benevolent nor malevolent. The creative praxis in my works is based upon Critical Plant Studies and experiments with plants that are documented by me via drawings, photographs, collages, watercolor paintings and writings.”
Shri Satish Gupta, Eminent Artist and Chief Guest of the exhibition, says “Jyotsana’s creations are like a whiff of spring, blossoming in the desert and radiating a hidden power. A woman’s turbulent journey and her metamorphosis into a plant is inspiring.”
The exhibition will be open for the public from 28th October till 3rd November 2023 from 11:00 AM till 7:00 PM. During the exhibition, 16 beautiful paintings were being displayed by the artist and were also open for sale for the desired art lovers.
Jyotsana Dwivedi is an artist, an avid gardener and an amateur botanist, works in a studio cum laboratory where she keeps and documents visual records of aging in flowers.
