I’m crowned by the macramé veil made by a friend and a brilliant multidisciplinary visual interventionist, and down to earth artist Surekha Sharada @the Sumukha gallery in Bangalore. I could see her sitting in earnest, making a loop and passing the cord from left to right, pulling it tight. Then again right to left, in and out, pulling it tight for a square knot. Your fingers must move in a kind of rhythmic precision, to make a pattern, imparting a soothing lullaby to body and mind. The hanging costumes of macramé seemed to ask, what weave did your skin wear today? What knots in your walking, talking, in your gestures persisted today? What pattern will you project tomorrow? Rewire, shed, reclaim, with a flick of your fingers, they say.

Come out of the macramé veil and a spinal spiral knot runs up towards the ceiling. To your right Matisse’s women are holding hands in a vertebrate dance! And the smell of jasmine to your far right, knotted into hair, again in macramé like precision. Surekha captures a story of changing identities and tradition from Mysore. A culture of a flourishing jasmine economy making its way through photography, witness to, and celebrating the different stages of growth in a woman’s life from puberty to pregnancy. Wonderful tradition. Equally, we could start a culture of bearing witness to the different stages of our mind’s growth patterns too. 

 She roams the busy streets of Colombo, scattered with Buddha idols and stupas and the remnants of extremist violence, both existing side by side. Watching those photographs, where she locates herself Buddha like in the midst of traffic, in busy streets, amongst vendors and inanimate objects, the observer concept arises. She nudges the viewer into this contrasting imagery and jolts us, reminds us of the observing mind/ awareness of our actions. Can we be Buddha like, in constant awareness in the midst of city life and its heavy flowing traffic? 

In the centre you bow down to this solemn, respectful bed or perhaps a tomb stone of beautiful, delicate red poppy flowers stitched on to 25 meters of silk, now folded and laid to rest. Part of a work done in the UK commemorating dead war heroes and originally made with ship sails. 

You have sculptural corsets, where she delves into the fragile ecosystem of the body, their skin shed to reveal a most delicate network painted beneath, and evoking motherly instincts. Next to it hangs skin like, thin, delicate, folded fabric with an electric gap in between, which makes you hold your breath. A prick, a stitch, a tug and a pull…runs the coloured thread up the skin. Stories of Dastakar women weavers running parallel and up the silk fabric, create a stunning network of arterial lines. Some needles are abandoned half way through unable to waltz with cultural shifts, and so that you may ask her, who left it there? And she tells you about the immersive lives of the quilt makers she worked with. 

Soft spoken but a sensitive power packed artist, she patiently and sincerely holds hands with forgotten precious spaces once inhabited. She dances slow and steady. Left to right, then right to left, in and out through the loops and the square knots; a prick, a tug and a pull. 

And out. 

A riot to the senses @the Sumukha gallery ‘Shedding the skin’ until 22nd July

Anuradha Nalapat