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Lot 76

 

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A strong believer in change being the only constant, Atul Dodiya has relentlessly experimented with technique and subject in his work to emphasize important differences in perspective that exist over chronologies and geographies. Challenging convention, the collections of images and text that populate Dodiya’s surfaces serve to reveal the multiple layers of meaning that are hidden under the umbrellas of various ‘universals’.

In the... A strong believer in change being the only constant, Atul Dodiya has relentlessly experimented with technique and subject in his work to emphasize important differences in perspective that exist over chronologies and geographies. Challenging convention, the collections of images and text that populate Dodiya’s surfaces serve to reveal the multiple layers of meaning that are hidden under the umbrellas of various ‘universals’.

In the present lot, the artist draws from his encyclopedic archive of historical and social references to break down conservative ideals of marriage. Part of Dodiya’s irreverently titled series ‘Saptapadi: Scenes from Marriage (regardless)’, which examines the ways in which the supposedly inflexible vows made during wedding ceremonies are regularly tweaked and modified, this work on laminate board wittily throws light on two such variations from the standard. The series of 24 paintings has its genesis in Dodiya’s “…discovery of a portfolio of printed plates titled ‘Lagnotsav’ (‘The Festival of Marriage’) in Ahmedabad… [whose] text and images idealise the married state and elaborate on the gestures of nuptial approach, conjugal behaviour and the mutual affection, trust and regard that must bind the bride and groom to one another” (Nancy Adajania and Ranjit Hoskote, “Conjugating Love”, Saptapadi: Scenes from Marriage (regardless), Vadehra Art Gallery exhibition catalogue, 2007, p. 10).

In this portrait of an unblinking Gujarati husband and his equally nonchalant seventeenth and eighteenth wives, Dodiya proudly presents the practice of polygamy under inscriptions of the Indian Tourist Board’s current promotional slogan ‘Incredible India’. Provocatively linking a marriage practice generally associated with Islam to a Hindu family in a state recently torn apart by religious violence, Dodiya questions the veracity and depth of such associations. In the same fashion, Dodiya presents the example of the Duchess of Biron, a European child bride documented in Ripley’s ‘Believe it or Not’, to dispute the stereotypical connection of the phenomenon with India.

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