Important Notice

Regularly incorporating references from mythology, art history and the popular press in her body of work, Anju Dodiya illustrates the problematic and frequently violent nature of artistic creation in general, and her own creative process in particular. In her semi-autobiographical watercolours, Anju Dodiya “…continually creates her own legend as though she were a fictional character caught in bizarre but lyrical narrative, a self-disruptive... Regularly incorporating references from mythology, art history and the popular press in her body of work, Anju Dodiya illustrates the problematic and frequently violent nature of artistic creation in general, and her own creative process in particular. In her semi-autobiographical watercolours, Anju Dodiya “…continually creates her own legend as though she were a fictional character caught in bizarre but lyrical narrative, a self-disruptive autobiography…[she] compels one to unravel the story, untold and told, of which the single painting seems to be but one isolated frame, and she seems to urge us, ‘Behold! This could be me trapped by art'” (Dilip Chitre, “Anju Dodiya: Enigmatic Variations”, Anju Dodiya: Recent Works, Gallery Chemould exhibition catalogue, 2001).

In the present lot, Dodiya places herself in the role of Joan of Arc, the fifteenth century martyr, who was tried and convicted of heresy, and burnt at the stake at the age of nineteen. It was only in 1920, several centuries later, that ‘the Maid of Orleans' was canonized, becoming the patron saint of France, martyrs, captives and soldiers amongst others. Borrowing a frame from Carl Theodore Dreyer's 1928 silent masterpiece, The Passion of Joan of Arc, here the artist condemns her image to the same fate as that of the young Joan, being led to her death by those who claimed to represent the faith she passionately defended. Dodiya thus likens her role as an artist to that of a martyr, ready to sacrifice everything for her beliefs. Clutching a cross to her chest, representing her calling and career, Dodiya as Joan of Arc stands on a precipice, bravely awaiting her fate.

In her work, Dodiya “…demonstrates the tension between the painter and the painting, and arrives at the figure in the masquerade through sources that are literary and mythic. Her choice of figures has been in a series of works in the heroic scale – Daphne, Joan of Arc, Shiva, Artaud, Rajasthani princelings, who through the act of mimesis, confer on their interpreter a visible and ennobling heroism. Thus, the paper in her work appears as both magic mirror that redefines time, place and location and as a site for confrontation. By replacing the original image with her own, she actually sets up a tense confrontation between the visible and the implied presences – the self and the other, one that blurs gender identity” (Gayatri Sinha, “Heroic or the mock heroic”, The Hindu, February 2005).

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