Important Notice

In 2005, Atul Dodiya executed a seminal series of large mixed media paper-pulp and print works over the course of a residency at the Singapore Tyler Print Institute. “Dodiya has never allowed himself to be constricted by a particular stylistic choice or medium: his continuities have been staged through self-disruption, an extension into new methods and spaces, an addressing of parallel arts and discourses…It is against this backdrop of restless... In 2005, Atul Dodiya executed a seminal series of large mixed media paper-pulp and print works over the course of a residency at the Singapore Tyler Print Institute. “Dodiya has never allowed himself to be constricted by a particular stylistic choice or medium: his continuities have been staged through self-disruption, an extension into new methods and spaces, an addressing of parallel arts and discourses…It is against this backdrop of restless inventiveness that Dodiya’s work at STPI should be viewed” (Nancy Adajania, “Sabari in Singapore: The Testimony of a Pirate King”, The Wet Sleeves of My Paper Robe, Bodhi Art exhibition catalogue, Singapore, 2006, p. 8, 9).

In this series, Dodiya explores the story of the tribal woman, Sabari, one of the many narratives contained within the epic Ramayana, much like the artist Nandalal Bose did in the early 1940s. Dodiya, however, updates the chronicle of Sabari’s lifelong devotion to Ram, employing it as a vehicle to explore the ways in which the epic is currently being misappropriated in the name of right-wing politics. As a result, this series of work can be read as “…a critical engagement with a history of India, a claim to the shaping of India’s future as a space of inclusiveness”, and one that calls for “…a fresh valuation of the past… a realisation of the fatuity of monolithic interpretations of tradition, identity and belonging” (Ranjit Hoskote, “The Amplitudes of Connection”, Ibid., p. 25). In the present lot, Dodiya paints Sabari peacefully asleep within a pair of brackets, lifted away from the violent sea of blood and bones below her by the rays of the rising sun, and by her own unflagging commitment to Ram, whose name the artist has inscribed in Devnagari on the cotton shirt-sleeve next to her.

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