Important Notice

Although she has worked in several different media, fabric has always fascinated Anju Dodiya; from the way in which Robert Rauschenberg, an artist she has always admired, incorporated pieces of cloth in his collages, to the intricate weaves and patterns that textiles offer her as an escape from the intimidating whiteness or blankness of paper. Always cognizant of, and forthcoming about the violence inherent to her creative process, the artist... Although she has worked in several different media, fabric has always fascinated Anju Dodiya; from the way in which Robert Rauschenberg, an artist she has always admired, incorporated pieces of cloth in his collages, to the intricate weaves and patterns that textiles offer her as an escape from the intimidating whiteness or blankness of paper. Always cognizant of, and forthcoming about the violence inherent to her creative process, the artist explains, “When you work on paper, confronting that white is a terribly fearful thing. With textile, something`s there already, and I have to interact with the textures. It made the painting process more carefree for me. And there was a great pleasure in working with the textures and also kind of fighting them with the paint. It was great fun” (as quoted in “Gieve Patel talks to Anju Dodiya”, Anju Dodiya, Bose Pacia exhibition catalogue, 2006, not paginated).

Dodiya`s use of mattresses in her work has added a new dimension to her painterly affiliation with fabric. According to Ranjit Hoskote, in these three dimensional works, Dodiya “…obliges us to attend to the semiotics of the mattress: here is a place of sleep, a place of dream, a place of erotic encounter, joy and disturbance. Here is where the Self and the Other meet, discover one another’s nuances, connect and retreat. This is where the individual is both drawn out of herself and thrown back on herself in a moment of intensity. Playing with the textures and motifs on these textile surfaces, Dodiya shapes her personae as they walk along dark riversides or decipher the scrolled script of fate, try on masks or toy with knots, listen to the parrot who knows all about human frailty” (“A Compass with Ten Directions”, The Artist Lives and Works in Baroda Bombay Calcutta Mysore Rotterdam Trivandrum, Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke exhibition catalogue, 2005, not paginated).

In the present lot, one of the first mattresses the artist painted, she offers viewers the figure of a faceless oracle, reading the future off a long paper scroll. The half-visible green parrot behind this robed figure recalls the traditional Indian future-predicting practice of having a trained bird pick cards from a pack. The other two figures in this painting, one gagged and one half-masked, bear the artist’s own features, commenting perhaps on her powerlessness against the forces of fate. Working with the unique texture of the mattress, Dodiya overlays this cast of characters with a black and gold web; another reference to providence and the idea of being trapped by destiny.

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