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Part of a series of mixed media works that Anju Dodiya produced during a residency at the Singapore Tyler Print Institute in 2007, the present lot is a large-format diptych that pairs handmade paper with fabric. In this work, Dodiya challenges the boundaries of traditional printmaking processes through her creative cobbling together of diverse images and materials. Nancy Adajania observes that as the artist “…pushes printmaking beyond itself,... Part of a series of mixed media works that Anju Dodiya produced during a residency at the Singapore Tyler Print Institute in 2007, the present lot is a large-format diptych that pairs handmade paper with fabric. In this work, Dodiya challenges the boundaries of traditional printmaking processes through her creative cobbling together of diverse images and materials. Nancy Adajania observes that as the artist “…pushes printmaking beyond itself, the process of making turns into a slow dance of improvisation: the image is rubbed or stamped into the wet pulp and shown like an open wound, or held in place with a stigmata of screws. This process allows for a deep embedding of secrets; it also makes space for the artist’s exhibitionist flair, her desire to stud the surface with actual objects, and not just their impressions” (“Birds in a Mirage of Gold”, All Night I Shall Gallop, Bodhi Art exhibition catalogue, 2008, p. 9).

Here, the pieces of a torn portrait, a shred of gauze bandage, and several pointing fingers on the left panel emphasize the frequent and violent challenges that Dodiya experiences in expressing herself as an artist. The printed image on the fabric panel, of a woman whose head is being bandaged, adds to this imagery. To accompany this collection of images, Dodiya inscribes the first stanza of Sylvia Plath’s early poem, Admonition, on the surface. One of the poet’s Trio of Love Songs, in Admonition Plath describes the adverse, almost brutal consequences that the creative process, whether scientific or artistic, can have on beauty and love. Like Plath’s concerns in this poem, Dodiya’s also center on the violence that the artistic process and the search for the ideal image inflict on her as an artist. As Adajania explains, “Dodiya admits to having been impressed by Plath’s ability to structure pain and stare unflinchingly into the face of death; what she omits to mention is that Plath’s self-flagellatory tone acts as a mirror for her own masochistic need to sacrifice everything at the altar of the perfect image” (Ibid., p. 7).

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