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Lot 24

 

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Atul Dodiya's "...sense of amplified selfhood depends crucially on his ability to reach out and embrace a diversity of positions and perspectives. This extended cultural range takes him well beyond the circumstances of birth and the confines of nationality, and allows him to transcend the sterile provincialism as well as the lethal hypernationalism that can afflict a postcolonial society" (Ranjit Hoskote, Pale Ancestors, Bodhi Art Gallery... Atul Dodiya's "...sense of amplified selfhood depends crucially on his ability to reach out and embrace a diversity of positions and perspectives. This extended cultural range takes him well beyond the circumstances of birth and the confines of nationality, and allows him to transcend the sterile provincialism as well as the lethal hypernationalism that can afflict a postcolonial society" (Ranjit Hoskote, Pale Ancestors, Bodhi Art Gallery exhibition catalogue, 2008, not paginated).

In his series of paintings and installations titled 'Broken Branches', to which the present lot belongs, Dodiya explores the payments exacted by the violence of political history. Referencing a range of incidents from the repercussions of the Partition of India in 1947 to the recent war in Afghanistan, waged in the name of fighting terrorism, the artist scrutinizes the nature of suffering as it is manifested in both public and private, past and present spheres. Attempting to reconcile the reactions to and manifestations of this suffering of the mind with those of the body, Dodiya derives his approach from local philosophies found in the practice of yoga. First exhibited in New York in 2003, the series uses local ideas to investigate the phenomenon of suffering while addressing a foreign tragedy.

Speaking about this 2003 exhibition, Nancy Adajania explains, "Dodiya's incorporation of the body of the potential yogi in the large watercolors accompanying the cabinet installation is an attempt at exploring the nuances of vairagya [which roughly translates as a renunciation of the pains and pleasures of the material world] in the wake of 9/11. A male with an idealised physique performs various yogic asanas balancing the twin towers of the World Trade Centre on his limbs. This acrobatics of the spirit is performed against the deeply disturbing cycle global violence, of terror, and counter-terror" ("Showcasing Broken Lives", The Art News Magazine of India, Vol. VIII Issue III, 2003, p. 75).

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