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Born in Lucknow, Anita Dube studied art history and criticism at the Faculty of Fine Arts of M.S. University, Baroda. Associated briefly with the Radical Painters and Sculptors Association of Baroda in the 1980s, the artist’s work continues to be informed by her strong liberal political agenda. Presently, Dube’s oeuvre spans a wide range of media and speaks of personal and social issues including violence, loss, power, belief and desire, often... Born in Lucknow, Anita Dube studied art history and criticism at the Faculty of Fine Arts of M.S. University, Baroda. Associated briefly with the Radical Painters and Sculptors Association of Baroda in the 1980s, the artist’s work continues to be informed by her strong liberal political agenda. Presently, Dube’s oeuvre spans a wide range of media and speaks of personal and social issues including violence, loss, power, belief and desire, often employing and politicizing the body as either site or vehicle. As she explains, “…I am attracted to things that shake the nervous system out of its comfort zone. Violently visceral things interest me as vehicles for transformation. And erotics and politics are both sites where these sorts of transformations occur” (rpt. in Anita Dube interview by Peter Nagy, Icon: India Contemporary, Bose Pacia exhibition catalogue, Venice, 2005, p. 23).

Dube has been using tiny painted enamel eyes in her work for several years now, whether site-specific installations, photography projects or sculptures. Traditionally used to decorate Hindu idols, the artist explains how she came across these eyes almost a decade ago and why she continues to use them, saying, “I had seen a single eye installed and painted, again and again, in the work of the Indian painter Gogi Saroj Pal, it fascinated me for its incredible presence, as something nearest to being human and alive. When I actually got around to using it, I found that when you have a cluster of them they carry the energy and charge of crowds of people. The sense of being in crowded places, even messy dirty places, an attraction to the violent energy present in these situations, which is either revolutionary or fascist, is the reason I continue to explore this material” (rpt. in Ibid.).

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