Important Notice

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 has no single narrative or easy explanation. Rather, like a surreal painting or poem it ‘activates itself’, “…where random words trigger memories and shapes of desire” (Nancy Adajania, “Birds in a Mirage of Gold”, All Night I Shall Gallop, Bodhi Art exhibition catalogue, 2008, p. 8). Here, among other... 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 has no single narrative or easy explanation. Rather, like a surreal painting or poem it ‘activates itself’, “…where random words trigger memories and shapes of desire” (Nancy Adajania, “Birds in a Mirage of Gold”, All Night I Shall Gallop, Bodhi Art exhibition catalogue, 2008, p. 8). Here, among other images and symbols, Dodiya quotes the first three lines of Sylvia Plath’s disturbing poem Getting There, where the latter likens her agonizing journey through life to the Holocaust, questioning how much longer it will take to be rid of the pain and frustration of her existence, even if it means she must die.

Much like Plath did, Dodiya is able to step back from her situation to examine and creatively record the intense emotions that she experiences. However, while Plath was dealing with chronic depression and suicidal urges, Dodiya’s concerns center on the violence that her artistic process and the search for the ideal image wreak on her. According to Adajania, “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).

Contemplating the present lot, Adajania continues, “…in ‘How far is it?’ Dodiya accidentally chanced upon the portrait of a Japanese woman on a floral print in a local Singapore market; serendipitously, it looks like a screen print run onto the fabric. While this cloth hangs like a curtain, Plath’s lines run on…and are abruptly cut mid-sentence. Below these lines, which act like a floating signifier, a readymade doily spins like a cosmic yarn [or, perhaps, a fresh iteration the artist’s familiar maze motif] and a mother probes her daughter’s mouth with a spatula – this is, very probably, a 19th-century image screen-printed here. How far are we from constructing a coherent meaning from this non-linear narrative? Are the crocheted planets far away? Is the gullet of the girl under examination actually a deep and dark gorilla interior? And how do we reach the anonymous Japanese woman imprisoned in a curtain that is trying desperately to be a continent? Or is it a continent that will always be a curtain?” (Ibid, p. 8).

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