Important Notice

Anju Dodiya, a talented draughtsman, uses her body of work to weave “…her own legend as though she were a fictional character caught in bizarre but lyrical narrative, a self-disruptive autobiography…[she] compels one to unravel the story, untold and told, of which the single painting seems to be but one isolated frame, and she seems to urge us, ‘Behold! This could be me trapped by art’” (Dilip Chitre, “Anju Dodiya: Enigmatic Variations” in Anju... Anju Dodiya, a talented draughtsman, uses her body of work to weave “…her own legend as though she were a fictional character caught in bizarre but lyrical narrative, a self-disruptive autobiography…[she] compels one to unravel the story, untold and told, of which the single painting seems to be but one isolated frame, and she seems to urge us, ‘Behold! This could be me trapped by art’” (Dilip Chitre, “Anju Dodiya: Enigmatic Variations” in Anju Dodiya: Recent Works, Gallery Chemould exhibition catalogue, Mumbai, 2001, not paginated).

In illuminating these highly personal narratives, the artist often draws on mythological and art historical references, both Indian and international. In the present lot, for instance, Dodiya paints the head of Lord Shiva, the destructive force of the Hindu holy trinity, connected by a maze of golden strands of what the artist suggests is algae, to a large, dark sea shell. Alluding, perhaps, to the myth of the descent of the River Ganges into Shiva’s tresses like she did in her 2002 work, Spaghetti Shiva, Dodiya once again turns to the maze motif, and to her fondness for “eccentric hats and their quirky owners” in this piece (Nancy Adajania, “Tasting the Acid Kiss”, The Cloud Hunt, Vadehra Art Gallery exhibition catalogue, New Delhi, 2005, p. 9).

It is believed that to break the fall of the goddess Ganges from heaven to earth, she descends onto Shiva’s hair, and is divided into several streams by his locks. In this charcoal-smudged watercolour, however, Shiva’s hair is rendered as a warren of algae, complicating rather than easing the fall of the river. Relating her artistic journey to this thorny and convoluted path, and her troubled creative process to Shiva’s dance of destruction, the tandav, Dodiya offers the viewer a sharp mythological analogy to her private cosmos of creative destruction.

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