Cartwheels in Your Honour
A monographic exhibition by Trishla Jain
Young, effervescent Trishla Jain is one of the most recent entrants into the domain of contemporary Indian art. Largely influenced by her education at the American School in New Delhi, followed by her Bachelor’s degree in literature, poetry, psychology and anthropology at Stanford University in USA, Trishla Jain’s art is reminiscent of some of the much celebrated Pop artists of the eras past.
With her third monographic exhibition, titled Cartwheels in Your Honour, the artist calls for a re-reading of Pop Art in the 21st century Indian contemporary art. Taking the title from the lyrics of the popular song If Only for A Night from the album Ceremonials by the Best New Artist nominee in the 2011 Grammy Awards, Florence + the Machine, Trishla depicts a grand gesture for celebration of life through a new series of works. The exhibition is loosely conceived around the archetypal framework of the Dasavatara of the Vaishnava philosophy, through which Trishla continues to explore universal wisdom and higher consciousness. With her constant preoccupation with the spiritual and the universal truth, she makes use of the easily identifiable references – in this case the ten incarnations of Lord Vishnu that one is familiar with - and contemporizes them with motifs from popular culture.
Trishla appropriates the ten avatars of Vishnu as per her personal relationship with them and then presents a distillation or symbolic rendition in the form of life-size sculptures and canvases as an ecstatic, psychedelic ode to color, light and form. Through them she evokes stages of life or states of being, right from the soul’s very conception to its ultimate freedom, the enlightenment. As always is the artist’s intention, one first encounters the whimsical in her work – the deliberate, colourful playfulness of wit, humour and verse, and simple meanings. However, within that simplicity and whimsy is camouflaged the complexity of thought.
“The purpose of the series, she says, “is to expand the definition of the Self from its restrictive attributes (such as: Trishla, female, 28 years old), towards the edges of infinity… to transport the Self, of the viewers as well, from the prison of limited conceptual identity to a sacred space far beyond the grasp of the small, logical mind. As encapsulated by Rabindranath Tagore:
“Man progresses, from epoch to epoch, toward the full realization of his soul, of this soul that is greater than all the riches he can accumulate, than all the actions he can accomplish and all the theories he can set forth, this soul that continues onward, never ending in death or dissolution.”
Each avatar is represented by a group of emblematic works in Trishla’s characteristic approach using the techniques for bricolage and decoupage that ties philosophy, mythology, contemporary music, and literature to the mass appeal of popular culture. In terms of the design, while broadly the exhibition plan is determined by the chronological order of the Dasavatar, each individual work of art is also showcased as complete in itself. Through a series of about 20 works, the exhibition experience is thereby not just merely visual, but rather an engagement with the labyrinth of human life in all states of being, from conception to enlightenment. The intent of the design would be to match the intent of the artist, in that by linking the mythical, or the ideological with everyday life, Trishla leaves her audience at the precipice of a surprising realization on the contemporariness and universality of the Dasavatar.
