Through masks and memories, this artist’s solo show in Hyderabad tells a story of resilience

Artist Anupama, who goes by the sanction Anupama alias Anil arsenic a tribute to her precocious hubby and creator Anil Xavier, ushers successful a caller connection of expression done her solo amusement A Room for Refuge astatine Kalakriti Art Gallery. The accumulation brings her mixed media works and assemblages, each shaped by idiosyncratic experiences.

Her mixed-media works are populated with self-portraits wearing masks, acceptable against abstract, layered landscapes that symbolically reflector the complexities of the caput — interwoven with thoughts, memories, and lived moments.

Recurring motif

Anupama often uses her ain look arsenic a recurring motif, but her enactment besides references the broader acquisition of womanhood. “I americium portion of it, but determination are others too,” she says, positioning herself arsenic some taxable and corporate voice. This introspective travel began successful 2014 during what she calls an “intense time” successful Hyderabad. Alone successful her studio, she recovered herself conversing inwardly, arsenic stories and characters from her puerility merged into a fusion of emotions and imagination. The experience, she recalls, was “intense but blissful” — a infinitesimal that blurred the lines betwixt idiosyncratic and corporate acquisition and inspired her to research deeper themes of interiority and existence.

Mixed-media works

While pursuing her Master’s successful Fine Arts astatine Hyderabad Central University, Anupama began to prosecute with ideas of womanhood, femininity, and the societal realities of women. She sourced atom insubstantial from Kolkata to make extent and layering successful her mixed-media works — a process that, for her, became symbolic of self-discovery. “I felt similar a pistillate whose soma dilatory uncovered the layers,” she says, referring to her Island of Hope series.

Her aboriginal influences see the striking African masks she encountered astatine the Louvre Museum successful Paris, and Theyyam, the ritual creation signifier of Kerala wherever performers deterioration elaborate masks and headdresses. For Anupama, the disguise symbolises translation and power. “It makes the performer a divine being who transcends to different realm,” she explains. “The assemblage excessively experiences a benignant of societal translation — successful that moment, the boundaries and inequalities betwixt them and the performer dissolve.”

Anupama’s enactment not lone explores vulnerability and translation but besides the emergence of individuality and hope. In her probe connected masks, she examined the histories of Latin American cultures and their profoundly rooted content systems. “The women I picture whitethorn person vulnerabilities and look challenges, but they besides acquisition transformation. The disguise becomes a awesome of powerfulness — a mode to lead, to choose,” she notes.

Among the astir idiosyncratic pieces successful the accumulation is simply a representation of a Malayali mates from the 1980s — a self-portrait with her precocious hubby Anil, dressed successful accepted attire, with a trunk container placed successful a country of the canvas. The assemblages displayed successful the amusement are drawn symbolically from this precise box, holding fragments of representation and emotion.

“My hubby Anil, who passed distant successful 2024, was a large inspiration,” she says. “He was the co-sculptor of the statue of Rohit Vemula (the Dalit pupil whose decease astatine Hyderabad Central University sparked nationwide protests against caste discrimination). I came from an applied arts inheritance and wasn’t definite of my creator direction, but helium was the 1 who encouraged maine to prosecute it.”

A Room for Refuge is connected presumption astatine Kalakriti Art Gallery until November 5.