Mushroom cloud, tornado or light?

One doesn't usually think of light as an artistic medium. Few artists in India have explored the aesthetic possibilities of light, beyond deciding under which light to show their canvas. This makes actor-artist Lekha Washington, who has designed light fixtures for domestic use under her studio label Ajji and has now begun making art installations with light, quite an exception.

Lightstrom, unveiled recently at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, is an interactive piece. You can't see the light fixture above, only the wisps of incandescent fabric hanging from ceiling to floor in cascading waves and whirling gently — touch it and the apparatus appears to explode, white lights sparkle all over, setting it aglow. Washington, who was supported by Philips Lighting for the technological back-end, says it was the tactility — the feeling that you can touch light — that she was aiming for. Lightstrom is a variation of a piece Washington had made for her solo show at the Sakshi Gallery in Mumbai, a few months ago. Similar and simpler, A Dervish of Tornadoes, consisted of long stretches of translucent white fabric falling from a ring from the ceiling. There's a light within and as the fabric turns round and round, the fabric billows out like the skirts of a dancing dervish. "Light has an intuitive quality, which I love. These pieces, for instance, were sparked by the flames in a fireplace. It's soft, repetitive and meditative at the same time," says Washington. "I was also tying it with other visual metaphors — a tornado, the nuclear mushroom cloud, dancers. You look at it and think of one or the other."

A few years ago, Washington had designed a line of floor lamps and chandeliers — one shaped like a windswept strand of Medusa, each a flexible steel wire, with a light bulb at its end. India has a long tradition of using lights to beautify homes; Deepawali, the festival of lights being the foremost among them. Her own aesthetic sensibilities, she says, is more contemporary, but it flows from the same home-grown practices. While Indians, feels Washington, have thus far not explored the potential of light as an element of home decor, she can see attitudes changing now. "There's more awareness now of what light can do to the way you feel, how it can change the mood of a space."

Indians, however, she says, need to have a greater appreciation for original design. "I feel tired having to explain that my piece is an original design and therefore of more value than something bought from China."