Tanya Mehta's latest exhibition speaks of things that are perceived to be opposites but are actually non-dual

In The Unity of Opposites, Tanya Mehta’s fourth solo show, the new media artist has used fine art prints, lenticular prints and animated light boxes to explore our human need to order and simplify the complexity of the world around us. Coincidentia oppositorum or the coincidence of opposites speaks of things that we perceive to be opposites but are actually non-dual, i.e. part of the same thing and form a unity. 

Tanya, who has exhibited both nationally as well as internationally, tells After Hrs that her concepts can be examined through different constructs of knowledge. “You just need to trust the process and enjoy the exploration,” she says. Excerpts...  

How did you arrive at the concept/theme of your show? And how have you used it in your works? 

The concept of this show started with a meeting I had in a café with a curator and friend. We were talking about concentric circle maps as an idea for art — that is, a country within a country — and this led to the imagery of portals within my mind and the different concepts they could house. A theme is an evolutionary process. It’s something that starts building up inside of you through small instances and observations over a long period of time.

When something comes to my attention, I have to research it. I love doing my homework and then letting whatever I’ve learnt take hold of me in whatever form it decides to manifest itself… and so The Unity of Opposites was born. It talks about how there are no real opposites — the concepts are non-dual and exist solely in our minds because we, as human beings, need to order the complexity of the world around us. 

Even when you start, I don’t think you can completely know where a theme or line of questioning will take you. For instance, within this theme, there were several ‘mini themes’, so to speak. Creation and destruction, order and chaos, day and night — all these constructs of opposites are human made so we can understand our world better. They are all respectively part of a singular spectrum. To illustrate this point, let’s consider the work Creation and Destruction. In order to create, one must destroy. In this process, energy is constant — it’s the shifting and morphing of it that we perceive as something being created or destroyed. 

All my concepts can be examined through very different constructs of knowledge, like science, philosophy, etc. You just need to trust the process and enjoy the exploration.  

As an artist, you use many mediums. Why not master one medium, rather than exploring many? 

Medium forms a part of art as intricately as the aesthetic or concept of a work. As an artist, it is your responsibility to get your message across as poignantly and effectively as possible and medium plays a great role in doing this. During this show, I was exploring the perception of opposites and so mediums like lenticular print or light boxes made sense because you can merge two artworks to make them seem as one. 

Moreover, my mediums are more in harmony than one might think. The basis of all my mediums is photography and digital art. It is only technique and production that changes between the works, and those are only a small fraction of the total input that goes into creating a work.

Tell us about the use of animated light boxes and lenticular prints and how have these mediums enhanced your concept? 

I came up with the idea of animated light boxes because they allowed me the freedom of housing two concepts within what is traditionally one still frame. All the artworks in the form of light boxes — Join the Dots, From the Pale Blue Dot and Dot to Dot — are meant to cast aside the imperfection of our human capability (which the rest of the show explores) and instead look forward to the wonder and progress we are capable of. The front screens for these are simpler – what one would see with one’s naked eye, representing the everyday mind. But once the backlight comes on, it’s a completely different story. They show the power of human imagination (Join the Dots), which ultimately leads to scientific exploration (From the Pale Blue Dot), which, in turn, nudges us forward to understand more than we did yesterday (Dot to Dot), helping us to ultimately transcend the narrowness of our perception. The medium thus allowed me to (literally) shed light on the wonder and magic of what is possible when we choose to be our best selves.

I chose lenticulars for a similar reason because their aesthetic and output differs from that of the lightboxes. Housing two opposing artworks and concepts in one frame and uniting them in form as well as ideology really helped in bringing the concept to the fore. The artwork All in the Mind, for instance, discusses happiness and sadness and how different individuals deal with these waves of emotion differently. The lenticular medium allowed the work to roll like these waves of emotion, quite literally, so that our very natural human journey is physically represented by the medium. It allowed for the concept to come to life. Besides this obvious allure of movement, lenticulars also allowed me to play with depth, thus making the image 3D and a little more real for the audience.

The exhibition is on till August 18 at Rukshaan Art, Fort.