Delhi-based artist Nitai Das loves to sketch Indian culture and the ordinariness of everyday life, albeit with an underlying meanings. He has shown everyday activities through the day-to-day lives of ordinary people, whether they are the farmers of Tripura, actors of Chattisgarh, college students of Kolkata, Delhi or Mumbai, or tourists in Goa. His current exhibition Living Traditions reflects that fact. He says, “In one of my canvases called Dance of Life the man drawn is really Lord Shiva but I haven’t named him. He is shown pouring a red and green liquid from the same lotta depicting death and birth respectively, denoting the circle of life.”
Another canvas depicts Jesus Christ and the stations of the cross, though he has made it seem very ordinary by deliberately making a man hold a cross symbolising that everybody has a cross to bear no matter whether you are a do-gooder or not. “I want to portray that everybody has a cross to shoulder — but the size depends on your ability to bear it.”
Forty-year old Nitai belongs to the great tradition in art, of Jamini Roy, Gaganendranath Tagore and Ramkinkar Baij.
Though he grew up in Tripura and studied in Santiniketan, he has retained his roots by propagating Indian culture in all his exhibitions, be it here or abroad.
For your dose of someIndiannesscheck out the exhibition at Nehru Centre art gallery, on till 28 December.
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