Nivedita Deshpande’s is taking art to its rightful place—where men on the street can see it.
White paper streamers and cubes spiral down from a ceiling 22 feet high. Special ultraviolet lights illuminate the dreamy sculptures at night and create haunting shadows. Nivedita Deshpande's first solo exhibit Simply Constructed, which will show until February 27, is truly simple in its beauty but very difficult to create, as Deshpande reveals.
"I have been working on these six sculptures since September 2005. It took me a month just to install the works," she says. Since no gallery would give her so much time just to install her works, she chose a rather different gallery-Marble Arts in Parel. "I also need very high ceilings, which is not easy to find in Mumbai. When a friend offered me a marble cutting shed, I grabbed it," she says.
And to make the most of her unusual location, Deshpande even put up Marathi posters to invite the community around her exhibit. "Their instant reaction to my work is khoop kaam kelas (You have worked very hard) and then they say it is quite beautiful. It is the labour and effort that they notice before the beauty," she says.
This 32-year old has been working with suspended paper sculptures since 1996. "I wanted to get off pedestals and still make things stand as a sculptor. And I found the answer in suspension. I am also interested in the ephemeral and transient, so I chose paper," she explains.
Deshpande graduated in sculpture from the MS University in Baroda before pursuing her Masters in Fine Arts from Maryland Institute in Baltimore, US. "In Baroda since we had poor infrastructure, we had to be innovative to make do with whatever we had. In the US, if the lights went off, people would just stop working. Yet, I learnt some important techniques using state-of-the-art infrastructure there. The combination of the two schools was perfect," she says.
Simply Constructed ongoing till February 27, 12noon-10pm, Marble Arts, DS Road, Opposite Lady Ratan Tower, Behind Micassa Auto Garage, Gandhi Nagar, Worli, Mumbai 400 018.Tel 22817017.
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