Artist Seema Kohli has put up years of her hardwork, imagination on canvas and weaved a beautiful work of fables, myths, philosophies of life along with her reality. Her art gallery in Delhi, is a beautiful mix of real and the unreal.
The magic of creativity sparkles up the monochromes in life. Art is not just imagination on a real canvas, art is mood, an emotion that has a universal language unique to individuals. Art is serene, it triggers that button of imagination and we start to enter the world of our own reveries. And that is exactly how I felt as I entered the gallery by Seema Kohli titled, Cut From The Same Cloth. The gallery is put up at the Contemporary Art Centre at Bikaner House, Delhi.
Cut From the Same Cloth is an exploration of the female form through the medium of embroidery. The exhibition by Gallerie Nvya opened at Bikaner House on Friday with 15 artworks embroidered with silk and cotton threads, beads, and sequins on an untreated canvas cloth. The show also features three paintings in acrylics with gold and silver leaf on canvas, as well as two works on gold tissue, bringing together painting and embroidery. While exploring themes of beauty, sensuality, and spirituality, Kohli has created a narrative amalgamation of these subjects with ancient myths and figures of India.
The walls of of the gallery were not just adorned with artwork but some beautiful verses too.
As one enters the serene space with white walls adorned with the magical creations of Seema Kohli, one is bound to be enchanted by the musings thus created. Even the white walls speak with verses that support the idea of the whole theme.
Divulging about the nittigrities of her work in a Walkthrough with Rahul Kumar, she said that she has endeavoured to keep the colour theme close and vibrant.
There are various elements on her canvas that are symbolic of the true and authentic amalgamation of what reality and fiction looks like. With feminine energy coursing and weaving the narrative, she has herself, her pets and her real-life elements in it too. She said, “ The images are my friend. I am their life, they are my life…” Tree is a recurrent theme in her work that is a reminder and a way to show her reverence of sort.
A story weaved by Seema Kohli
Kohli’s narratives on the canvas use ancient symbols, rooted in history, mythological characters and above all, she has used female figures as an embodiment of feminine energy in the cosmic realm.
Documenting the journey of her creation and imagination on social media, she captioned one of her posts as, “I believe our source is from the feminine, and we all have a certain aspect of feminine in us. I wonder how we know that there is a floor beneath us? Maybe some energy is holding the carpet, the floor. Maybe, they are the unforeseen energies, bodiless forms holding us from below, making us do things that we are only thinking about. And, therefore, my story remains the same – It is the creative, regenerative feminine energies that create and maintain everything in this world.”
Seema says that she loves to brood and her work is a tell-tale of it. Some of her artwork is truly meditative with colours and threads taking you to another world. Her different painting have different stories and speak differently to different people.
The show stopper of gallery is the one big frame that is spiritual, magical, fictional, and real at the same time. It is a flight to be experienced by viewers. During the walkthrough, Kohli said that while most of her works are set in borders, this one painting has no border at the top, in a way of expression it is to let the flight of imagination soar high.
Speaking about her work, Kohli said that it is like love at first sight for her. These paintings have their own life, have their own ways of communicating and know whom to speak with.
If you are someone who is an aficionado of art, and have a penchant for myths, fables and everything and anything to do with philosophies rooted in realities, this gallery is for you to delve in Seema’s world of fiction and enjoy living in it briefly.
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