Seema Kohli relives reminiscences of previous

Untitled, hand painted with Fuji picture color on distinctive silver gelatin print at Khula Aasman exhibition by Seema Kohli
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Nostalgia needn’t at all times be painful. Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) mentioned “One is at all times at residence in a single’s previous…” This sums up the continuing multi-media solo exhibition of seasoned artist Seema Kohli “Khula Aasman” within the Capital.

Speaking in regards to the challenge, she says, “I’m articulating a tenuous hyperlink to a house that my father by no means returned to. This challenge is deeply private, nonetheless, reveals the ephemerality of all belonging.” The various works join Kohli together with her previous, forefathers and ancestral residence in Pind Dadan Khan (now in Pakistan’s Jhelum district).

Artist Seema Kohli together with her work Gulab ke khet
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Bridging of the previous and current is exhibited within the silver gelatin prints. Utilizing photographs clicked by her father, KD Kohli, the artist has added color, ink and pen drawings, some footage from her archives and up to date ones of Pind Dadan Khan by Maria Waseem, offering a recent perspective. The baraat of her father passing by means of New Rajendra Nagar’s Shankar Street is framed within the arch of the Shiva temple of Pind Dadan Khan. Urdu poetry and coronary heart motifs on these prints make them partaking. Lots of the authentic footage are of Seema’s mom Uma who was her father’s muse.

The works portraying the journey of Kohli’s household from Pakistan to India are additionally fascinating. One reveals a practice, which was a significant technique of transport for refugees throughout Partition, together with the picture of Seema’s studio when it was being constructed, thereby connecting the previous with the current. Partition’s barbaric aspects are depicted subtly by axes and a shrouded physique. Equally riveting is the work juxtaposing Seema’s ancestral home together with her New Rajinder Nagar residence wall with photographs of her grandfather and his associates between the 2 buildings, signifying the passage of time.

Untitled, hand painted with Fuji picture color on distinctive silver gelatin print at Khula Aasman exhibition by Seema Kohli
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Works highlighting Kohli’s household occupation of hikmat or apply of Unani and Ayurveda drugs are additionally exhibited. One lists the eight generations of docs within the household, ending together with her grandfather, Hakim Chunni Lal Kohli. Seema’s eyes on the highest, trying on the names of her illustrious forefathers, mirror admiration and awe.

The set up reproducing the Appendix from certainly one of her grandfather’s books – Makhzan-i-Hikmat — illustrates the vary of therapies supplied by Unani and Ayurveda in addition to allopathy for various ailments together with cholera, dysentery, and influenza.

Untitled, hand painted with Fuji picture color on distinctive silver gelatin print at Khula Aasman exhibition by Seema Kohli
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A charpoy (mattress) lined with a bedsheet displaying belladonna herbs and a pill-making machine present the atmosphere of a dawakhana. The 12 works outlining the herbs used for making ready medicines, their scientific names, and properties together with glass jars containing murabbas and gulkand, and anatomical drawings of physique organs like coronary heart, liver, and lungs, take one to an period when this indigenous medical system was thriving.

Untitled, hand painted with Fuji picture color on distinctive silver gelatin print at Khula Aasman exhibition by Seema Kohli
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The present’s essence comes alive in Seema’s Gulab Ki Khet (acrylic colors and ink on canvas with 24-carat gold and silver leaf). She has painted the blooming rose fields of Choa Saidan Shah, a city in Punjab Province of Pakistan, and displaying camels utilized by the pilgrims to go to shrines at Katas Raj on the again. Past these stand the mighty Hindu Kush mountain vary and the birds hovering within the sky pointing on the futility of artificial borders.

Speaking about Khula Aasman, the artist describes it as a “challenge of reminiscence of reminiscences”. She says, “I really feel that the guide Mitr Pyare Nu (KD Kohli’s autobiography) was cathartic for my father and the identical for me with Khula Aasman, which relies on my father’s autobiography. It was reliving my father’s reminiscences.”

(On view until February 18 at Seema Kohli Studio, B 85, Pocket X, Okhla Part II, 11 a.m. to six p.m. each day)