Alternate Evolutions

Drawing forms the basis of Shrimanti Saha’s practice as an immediate, tangible expression, taking shape from the ephemeral nature of an idea. Usually drawing on paper with different mediums, Shrimanti experiments with making collages by pasting and cutting various kinds of paper, building them into independent cut-outs, combining a range of drawing styles within a coherent visual realm.

 Alternate Evolutions opens and extends from Shrimanti’s paintings beyond their conventional formats, unhindered by borders and frames, into expansive, ever-expanding space. This ongoing body of work began when she received the FICA Amol Vadehra Art Grant in 2018-19. The Grant enabled her to experiment with stop-motion animation practices, and re-think storytelling through a combination of tactile media with digital interventions. FICA is delighted to showcase the outcome of this grant process at the India Art Fair 2023.

The installation assumes multiple (after)lives, having been conceived in the various studios and residency spaces that she has worked in. Imagining the work spreading ‘like an organism’ across enclosed walls, she believes it garners influences and textures from the architecture of spaces that have hosted it and that it continues to inhabit. Triggered by formations offered up by new contexts and temporalities, her work catalyses a process of world-building, internalising the exteriorities in an environment, mapping the flux that comes with travel, with novel interactions and conversations.

 As narrative assemblages, these cut-out drawings have accumulated over a span of time, and they transmogrify into devices that offer a study of space and the existence of the self-in-space. Stemming from this, she incorporates her cut-out drawings into stop-motion animation films—a key interest for her—approaching the moving image with the temperament of a painter. Experimenting with methods that synthesize the hand-made and the digital, Shrimanti morphs these shapes into stories accompanied by sound, opening up yet another area of exploration for her. While they usually have a linear storyline, these videos also become a way of tracing the indexicality of fragmentation and continuity, and the relationship between sound and image.

 An avid reader, storytelling is intrinsic to Shrimanti’s research-based practice that grows from a range of sources such as history, literature, mythology, comic books, art history, science fiction, miniature painting, movies, architecture, encyclopaedias and news reports as well as memories and personal experiences. Some of her references include works by Edmund Husserl, especially his concept of ‘the Other,’ Donna J Haraway’s feminist post-humanist theories, the co-dependence and coexistence of multi-species ecosystems in Anna L Tsing’s writings, Jorge Luis Borges’ labyrinthine surrealism, his folkloric, mythical beings, and the queer performativity of nature outlined by Karen Barad. This rich amalgamation results in the formation of multi-faceted narratives exploring themes of identity, gender, ecology, violence and exploitation with dystopian landscapes, characters, composite creatures and humanoid objects choreographed across a combination of different time periods.

 “Can we live inside this regime of the human and still exceed it?,” asks Anna L Tsing. We extend a similar proposition: Can we work with the grain of the ‘more-than,’ live to grow alongside, and foster with pleasure? As we make, as we create, must we let what we think be defined by that which already exists? Leading to the creation of a personal mythology that plays along the lines of the personal and the collective psyche, Alternate Evolutions hints at the possibilities of hybrid cultures and universes, and the present as a consequence of the past. 

About the artist:

Shrimanti Saha completed her BVA (2009) and MVA (2011) in Painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts at MS University, Baroda. She received the FICA Amol Vadehra Art Grant in 2019, the Inlaks Fine Arts Award in 2015 and has been part of residencies at Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Nebraska, USA (2022), Vermont Studio Centre (with Barbara White Fellowship 2019), Johnson, USA; Art Omi in New York; Taj Residency and Ske Project, Bangalore and others. She worked as a freelance illustrator with ad agencies and publishers after her post-graduation; before resuming her practice full time as an artist. She has been part of shows at Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi; Serendipity Arts Festival, Goa; Nature Morte, Gurgaon; Gallerie 88, Kolkata; and Mumbai Art Room, amongst others.

Read more about our projects at India Art Fair here.