The nature of visual abstraction is akin to poetic verses elucidating the search for the Supreme. One can find this search in Kabir’s dohas, Rumi’s poetry or references in Vedas and scriptures, where the ‘divine’ is elusive yet its presence can be ‘felt’ with or without sensorial apparatuses. At times it exudes from Nature but is not nature itself, at times it is within one’s self yet separate from the Self. The poetic attempts at a ‘definition’ become a series of negations like ’what it is not’, just as in an image, the negative space gives an indirect definition of the object/positive space. Abstraction pulsates and emanates from such uncharted realms within the artists’ minds.

Abstraction derives its roots from unpredictable sources such as nature, un/known forms, emotions, actual or imagined. Unlike clearly defined academic art styles of figuration or landscape etc, abstraction emerges as a process of making visible the hidden. This unplanned journey and ambiguity of interpretation is further complicated by the urgent need of the chattering human mind to identify/classify the visual into the known or the familiar. This encourages the sharp negation, to clear out the unwanted familiarisation and bring forth the nascent, implied thought in visual. When one adds to this complex mixture a generous helping of varied perceptions, it is then that many unseen levels are reached by the art work radiating its multifarious essence.

It is from within such a quagmire of conflicting thoughts, perceptions and a sound academic backing that Pragati works derive their life force. In her works, Pragati adheres to using abstraction as a lexicon as much as it becomes an articulating voice for the tricky situations in her life. The trials and tribulations of new motherhood, the fear of dilution of dreams to make room for expectations, the conflicted artist, the new responsible mother, and numerous other personal, social and professional roles that are demanded of her on a daily basis, tend to bring out a range of emotions, most of which remain unuttered in normal existence, but find life on the canvases which become embedded with dissonant questions. There is a leaning towards the rhetoric having come face to face with questions of patriarchy which have remained unanswered since ages, attempt to see the light of day through her works. The pictorial surface depicts chaos interspersed with deep silences, intense dialogues contrasted with nurturing soliloquies.

SUSHMA SABNIS

Art curator | Art writer | Mumbai