Lub Dub Lub Dub, Dhadakte Dil Ki Jodi Awaaz is also the title of artist Rejani S R’s first solo show held recently at Durbar Hall Art Gallery. The narrative is a woman’s struggle in a society based on gender bias and prejudice. The woman is not only the object of man’s gaze and appetite, but also of his absolute control. Rejani uses jute as a medium to express her strong and bittersweetness.
Made of jute and found objects—beads, rope, cords, clay and cloth—the untitled female form depicts a woman in the throes of childbirth, as the object of sensuality, as a mighty goddess and as a reclining girl . One of the most forceful acts is the eye-catching figure of a woman in childbirth, that is, in the early moment of fertility. Newborn is a heap of paddy.
From a group of women’s faces high on the wall hang long thin ropes that are gathered in a pile on the floor. “These are tears,” says Rejani, pointing to another work where women’s noses are pierced, “just like a ring used to control a cow or a bull.”
His childhood-inspired works offer mystery and intrigue. Memories of looking carefully through a gap in the window in your grandfather’s room have resulted in piercing doll figures, a seating form with red and white patches. Rejani mentions black blood, toxic breast milk, and occult rituals.
Artist Rejani SR. a work of
A work on stray dogs – infected with mange in jute in jute – is about a society that is indifferent to the animals that live alongside them. Another, one of the slippers covered in spiders and cobwebs (in jute and coir), is about intimacy and nostalgia.
A girl’s face is terrified of a knife and rope from behind the curtain. “These are what a thief takes but here he has to defend himself,” says the artist. Another theatrical work is a female form, on the floor, made of sand and clay, with a slight sheen on the pelvis. “The woman worshiped as a goddess is repeatedly violated,” says Rejani.
Rezzani’s art, a feminist, is shaped by what she sees as “especially my mother” to the women around her. A student of College of Fine Arts, Mavelikara Rejani completed her MFA in Sculpture from RLV College of Fine Arts, Tripunithura. She lives and works in Kayamkulam.
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