An Unknown Bride

Regarded as one of India’s most talented surrealists, Bikash Bhattacharjee uses a photo-realistic technique to create macabre and often chimerical depictions of life in India, particularly through figures of the subaltern and women. “The relationship between woman and goddess runs through the artist’s oeuvre: beginning with paintings of the woman hidden within the goddess, he progresses to images of ordinary women possessed with divine power [...] Undefined (perhaps indefinable) emotion and an indirect (often inscrutable) method of allusion are conveyed through a slight twist of mouth, the hair or the eyes, painted often without pupils – slight dislocations that lift the work from being a ‘mere’ portrait.” (A. Jhaveri, A Guide to 101 Modern & Contemporary Indian Artists, Mumbai, 2005, p. 20)

In this striking painting titled An Unknown Bride, Bhattacharjee’s subject is dressed in a traditional Bengali wedding sari with all the typical ornamentation including gold jewellery, painted brows and a garland of flowers. However, this is not a celebratory scene. In this painting the bride sits alone in a dark interior, perhaps foreshadowing the dreary domesticity her new life holds. With his unique ability to call upon the surreal and supernatural, Bhattacharjee also renders her eyes completely clouded over, as if she is the one summoning up this vision of her future.