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拍品专文
Atul Dodiya’s vast body of work defies categorization, seamlessly blending a range of mediums and styles. His large-format narrative paintings often engage with various historical and sociopolitical happenings in India. Campaigners during the Quit India Movement, Gowalia Tank - 1942 is one of a series of photorealistic paintings by Dodiya in which he recreates historical images from various events leading up to Indian independence. Gowalia Tank in Mumbai was originally a water tank where cows were bathed, deriving its name from the Marathi term for cattle owner. This site continues to exist today as a popular garden, but also represents a significant moment in the history of India’s independence movement, as the place where Mahatma Gandhi delivered his ‘Quit India’ speech on 8 August, 1942. Gandhi’s call for the nation to “Do or Die” mobilized the citizenry and ignited a nationwide civil disobedience movement.
Part of a series of large-scale paintings created for a major exhibition at the Dr Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum, this image, like the others, recalls “the magnificent aspirations of the nation’s founding fathers. These are ruptured by a strong painterly gesture in colour against the black and white, taken from abstractions from the works of artists of the time, such as Rabindranath Tagore, as well as the Museum’s archive of pre restoration damaged paintings. The gesture sometimes acquires a flourish that recalls the decorative lines of the building as the artist fuses fact and fantasy into a striking allegory of our times.” (‘7000 Museums: A Project For The Republic Of India’, Dr Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum website, accessed January 2019)
In choosing an image that depicts women participating in the freedom movement, Dodiya turns his lens onto the masses as a key force in the resistance to British rule. The animated swirls of color the artist overlays on the image disrupt the stillness of the original photograph, recalling the dichotomy between nonviolent activism and the turbulence of the freedom struggle and adding an additional layer of coded historical references in Dodiya’s work.
Part of a series of large-scale paintings created for a major exhibition at the Dr Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum, this image, like the others, recalls “the magnificent aspirations of the nation’s founding fathers. These are ruptured by a strong painterly gesture in colour against the black and white, taken from abstractions from the works of artists of the time, such as Rabindranath Tagore, as well as the Museum’s archive of pre restoration damaged paintings. The gesture sometimes acquires a flourish that recalls the decorative lines of the building as the artist fuses fact and fantasy into a striking allegory of our times.” (‘7000 Museums: A Project For The Republic Of India’, Dr Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum website, accessed January 2019)
In choosing an image that depicts women participating in the freedom movement, Dodiya turns his lens onto the masses as a key force in the resistance to British rule. The animated swirls of color the artist overlays on the image disrupt the stillness of the original photograph, recalling the dichotomy between nonviolent activism and the turbulence of the freedom struggle and adding an additional layer of coded historical references in Dodiya’s work.