The blank walls of the ICCR Gallery – Kala Bhavan were dotted with black and white framed paintings of a group of young, aspiring digital artists from Creative Multimedia Educational Society.
Titled ‘Life: The Golden Season' this thematic presentation was of old human faces etched by the ravages of time.
Varied expressions
A wrinkled old man with deep thoughtful eyes, smoking a pipe, a witch-like appearance pondering dangerously, a pair of shrivelled yet mischievous eyes set under a deeply furrowed brow- they were all peering at the onlookers from another space and time. The black and white contributed to the age, dimension and distance.
There were portraits of old men and women, of European and Mongloid origin not to talk of Indian, sharing the wall space but no two were similar. Each picture was singularly individualistic both in expression and look.
A turbaned Turk (by Waheed) greeted with his royal smile while a weary, old face trying to peek from a foggy old pair of spectacles that tugs your heartstrings.
Before you succumb to the blues, you walk over to the creased wonder - an old humorous-looking man (by Romil Dilip Motta) and his smile lights up your face.
The wrinkled woman (by M. Bharat) or the bedecked Kashmiri woman and two more women (by Vani) - one with suppressed laughter in her eyes, perhaps directed at the younger generation whose fate she can foresee or the other with piercing eyes that makes one wonder at the varied expressions that can adorn a human, irrespective of age.
A professor having the last laugh at the world (by Siddarth) or the tribal woman with a scarf (by D. Harinath) and the Mongloid woman (by Ajay Varma) and the old Persian gentleman, Mother Teresa- all of them and many more inspire, question and challenge us to look at life from their perspective.
GenX is not something to wish away, they seemed to convey through their eyes; that your turn will come sooner than you expect since ‘time and tide wait for no man.' Venerate us as we are standing testimonials of life's filtered experience and wisdom.
The exhibition spanned across four days from May 12 at Kala Bhavan (Ravindra Bharati premises).
Kudos to students of Madhu Kuruva (BFA animation programme) who hosted this show under the aegis of Jawaharlal Nehru Architecture and Fine Arts University.
