Anjana Kothamachu, a visual artist from Bengaluru, draws inspiration from psychological and philosophical ideas through sculptures and animation. Winner of the Inlaks Fine Arts Award in 2013, Anjana – who has also participated at premiere national and international art residencies, and teaches at the Wadiyar Centre for Architecture, Mysuru – speaks about her inspirations and creativity.
What is your work about?
My work is inspired from everyday rhythms, rituals, literary fiction and psychological processes. From these, I create fabricated worlds venturing beyond the veneers of reality wherein I seek to access and express the unspeakable in human experience.
Can you explain some of them?
The body of work I made at the Mumbai Art Residency, The Last Ship uses cloth as it is symbolic of a container. I made three sculptures - Venus flytrap, Ourboric opus and Carapace. The attempt is to engage material, space and scale to create a visceral experience that touches on the paradox of desire as something that is both tangible and intangible.
I used multimedia, a combination of different content forms like text, animation and sound. To portray my ideas at the KHOJ International Artist Association, New Delhi, 2013, I constructed a video comprising of mobile/animated mirrors in the sterile, made up environment of water, strange moving circular shapes and tubes. Each mirror seems to be opening up to a different landscape or setting, and there is an overall kaleidoscopic effect of multiple images overlaying each other. It is based on “Phantasy”, a term in psychology which means to be born with some images inside of you that is a part of a collective derived from the society. It is your personal dreamscape.
You have been to various countries.How did your travels shape your work?
We are in the internet age and are aware of what is happening in all parts of the world. But to see the same art we see in books and internet is a different experience altogether. I have been to Zurich, Seoul and New York on artist residency programmes. I go in search of specific works. I went to Zurich to read from the archives of psychologist Carl Jung, to New York to research at Timothy Leary’s archive. Once you start researching, you get exposed to a wide range of information and thought processes. It is not just about their work, but the people who influenced them and who they influenced. All this information, exchange; meeting other artists and scholars feeds my art practice.
How do you start a body of work and what is the process until it is exhibited?
It is hard to pin point and say that this is where an idea began. It is usually a slow germination. It is like a thread unrolling from a large spool. It is a progression of both idea and material. For example the element of water and reflection reoccur in my works, but the manner and context setting in which they reappear changes. It is building on your previous work, a layering if one might say.
What elements do you work with?
There is a relationship between the idea and the form/material it manifests in. I choose the material based on the idea inversely the material also shapes the final idea and work.
As far as titling the artwork goes, I don’t name my work until the end. Once you name it, I feel the work gets restricted by it otherwise it’ll grow by itself.
How is art useful to a common man?
Art doesn’t solve world problems, but when you experience it, it changes you and you can’t go back, that is the power of art. For me art brings meaning and purpose to humanity. It serves like a mirror to our culture but also is a record of our past. I feel in a value driven society, it gives place for the intangibles like human experience.
