From the Bordeaux experience

Priyanka Aelay shares the impact of travelling and living alone for six weeks on her art

August 04, 2018 01:24 pm | Updated 01:24 pm IST

A work by Priyanka Aelay

A work by Priyanka Aelay

Priyanka Aelay made a fresh start in Bordeaux, France. There, minus the tag of artist Laxman Aelay’s daughter, she was just an artist from India. “People were curious to see my works as it was the first time that a woman has been selected for the residency programme,” she says. With only a few clothes, her personal brushes and Bengali rice paper, she did art shopping for four days before she left. Now, dressed in a black salwar kurta and dazzling buttalu , Priyanka explains why the six-week stay in Bordeaux as part of the cross residence programme is an important chapter of her life. “I was travelling and living alone for the first time. This residency is very personal because of my experiences.” In an exhibition titled ‘I Wonder How Often Do You Dream Of Me’, the works done at the French city are being displayed at Kalakriti Art Gallery.

Beautiful Bordeaux

With flora and fauna as her muse, Bordeaux impacted her colours and intense detailing. The eco-friendly city also taught her a lesson or two on the conservation of energy. “It is a huge environmental space where most of the people do not use power at all. The pollution-free city has a lot of greenery. Every nook and corner of the city exudes history. I did go to Paris but the experience was not the same as in Bordeaux; it was that beautiful,”she exclaims.

How Often You Dream of Me focuses on the person hidden inside our hearts. “We feel insecure but that feeling lies deep. We are different person outside,” she shares. Also, in a few works she captures Bordeaux’s historical architecture and the environmental sensitivity. What was significant was her unplanned ‘performance’ in which she draped and undraped a sari to show the juxtaposition of two cultures and also what happens to a Indian woman when she travels abroad. “When an individual, especially a woman dresses in a public space, she is objectified and ceases to be a human being. Indian woman also has a revelation when she goes to a foreign country.”

Though she visited Paris museum and enjoyed works of other artists there, she didn’t go deep to understand them. With Indian miniature things in her art, the young artist’s perception is to have Indianness in her works. “While the early masters did hyper realism, its reflection in the art of contemporary French artists is minimal. Also, the French artists’ viewpoint doesn’t work in the place that I live in. If it it doesn’t reflect my sensibility, it doesn’t make sense to learn more of it. However I did learn techniques of printing on glass.”

Currently pursuing her Ph.D on ‘Film Studies and Visual Culture’ in EFLU, Priyanka says, “I will look at the traditions of Telangana like puppetry, veedhi natakam and Surabhi narrated stories and how they got adapted into films like Bhakta Prahalada and Balanagamma , on which I am doing a case study. ” She goes on to add, “It’s interesting that after NTR enacted the role of a folk artiste in Balanagamma , one artiste also wanted to act like NTR.”

As a souvenir from France, she got a tattoo on her left wrist — a flower with Spanish words meaning, ‘I paint flowers because they don’t die’ . “Frieda Kahlo has been a huge inspiration; these are her words and this flower is from my art.”

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