Eleni Tsipiara Stoelinga, Pankaj Guru, and Priyanka Gupta are three artists of different ages, generations, and cultures. They met in Delhi and became firm friends and art colleagues, bonding through their mutual respect for each other, and each other’s art and ideas.
Confluences, Without End is their first joint exhibition together as a trio, and in it, we can see their expressions and interpretations of some of the common threads they share–wonder, and love, for life and humanity, for science and spirituality, and a belief and hope in the continuity of life and spirit.
Nature’s ability to create and transform the very simple to the very complex, to self-organise, to create infinite patterns, form the basis of life, and is at the very core of the ideas explored in Confluences, Without End.
Their joint project, Limitless Sky, Aasman Seemit Nahi, is an unconventional tapestry that best exemplifies these ideas. It is a simple concept that becomes more and more complex as it loops, criss-crosses, twists, and pulls, again and again, balls and bales of thread or yarn, without heed to pattern, or warp or weft. It picks up colour upon colour by simple capillary action, that infuses almost every single thread of yarn, and at every confluence, the threads meld and mix again, and new colours and gradations of colours are created. It looks, and is, random and chaotic, yet it is premised on a simple and singular idea and construct that arises from straightforward human endeavour that then takes a complex life of its own.
Limitless Sky, Aasman Seemit Nahi, is a powerful installation that works on many levels, both local and global. At its most literal, it can reference a weaving, a net, a craft, and a trade. It can be a metaphor for the spread of many things, from the most primitive to the most advanced cultures, ideas, thoughts, industries, life, the Internet. It can represent communities that come together, and that then disperse away, that become a diaspora, that then becomes new communities, and that then move away, and so on, like an ad infinium dance of life.
Both nature and human history have proven, time and again, that like capillary action, both cannot help but move, mingle, migrate, and integrate, whether tentatively, in spurts, or relentlessly, in waves and floods. The same is proven for human thoughts and ideas that cross borders, be they physical, artificial or meta-physical.
In their individual works, simplicity and complexity, humanity and infinity, patterns and replications, spirituality and transformations are explored.
Eleni has always been inspired by the human form, and she inevitably captures nuances of her land of birth and the lands she has lived in, in her works, as can be seen in her evocative Greek naiads and strong Tribangha series. Her latest works are of the most expressive parts of the human body— the hands and eyes—that to her represent the best and worst of human abilities. Using collage, wax and moulds, she has created hands and ocular pieces of different sizes and types, colour and complexity, that conjure up textured impressions of unity, peace, hope, community and diversity.
For Pankaj, Indian spirituality and philosophies have always formed the backbone of many of his works, and the discoveries and technologies discussed and shown in The Secret Life of Chaos resonate deeply in him, giving answers to some of his spiritual and philosophical thoughts and ideas. Confluences, Without End is the sum of Eleni, Pankaj, and Priyanka’s individual and collective expressions and interpretations of life, infinity and hope.
Confluences, Without End, opened on 16 May at Delhi’s India Habitat Centre