French connection: An Indian artist and her creative pilgrimage to Paris

Delhi’s Alliance Française is hosting a solo show featuring artworks made by Aishwarya Sultania when she was on a year-long fellowship in Paris. The exhibits remind us of India’s modernist link with the French capital, writes Bhumika Popli.

 

Paris, once known as the art capital of the world, has been central to the lives of many Indian artists. Syed Haider Raza, Sakti Burman and Akbar Padamsee are among the many such creative geniuses who received a scholarship to study in France in the early 1950s, and who found fertile ground for their ideas in Paris.

An ongoing series of shows, Back from France, organised by Delhi’s Alliance Française, aims to feature artworks by young Indian artists who went on a creative pilgrimage similar to the one that the great modernists once made, from here to Paris.

The first exhibition under this programme, entitled Unwarping Time, opened last week at Delhi’s Alliance Française. This solo show, by Aishwarya Sultania, includes 16 artworks ranging from installations and photographs to videos. Sultania was selected to study at École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 2010, on a French Embassy-Krishnakriti fellowship.

 The show is curated by Shruthi Issac, a PhD scholar at the Jawaharlal University who specilaises in French literature and in the works of Indian artists who went to France. “This scholarship is the same one that Raza received in 1950,” says Issac. “After talking to the director of Delhi’s Alliance Française, Jean-François Ramon, we felt that there hadn’t been many shows celebrating the works of young Indian artists in France, and we wanted to bridge that gap.”

After her arrival in Paris, Sultania felt alienated and aloof. “Language is a big thing in Paris. If you don’t know the language it is difficult to converse. They [her French acquaintances] didn’t want to go through the trouble of pronouncing my name. They used to call me an Indian girl and not by my name, Aishwarya. I used to feel that yes I am an Indian but I am also Aishwarya,” says Sultania.

Then, she made Wooing Paris, an installation piece with foam as the medium. This was Sultania’s attempt to come to terms with her Parisian life. The work is a replica of the Eiffel Tower. After completing it in her studio, Sultania travelled to the Eiffel Tower with the replica she’d made, and recorded her experiences in a video that’s also part of the Delhi show. “I met people along the way and all of them were very welcoming. Looking at my tower, a gentleman said, ‘You are walking in Paris with Paris.’ It was like I had made my peace with Paris,” says Sultania.

 In the show, we also see a poem written by the artist which conveys her mixed feelings about Paris.

An excerpt from the poem reads:

There rises a sea of questions,

Which they call the pourquoi.

They ask me pourquois (‘why’ in French)

And I ask them kyun (‘why’ in Hindi)

In front of these waves of pourquois and kyuns

That are now tearing at this little space

They don’t ask me kyun nor I, their pourquoi

That our hearts have created

We try to put an end to these doubts

By finding a common language.

Another video installation in the show, entitled Excerpts From My Painting, was made in 2007. The theme of the video is the anxiety the artist feels when she is in unfamiliar places. In it, we see the artist getting her face painted. She is also hooked up to a machine that is recording her heartbeat.

Sultania has been trained as a printmaker and she has used those techniques in her photographs. There are two viscosity prints on metal sheets on display at the exhibition. She has also etched on the photographs using diverse techniques. Sultania feels at ease working with different mediums. “A series of questions during my student years—such as, what are you doing? Why are you doing these?—led me to include new mediums in my art practice. I feel quite comfortable working with non-traditional mediums and in a way, they encourage my art,” she says.

The year Sultania spent in Paris changed her both as an artist and as a person. “In Delhi you meet the entire India, but in Paris you meet the whole world and meeting the whole world is so interesting,” says Sultania. 

 

The show is on view at Delhi’s Alliance Française till 27 November