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METROSCAPE
All In The Family
Artist Vivan Sundaram's latest exhibition of
38 photo-montages in Delhi's Hungarian Cultural Centre reiterates his
obsession with his maternal ancestry. And why not. Amrita Sher-Gil, his
aunt, was an immaculate bohemian, living in Paris and India, loving and
being loved, painting nudes, brahmacharis and rustic truisms (like a woman
selling red chillies) and tragically dying young. His granddad Umrao Singh
Sher-Gil, a Sikh, had also married Hungarian Marie Antoinette, adding
to the family's singular archival glamour.
 Ever
since Sundaram first realised the diversity of Post-Modernism, he has
been incorporating them in an enduring, modifying artwork called the Sher-Gil
Archives. For this, glass-case interventions were made where his family
(and their odds and ends) were sequestered in museum-like posterity. A
large part of the display were photos taken by Umrao Singh of his daughters
and wife.
 Sundaram
now repackages the consanguineal ties with the help of Adobe Photoshop
and digital deceit. This includes both temporal and spatial displacement-like
the work (above left) that has Umrao in 1933, Indira Gandhi with a cat
and Antoinette in Lahore in 1912. Or another (above) that has Antoinette,
Amrita, Indira and Sundaram himself in Umrao's lap."I enter the space
of Sher-Gil homes to explore the family scenarios and make them enact
a moment under my direction," explains Sundaram. Be sure that he
will make a re-entry.
-Anshul Avijit
COLOUR UNCONSCIOUS
 Designer
Ashish Soni played safe, like he usually does. For the palette of his
Fall/Winter collection, Precolour, Soni choose his reference point as
the moment before creation, where there exists only darkness and its achromatic
consorts, pale black and half-black.
The display of both Indian and western wear in the French Ambassador's
residence in Delhi, had all these non-colours (also soot black, pre-dawn
black, pre-bath black etc.) in an attempt to accentuate what the clothier
called "pure design". The clothes were also contrasted with
a range of hair colouring products by Sunsilk called Pro-colour, applied
carefully to the models by stylist Habib Jawed. Viewer Malini Ramani ,
in a catchy zebra-stripe sarong and matching scarf, was the other balancing
factor.
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