Lot 1044: REKHA RODWITTIYA (B. 1958)

REKHA RODWITTIYA (B. 1958)
Sharing Secrets
signed, inscribed, titled and dated '"SHARING SECRETS" OIL + ACRYLIC 1996 Rodwittiya' (on the reverse)
oil and acrylic on canvas
71 3/8 x 47 7/8 in. (181.3 x 121.6 cm.)
Painted in 1996

N. Tuli, Indian Contemporary Painting, Ahmedabad, 1997, p. 180 (illustrated)

PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTON, NEW YORK

Who bangs so loudly on the doors of my mind and insists that I let them in?
Do you not know that saffron stains forever;
And that strident voices that call to arms
Bring the scourge of death disguised as marching bands
That betray their prophet's wisdom?
Maybe I can find the twilight that neither holds the sun or the moon in its skies.
Rekha Rodwittiya (Artist Statement, Rekha@fifty, 2008)

Rekha Rodwittiya raises compelling questions by exploring notions of femininity and objectivity via striking colors and monumental forms. Challenging India's patriarchal restrictions the female body acts as a vehicle for cultural, social and political critique. And here the relative absence of the male figure is not so much a measure of exclusion as it is a positive assertion of the female protagonist.

In Behind the Smoke Screen (1992) the traditional picture plane is subsumed within a massive theatre of visuals. Vibrant female forms inter-twine and metamorphose inside a chaotic whirl and in this way, the artist questions the fashioning of female identity in post-Independence India, exposing the diaspora and revealing it to be fluid and flexible.

Rodwittiya poses her subjects in the midst of everyday tasks turned enchanted. Sharing Secrets (1996) was similarly conceived within a politically alert feminist practice and reaches toward an interventional purpose. The viewer is left to wonder: what primordial secret is the shell transmitting and furthermore, what background tumult is she blocking with her finger in order to hear its message?