Feeling the Pulse
Jayashree Chakravarty
Asia Week New York 2022
In her recent works, Jayashree Chakravarty gets even more closer to feeling the pulse of body-matter/Nature, creating dense circuitries of lines that translate into layers of raw furrows of paint along with powdered earth, tea stains, cotton balls, shell flakes, seeds, grass and roots along with other organic extracts. Her thought and working processes are connected to the material she chooses to engage with. Seeking parallels between human and natural forms, she is drawn to the power of the delicate but resilient network of veins/lines that form a sieve to hold the structure of matter together. Jayashree was always fascinated about learning from her father (a practising doctor), the reading of x-rays, brain scans, ECGs and so on, and the relationship of the interior with the exterior form.
‘Feeling the pulse’ and sensing all is well has become a preoccupation emphasized more than ever before, with disruptions and disasters that have drawn us to witness the sudden, inexplicable loss, extreme vulnerability and anxiety all around. Jayashree has been seeking recuperative energies through her artmaking, using grass and roots, seeds and mud, imagining sprouting/s of a new life from within the fertile tending of her canvas.
– Roobina Karode
Soaring
Medium: Acrylic, oil, paper, audiotape, seeds, synthetic adhesive, shell flakes on canvas
Size: 71 x 60.25 inches
Year: 2021
Connecting
Medium: Acrylic, oil, paper, shell flakes, synthetic adhesive, cotton on canvas
Size: 70.75 x 54 inch
Year: 2020-21
Pulsating
Medium: Acrylic, oil, audiotape, paper, synthetic adhesive, plant bark on canvas
Size: 69.75 x 70 inches
Year: 2020-21
Expanding
Medium: Acrylic, oil, paper, audio tape, seeds, dry grass, synthetic adhesive, tea stain on canvas
Size: 68 x 48 inches
Year: 2019-21
Simmering Synergies
Medium: Acrylic, oil, paper, cotton, seeds, Shell flakes, synthetic adhesive, tea stain on canvas
Size: 78.25 x 114.75 inches
Year: 2021
Withstanding
Medium: Acrylic, oil, paper, audiotape, seeds, synthetic adhesive, shell flakes on canvas
Size: 70 x 63.75 inches
Year: 2021
Gold Finch
Medium: Acrylic, oil, paper, audiotape, seeds, shell flakes, synthetic adhesive, cotton on canvas
Size: 70.25 x 52 inches
Year: 2021
Emergence
Medium: Acrylic, oil, graphite, tea stain, synthetic adhesive, shell flakes on canvas
Size: 69.25 x 53.25 inches
Year: 2019-21
Jayashree Chakravarty (b. 1956) completed her Graduation at Visva Bharati in the sprawling natural environs of Santiniketan. She pursued her masters at the Faculty of Fine Arts at The Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda, where she was exposed to an urban sensibility. She was also an artist in residence at Aix-en-Provence from 1993-95 where she was influenced in the formative years of her practice by the French movement Supports/Surfaces, especially by Claude Viallat and also had conversations with some of the group members at the time. Inventing her own creative techniques, using organic material and varied kinds of papers, her installations in the form of paper scrolls remain unique in their conceptions and execution.
Jayashree has had exhibitions both in India and abroad, with shows at various museums, including the Musee Departemental Des Arts Asiatiques Nice, France; The Tagore Centre, Berlin, Germany; Chicago Cultural Center, Illinois, USA, and Singapore Art Museum (SAM), Singapore to name a few. Her recent shows include her exhibition at the Palazzo Madama, Turin, Italy; Musée Guimet, Paris, France; Asian Art Museum, San Francisco; and at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, Mumbai, and Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Noida & New Delhi. The artist lives and works in Kolkata, India.