Anindita Bhattacharya’s artistic foundation lies in painting with an affinity for Indian miniatures expressed through the use of natural pigments on wasli paper. To this, she has added the use of scalpel and blade to turn sheets of paper into lattices or filigree as part of layered, complex compositions that spread across walls like mosses and vines. Primarily concerned with humanity’s impact on the environment and on living beings, she has also regularly produced work that engages directly with politics and current affairs. Her solo presentation at the India Art Fair demonstrates the variety of her practice as well as common formal and thematic threads running through it.

The triptych Gods Beneath the Carapace and paintings from The Bloom of Broken Wings (Pantheon Series) offer a private mythology centred on insects and animals that are placed against golden backgrounds in the manner of Byzantine icons. The creatures from the artist’s personal pantheon appear wounded, some being splayed like specimens on a dissecting tray. Their innards consist not just of organs but natural elements suggesting a rich and strange transformation through injury. 

The theme of peering into wounded bodies carries over into the series Wandering the Night Sky Through Moonlit Aches, where X-rays of rescued animals are backed by layers of hand-cut paper. The ghostly figures on film are adorned with a tracery that constitutes an apology for the pain caused by humans as well as a plea for healing. 

Bhattacharya’s artisanal inclination is given full rein in A Solitary Spider’s Song, consisting of gateway paper into which she has painstakingly cut lace-like patterns, harnessing the material’s translucency. The painted imagery evokes avian forms and cells multiplying through mitosis signifying creativity and abundance.

And Still, the Paperboy Brings More is made from news articles published in the first half of 2024 in the lead up to the general election. The perforation patterns created here are reminiscent of jaalis, carved screens characteristic of Indo-Islamic architecture and also common in Rajput forts and Jain temples of western India. She utilises the jaali’s multi-cultural history as a contrast with the dominant ideology of today in a lament about the fading away of an idea of India grounded in syncretism.

Girish Shahane