Curator’s Note

Travels through the Organic

Between the linear and the cursive, myriad forms and sensibilities unfold. Incorporating suggestively concrete imagery with textural dimension, the inner and aerial landscapes of Aparajita Jain Mahajan depict a world of her navigation. Over the last seven years, she worked on multiple pieces at the same time, using handmade paper from Sanganer, pen, ink, and acrylic paints. In particular, the pen affords her the meticulous, detailed strokes, suggestive of the minute particularities of nature. These horizontal images bring to mind Chinese landscape paintings where the essence of nature reigns and human beings are few if present. In Mahajan’s oeuvres, the current of all energy connects the crests and troughs created by her manipulation of paper and a palette of verdure. One wanders through these passages, as if following a river to its source. She speaks of organic windows, areas in these vistas which breathe, permitting the viewer to sense the dynamics of the sites, the sloping edges, the humming of substratum levels of this imagined clime. Elements of nature sauvage, albeit elegantly rendered, depict the juxtaposition of urban and rural, of ancient and modern, akin to contemporary life.

From the framed to the suspended, these strands continue as installation works. Mahajan paints her “mini-terrestrial landscapes” on paper which, once again, is moulded. Here it is affixed to cardboard which hangs as an echelle, between the ground and the ether, between the physical and the ineffable. Knotted wires, as neural synapses, connect the floating cartouches like roots or rootings. She notes that the “water” moves as if through the xylem of the plant’s capillary system. These roots are also routes. As throughout her work, two choices exist: “either this or that”. In these multi-dimensional creations, there are two sides. One as discussed liberates her terrains; the other relates to the elemental. The latter are pastiches of colour blocks and paper moulding, reminiscent of DNA components and bandages. Elsewhere, coloured paper blocks appear attached to the cascading wires.

Art has been inextricably woven into the fabric of culture, society and ritual life throughout history. Mahajan blends her personal aesthetic and spatial perspectives with largely organic matter to render an idiosyncratic expanse of creative expression. Her realms of the imagination and the multifarious marvels of the natural world recall the imperative to pay attention and become involved.

Elizabeth Rogers