Just like the Masters

Two artists are blurring boundaries of time & space through a personal expression of masterpieces

One can almost hear the beautiful woman laugh as she gazes into the camera. Head tilted up, her gaze powerful and provocative. The photograph has the intimate feel of a modern selfie. But it is unmistakably evocative of another, much older work — Self Portrait 7 (1930/32) by Amrita Sher-Gil. “I came across this self-portrait in the library, and just couldn’t look away,” says Samira Bose, a post-graduate student at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi and co-creator of this project. “I felt I just had to be her.”

Bose, with her childhood friend Pakhi Sen, an illustrator and multi-media artist, decided to “perform” some of Sher-Gil’s most iconic works in a series of photographs. “We used ourselves and our friends to recreate Sher-Gil and her works for the photographic lens,” says Bose. “In the process, we realised there was something so contemporary, so universal about her that we could see shades of her in all of us.”

Lady With A Fan (1918) by Gustav Klimt

“We feel a deep connection to Sher-Gil,” says Sen. “Not only was she pretty much our age when she was at the peak of her brilliance, she was also a strong independent woman who was unafraid to express her sexuality.” Like Sher-Gil, the two artists, both 23, are products of a global education and lives of privilege. “I feel so inspired to think of how Sher-Gil was so ahead of her times, openly bisexual then, when even today, there are taboos surrounding it,” says Sen. The duo came across some letters that Sher-Gil had written to her parents when she was in her 20s. “She seemed rebellious, bratty even,” says Bose. “We realised that so long ago, she had felt the very emotions that we are experiencing now.”
 

The duo invited their friends to recreate six of Sher-Gil’s self-portraits. “For backdrops, we dug through my mother’s stocks — she is a textile designer — and sourced some bedcovers from the Sarojini Nagar market,” says Bose.They shot the photographs in Sen’s living room and called the series Reprinting Amrita Sher-Gil. The homegrown project took merely two weeks from start to finish. When they eventually published it on Instagram and Facebook in February 2017, it went viral. “Within three days, our photographs had been shared 900 times,” says Bose. “It was unbelievable.”

Jewellery designer Manreet Deol of Manifest Designs saw their work and asked them to collaborate on another project to showcase her designs. “The gold jewellery she designed looked like molten metal and reminded us of the European artist Gustav Klimt,” says Sen. Their second series, If Klimt Could Pop With Photoshop, Would He? was a departure from their earlier work. “While examining Klimt’s work, we felt compelled to play with the form, while staying true to his oddly contemporary style of clashing symbols, multiple layers and contrasting textures," says Bose. 

Water Serpents II (1904) by Gustav Klimt | Photos: Samira Bose and Pakhi Sen

Inspired by his style, the two artists used Photoshop to recreate the collage-like feel of Klimt’s six seminal works including Lady with Fan, The Kiss and The Girlfriends. Again, the duo created richly textured backgrounds from their mothers’ saris, blankets and other fabrics they found at home.

“Our choice of fabrics and clothing was carefully planned,” says Bose. “In our performance of the artist’s work, we wanted to make it our own by locating it within the art and craft practices that have inspired us.” That is why one work uses different types of vegetable dyed fabric, while another uses several ikat designs. They also used a Palestinian keffiyeh in a performance as an oblique reference to their political leanings.

These unique photo performances have been transformational for both the artists. “I’ve learnt to be less apprehensive about using new media like photography in art,” says Sen, who will start a master’s degree in creative art at Bengaluru’s Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology this summer.

They plan to hold an exhibition of these works in Delhi in July, having only shown on Instagram so far. Next up, they plan to recreate Mughal miniatures. “Working on these projects has enabled us to explore the exciting range of art media as well as online spaces for creative expression that technology has made available to us,” says Bose. “It’s such a great time to be alive as young artists.”

A recreation from an untitled self-portrait (1930) by Amrita Sher-Gil