Artist reimagines lifeless walls as beings

In Mumbai-based artist Kiyomi Talaulicar's artworks, the seemingly lifeless four walls have been personified as she explores the different roles that the concrete structures play during a lifetime of an individual.
In her works, which are part of an ongoing exhibition titled 'Unlocking Stillness' here, Kiyomi wonders how the walls inhabited by a person imbibe the characteristics of the individual over a period of time, to manifest in the form of stories years later.
"The series is about my reverence for walls as lifelong companions. As guardians, walls have always been around whether to protect, divide or support us.
"They depict the different facets of our lives, shield us from various elements and yet time and life weathers them just as much as us. This series of works is about walls in their various forms and markings, as beings in themselves," says Kiyomi.

She has recreated the wear and tear on different walls, by painting lines on canvas that bear resemblance to fissures and crevices while attempting to convey a sense of alienation human beings go through during geographical displacements.
"Kiyomi's painterly lines marking fissures on walls and maps convey a strong syntax for borders, territorial boundaries, human memory and a search for a home within," says art historian, Shubhalakshmi Shukla.

Different elements of nature have often found space in Kiyomi's large spectrum of works, but in this particular series, Shukla says, the artist has chosen to be in "rumination" with the walls.

Her paintings "Membrane" and "Fate" seem to offer her acknowledgement as a "devotee would respond to a stranger", through the interiority in walls that manifest a layered acceptance as part of resistance to violence and an inward search for humaneness.
"'Membrane' and 'Fate' reflect Kiyomi's manifestation of inwardly bliss which could not resist blooming. The inevitable strength of the dialectic in the analogy of a wall encompassing fissure is an engagement with a slowly forming language within, creates a moment of completion.
"All that seems to be mundane and frugal gets embodied with a volume of minute-sound or sukshma in her works. The unspoken content gets filled with inner radiance and tranquility, wherein she carves out details of interiority as a profound stage," Shukla explains.

The artist goes through a process of self-reflection that fuels her meditations of what is within and without a wall.
Her paintings titled, "Splendour" and "Dwell into Night", both acrylic on canvas evoke deep human emotions and attempt to reflect on the minuscule things that go unnoticed in day to day life.
The exhibition underway at Gallery Art Motif is set to continue till February 25.