 "Christine Margotin")
Standing at the Gandhi King Plaza in India International IIC, you suddenly find yourself surrounded by a group of children – playing, laughing, and throwing a tantrum. The life size bronze sculptures of children, titled “Childhood” by French sculptor Christine Margotin, is captivating as much as it is thought provoking. In the midst of this happy crowd of children, is a striking fibreglass image of a “Street Acrobat”, a little girl in pigtails doing somersaults, a common sight at the traffic light crossings in every Indian metro city.
It's been a complete change of scene for Margotin, an engineer by training and a former strategic consultant at Areva, the French nuclear company in Paris. Ever since she shifted base to India, seven years ago accompanying her husband; Margotin says she started giving expression to her artistic inclinations.
“Just as any other tourist, at first I was surprised to see these kids at the street crossing near Hyatt Hotel (Delhi) performing; it was so dangerous and yet they were smiling throughout,” says Margotin. Moved by the sight of these street acrobats, she started sculpting a series on children. Her early works were smaller in size and of late she has taken to larger works.
Margotin has exhibited at the India Art Fair (2014) with French gallery Daniel Besseiche and counts among her role models European sculptors Camille Claudel and O Giacometti.
A mother of two kids, Margotin admits many of her sculptures might have been inspired by her own children. So be it the little three feet image of a boy blowing bubbles, (bronze with blue patina and bubbles made of delicate blown glass) or the little girl in pink poised happily mid- air with a skipping rope, have close resemblances to her own children.
Interestingly, Margotin says sculpting full size (three to four feet) in bronze is challenging in India, despite the country having a rich tradition of Chola bronzes and temple sculpture. When they told her that some of her works (like the girl playing hopskotch) were massive weighing 150 kgs and could not be executed, she smiled, "Being an engineer helped, I knew how it could be done."
Sculpture in India, says Margotin, is restricted to the traditional black, brown and green hues while she opts for the ‘patina’ technique to bring in colour in her work. After modelling her sculptures in clay at her studio in Delhi, she goes to Jaipur regularly to have her work cast in bronze, using high quality alloys.
Largely a self- taught artist/ sculptor, Margotin says she opts for specialised training in workshops on her occasional visits to Europe.
Her works are generally thematic in nature, some of her earlier themes revolving around Love, Spirituality, Sea.
Margotin, an avid traveller says she has made it a point to travel across the country and see India’s rich heritage of stone and metal sculpture from Khajuraho to Ellora.
(Portraits of Childhood, is being exhibited at IIC, New Delhi from October 30 to November 4, 2015)
