Mithu Sen: Dropping Gold, Dropping Gold
30 May - 18 Jul 2009
Installation View: Mithu Sen "Dropping Gold, Dropping Gold", 2009
Installation View: Mithu Sen "Dropping Gold, Dropping Gold", 2009
Within the framework of Suzie Q Projects, Birgid Uccia and Bob van Orsouw present current works by the Indian artist Mithu Sen. Born 1971 in West Bengal, the internationally established artist today lives and works in New Delhi. Mithu Sen is considered to be one of India!s trendsetting contemporary artists. She was introduced to the Swiss public at the 2007/2008 group exhibition “Horn Please” at Kunstmuseum Bern. In her drawings, collages, objects and video works, Mithu Sen studies the possibilities we have of self-perception and the influence of society on our identity and development. The artist is engaged in general questions of gender in postmodernism as well as with the subjective experience of femininity and sexuality in post-emancipation. Mithu Sen's works are often marked by an autobiographical aspect, which allows the way she copes with her role as a successful artist in an emerging nation to become a part of her projects.
A compelling physicality is manifest in Sen's works, in which figures fuse with animals and plants to enigmatic hybrid creatures. In a sensitive, humorous way, the artist links the almost kitschy femininity of rose-red flower arrangements with bones, teeth and anatomic details. By way of Mithu Sen's sensitive linear configurations, even intertwined entrails are divested of repugnance and metamorphose into ornamental structures on sheets of paper left largely blank. The masterful shift from precisely detailed color drawings to sketched-in outlines lends Sen's works on paper an aura of immediacy.
Starting with her drawings and collages, Mithu Sen supplements her presentations with objects and wall drawings that can be seen to provide her works on paper with a spatial extension, all of which contribute to her theme. An expansive three-dimensional installation results, populated by mystical chimera and foreign-familiar plants made up of flowers and entrails. From time to time it is the artist herself who peers out at us from the photo-collages, as though she were prompting the viewers, by interaction with her works, to reflect on their own identity.
Christiane Büntgen
A compelling physicality is manifest in Sen's works, in which figures fuse with animals and plants to enigmatic hybrid creatures. In a sensitive, humorous way, the artist links the almost kitschy femininity of rose-red flower arrangements with bones, teeth and anatomic details. By way of Mithu Sen's sensitive linear configurations, even intertwined entrails are divested of repugnance and metamorphose into ornamental structures on sheets of paper left largely blank. The masterful shift from precisely detailed color drawings to sketched-in outlines lends Sen's works on paper an aura of immediacy.
Starting with her drawings and collages, Mithu Sen supplements her presentations with objects and wall drawings that can be seen to provide her works on paper with a spatial extension, all of which contribute to her theme. An expansive three-dimensional installation results, populated by mystical chimera and foreign-familiar plants made up of flowers and entrails. From time to time it is the artist herself who peers out at us from the photo-collages, as though she were prompting the viewers, by interaction with her works, to reflect on their own identity.
Christiane Büntgen