‘Beyond Walls’: House to Home and Beyond.

Sunaparanta Goa Centre for the Arts presents a culmination of the Sunaparanta Art Initiator Lab (SAIL), a 10-month mentorship for Goa-based creative practitioners in an exhibition, titled Beyond Walls: A Collaborative Immersion, showcasing the works of 10 participants: Abhilasha Goswami, Arti Kurtarkar, Gautam Amerkar, Neelam Chauhan, Omkar Banaule, Pragya Bhagat, Shilpa Nayudu, Siddesh Gaunekar, Sidhan Kundaikar and Vihang Nagvekar. with their visual stories in a multidisciplinary approach exploring the themes of grief, trauma, memory, and cultural identity. The exhibition opened on Friday, June 28th, 2024 and will be open to the public until July 12th, 2024.

The unique aspect of this exhibition lies in its collaborative and multidisciplinary approach transcending the comfort zones built by each artist. It challenges the structure of static displays, offering an immersive experience that blends words, images, performance, music, and collaboration, the primary structure of this initiative. This compels viewers to engage with the art on a deeper level, challenging their perceptions of home and belonging, and inviting introspection.

“Beyond Walls intends to question conventional frameworks of exhibition-making and audience interaction. The showcase presents a multifarious positioning of the artworks and projects they have produced, individually and collectively.” Explains Lina Vincent, Curator, Art Historian and the lead Mentor at ‘SAIL’.

Home is an emotion, space, time, memories, community, and innumerable meanings that one finds in the term defining a feeling of belonging, security, completeness and responsibility. ‘Beyond Walls’ decodes the term, and redefines it through multiple perspectives and expressions.

Abhilasha Goswami, a practising visual artist currently pursuing her Masters in Mural centres her practice around the exploration of memories and the notion of a lingering past- a constant sculptor of identities. Her ‘untitled’ painting-based interactive project tells a story, unfolding her childhood and concerns with metaphors and literal layers of inexplicable experiences, allowing the viewers to peep into and through it; while also setting free her consternations in a fluid fabric piece in collaboration with Shilpa Nayudu, trained in Contemporary Art, post her education in Dental surgery and her service in the Indian Army, holding a perspective that stands as an amalgamation of her diverse background.

“A Collective Portrait of Pain” a Fabric Installation on the Journey of Pain and Hope by Shilpa Nayudu forms an interwoven grid of human journeys through these sensations, of lived experiences and the ramifications of pain and wishes archived in this ongoing project at each phase. Her work is like poetry in catharsis, expressed through shared dialogue around the transitory triad of the experience, emotion and expression in traces and thread work. Her “Pause and Rest” just acts like an invitation to the viewers to experience her abode and objects of comfort, while she moves out of her comfort zone by letting external intervention in the space in.

Pragya Bhagat, a spoken word poet, essayist, and author works within an intersection of poetry, performance, folk songs, and visual art, creating resonations with the purest meaning of home and memories of the place and its heritage, roots and narratives that she inhabits

In “Year of the Dragon” she builds a calendar format encompassing Goa’s diverse seasons. The poems accompanying each month weave together the literal changes of the seasons with metaphorical experiences, suggesting that the concept of “home” is shaped by both our surroundings and our inner selves and invites viewers to engage and immerse in the process of being and becoming. While in ‘Avadhuta’, a radio installation, Urdu poet Seema Noor responds to the folk songs she sings, encouraging listeners to have their conversations with the presented poetry and music and “Biology of the wild” explores the shores of Goa and the liminal spaces that exist around us and within us with Audio Visual mediums.

Vihang Nagvekar narrates stories of Place, Identity, and Landscape, manifesting his attachment to the spaces and identities he enfolds with time, keenly observing the various psychological and physical aspects of these identities structuring within their respective surroundings. Home, family, childhood, nostalgia, and abandoned memories and past are recurring themes in his meticulous renderings inspired by the Indian Miniature and Company School Paintings, furthering his interest in ‘muraqqa’ (‘album’ in Persian) eventually leading to the creation of a “modern muraqqa” (contemporary or modern-day album) an overlay of elements of miniature paintings with subjects recognised from his childhood memories.

Vihang’s “Modern Muraqqa”, acts as a photographic reinterpretation, revisiting and referencing his family albums but the identity of the portrayed remains unclear, inviting the viewers to reinterpret it with their own conception of memories and feelings.

Sidhan Kundaikar explores forms that unconsciously emerge, creating a mysterious escape from objective life and bringing solitude in the unknown, in configurations and aesthetics creating a comprehensive sensory experience.“Quiddity of my Abode” by Sidhan is an arrangement of created objects, each narrating a story of its own, where he visualises the concept of home in abstract poetry flowing through memories and moments while in “Artistic Accents” brings together his Art and fashion design instincts bringing to the viewers a tangible collection.

Siddesh Gaunekar, with his experience in teaching and the animation industry, is an ardent observer working with overlays of reality and imagination, translating mundanity into a profound language. find meaning in existence along the chaos of modern life.

Siddesh captures his interest in Goa’s abandoned houses, bringing into focus their neglect and decay, almost humanising the structures and advocating for their care with “Echoes of Solitude”. His work invites viewers to pause, reflect, and find meaning in the world around them while fostering a sense of empathy and connection with the forgotten and overlooked. In contrast to this insightful and intense video projection he also works with memories and reminiscences of childhood in “Nostalgia” rebuilding an object in resonance – ‘view-master’, showing holographic slides of comic heroes, bringing to life the cherished moments and wonderments of his childhood.

Omkar Banaule, an artist and professor at Goa College of Art primarily specialises in portraits and other conventional mediums to express his surroundings, including people and nature in intricate, realistic renditions. “Amche Ghar” (meaning “Our Home” in Konkani) is his exhibit for the project that honours his ancestral home, familial heritage, and lived memories with objects, audio, beliefs and references in visuals put together as an installation. His work reads like an autobiography of his home, each mark symbolic of shared emotions and lived movements in the architecture.

Neelam Chauhan, a sculpture artist and art educator, observes and translates the mundane aspects of life with a surrealist lens using forms that occur with a reimagining of the regular, currently working around the concept, essence and notion of space and time, employing methods of overlapping, repeating and layering of images and forms.

She suggests a dimension of the home that is lethargic, laid back and monotonously quiet and relaxed, capturing the essence of domestic tranquillity and raising concerns for the capitalist and fast-paced direction the world is heading in, in parallel where the act of nothingness, inactivity becomes a radical act of self-care and resistance.in “Epicentre” captures the duality of meanings of the idea of home as an epicentre, oscillating between the desire for a constant movement and the need for stability both working in a loop.

Gautam Amerkar specialises in drawing and portraits and draws his concerns from urbanisation steadily encroaching on natural habitats, drawing a parallel with how the ancestral heritage is being taken over by a need for modern living, capturing transitions in the idea of home and sustainability. His practice advocates for a balanced coexistence and tracing of the cultural roots in response.

Gautam’s work in gouache captures objects associated with his idea of home, encapsulating his vision of integration between nature and urban life. “Echoes of Evolution” is a series of paintings, that juxtapose everyday objects with their historical counterparts, telling histories and stories of ancestral legacy and human life with its impact on nature becoming a poignant reminder of a balance between progress and preservation. He further incorporates his questions through an interactive game that traces these choices while the viewer reads it and interacts with the game that holds symbolic and thought-provoking structures.

Arti Kurtarkar is a visual practitioner with sculpture and painting as her forte. Her practice is Inspired by the interplay between human and nature interaction leading to a transformative landscape that she revisits through cultural and ritual practices that mark home for her with its metamorphic and emotional tracing, in search for the lost intricacies of nature. Her voice sparks awareness, inspires reflection, and encourages a profound reconsideration of our symbiotic bond with the earth with her “Niveli Kanno” (Cactus). The installation represents a wooden structure representing the ‘nivelkanno’ (cactus), used during ‘Divaj’ (Ritual of lights and lamps, in Goa) where women in traditional attire, hold it inserting their fingers in the lamp-like structures created with it, while the projected video of the festival documentation morphed in the shape of a lamp light adds to it emotional and historic awareness in terms of its ecological importance and cultural relevance.

The ‘divaj’, a sheath made from banana stems, is also used during the festival. Interestingly, both married and unmarried boys use these divaj, similar to how the traditional ‘nivelkanno’ plant is used, both leaving behind a residual trace of nature in the cultural context. However, the ‘nivelkanno’ holds a particularly important place in the celebration. Its use is essential to the festival’s meaning and customs. As its popularity grows, it’s critical to ensure the continued growth and preservation of the ‘nivelkanno’ plant for future generations. Sustainable practices to protect this plant are vital to maintaining the cultural traditions and significance of this festival for years to come. Arti’s work brings a unique perspective to home where she finds her identity residing in her representative cultural condo.

The idea of Home goes beyond walls and a dwelling place, as each participant finds their way outside the ‘self’ and presents new definitions of comfort in a collaborative cohesion, rebuilding memories, finding the unknown, asking questions and drawing poetry beyond the walls.

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