Nabanita Guha

Arputharani Sengupta

Nabanita Guha’s Bengali heritage is a direct link to the conception of her figures. In a surreal landscape human beings wander with animals and mythological creatures. She weaves them into her canvas with paint and a fine thread running through. With this intimacy the process of creation manipulates the materials in a way that pays tribute to both the real and the imagined aspects of her life. Embedded within them are animals, god, goddess and popular forms meticulously reproduced from the commercial stickers that flash by on a local bus or decorate the fridge in the living room. Nabanita’s use of line, texture, and color is extracted from nature. Much like the narrative scrolls of her native place her painting is entangled with human life. Female sexuality is the spring well from which flow the dreams. At its centre is a mysterious hidden cave form where the life giving blood comes. Veins engorged with blood make a network of pattern. When it breaks, this monthly discomfort is a badge of female identity – it fills the mind, like the billowing russet cloud at sunset. Unexpectedly water breaks out of its sac. Babies float in the womb. It proclaims: Woman is an embodiment of fertility – the proud bearer of life.