Home matters

In the subsequent lockdowns brought upon by the pandemic, the ‘home’ became a centrestage in our lives. Featuring many moods, it also came to be known as the chief purview for a number of experiences. Focussing upon the importance of a home is a new show in Capital at Gallery Threshold. Titled, Nest: Gharonda, Basera, Nid, Ghar, curators Prayag Shukla and Tunty Chauhan bring its many facets in relation to various languages.

According to them, although every language has a different word for home, the idea and intent remain the same. “...it brings similar emotional warmth of an ever-welcoming environment, signifying a sense of belonging , security, identity, and comfort, to the solitary and the gregarious alike,” the press note mentions. Even the gallerist Chauhan decided to take it slow given the pandemic. “I was open to ideas by the artists but wanted to take time and work on noteworthy concepts. This idea with Prayag ji worked out the best,” she says in a conversation with The Morning Standard.

The gallery is illustrated with artists’ viewpoints of home. We come across Manisha Gera Baswani’s installation titled Hope is a Thing with Feathers made using gouache and pin incisions on paper. “The paper with incisions is going through an act of violence,” as Baswani points out, “but it is simultaneously emerging in a beautiful form. This is in parallel to how we live our lives, where we have our highs and lows. In the pandemic, as we got a lot of time to reflect on ourselves, this work came to be,” she adds.

Also included here are the works of artists such as Anindita Bhattacharya, Jayashree Chakravarty, and Sudhir Patwardhan. Chauhan further gives a lowdown on artists who have been engaged in this theme for a considerable part of their life. “Pooja Irana has been working on abandoned multi-storeyed buildings across Delhi, Nilima Sheikh has often spoken about migration and home, Rajendra Tiku has always spoken about uprooting and displacement because he is a displaced Kashimiri, Pandit Khairnar speaks about home on a deeply spiritual level. The pandemic made us realise the importance of home, especially while thinking about the conditions of migrant labourers who left the city for their homes,” she signs off.