For the past few years, Anju Dodiya has been thinking about trees, both as ancient ancestors and beautiful friends around her who listen. Touching upon the tragic legacies of disappearing trees, the Mumbai-based artist has created narratives around ancestral logs and stoic women who march on with resilience, almost on the verge of an uprising, like in her transformed retelling of the Greek myth of Daphne. “As more and more trees disappear—whether it is the banyan opposite my window or the centuries-old olive trees of Palestine, new narratives arrive around these absences. These are stories of disquiet, violence and the uneasy borders between home and beyond,” she says. The result? Her new solo show, The Geometry of Ash, at Chemould Prescott Road in Mumbai. It comprises a series of large-scale colour-infused fabric panels and a playful suite of works on paper. “There is an abundance of images, imagined characters that seem to play out this emotional drama. Women carrying logs, reading books, facing storms, and walking on,” she adds.
A sense of inwardness and alertness pervades the quiet rooms in her work The Green Book. “There is a reference to an Art Deco lamp, terrazzo floors. Two girls are reading. The book placed on her thighs indicates a quest for immense freedom. I want The Log Women in their state of composure. I speak of states of awareness and alertness, without slipping into perfect manifestoes. To recalibrate myths, where Daphne is not a woman turned into a tree, but a free, swinging forest athlete. It is an image-making that comes out of liberating intention,” she says.
Many of these themes—the inner world, imagined narratives and the emotional depth of colour—form the backbone of her work. “I have often worked with the Greek myths of Arachne and Daphne. This Greek (Arachne) woman was cursed to weave forever and become a spider by a jealous goddess because she was so good at her job. I think of it as a blessing. For an artist, it seems like a boon of certain, eternal creativity! I guess I adapt mythological stories to my narratives. They enrich my methods of expression,” she says.
Renowned for her sensitive ‘fictional self-portraits’ that confront the terrifying act of creation, Dodiya graduated from the Sir JJ School of Art in 1986, and since the 1990s, has been recognised as among the most prominent artists of her generation. Her art career has been called “happenstance”, a word she says is clearly not hers. “I studied art at a time when there was no money in art. I might have said that one painted for passion and commitment. A career in art seemed difficult in those days. One thought that one would have to adopt other ways of survival,” she recalls.