A lot of little

This year, Tina Ambani’s Harmony Art Foundation has built its annual art show around contemporary artists’ take on the classical miniature. Many of the artworks, however, are large. What to expect at the show, and why

For its annual show this year, the Harmony Art Foundation has gone with a theme: the miniature. Not the Mughal or Rajput miniature which appears in museums and on postcards, but the miniature as a way of visualising art.

The artists who have contributed to “Fabular Bodies: New Narratives in the Art of the Miniature” are not painters of the traditional courtly tableaux or amorous scenes of Krishna and his gopis. They are well-known contemporary artists.

Among the 80 or so works showing, for example, is a large, closely painted baby head by Chintan Upadhyay. A steam train chugs across the face, in a Rajput-style illustration, with what looks like Jaipur’s Hawa Mahal in the background.

Another is a comic book-style painting by Chitra Ganesh. An upside-down Parliament House buzzes overhead like a flying saucer full of aliens; below are scenes reminiscent of Amar Chitra Katha with a touch of Hieronymus Bosch’s medieval horror.

There is a work by Manisha Gera Baswani of what looks like the landscape backdrop to a classical Chinese painting but curiously distorted and missing a foreground.

There is a long sculpture of hybrid animal forms by Mithu Sen. From Orijit Sen there is another comic book-style scene in Hindi and English, with overtones of magic realism.

Besides paintings and sculptures there are drawings, photographs, computer graphics and more. Other artists showing include Nilima Sheikh, N S Harsha, Arpita Singh, Manjunath Kamath, T Venkanna, Chitra Ganesh, Dhruvi Acharya — 24 in total.

“Some have given several pieces; from Pooja Iranna there are 13, others have seven, six, five, two...” says Usha Bhatia, director of research for the 16-year-old Harmony Art Foundation, which was founded and is run by Tina Ambani, wife of Anil Ambani. (The Foundation in recent years has shown an interest in traditional heritage in art. It has hosted “cultural residencies” in Mumbai, for Indian and foreign artists.) “Suhasini Kejriwal has a fairly large work,” adds Bhatia, “so it is a single; Lavanya Mani, also a single. These are large pieces, 11-12-14 feet in size.”

What is miniature about a giant work? “The format has nothing to do with it,” Bhatia says. “It’s the detailed work. The minutest of details are represented.” She offers the example of Saravanan Parasuraman’s sculpture, composed of “tiny little little ball bearings — lakhs of them”, and of an architectural sculpture by Iranna involving thousands of small cuboid tubes.

The artists were selected and approached by Gayatri Sinha, the independent critic who curated this show. “In 2009 I had curated a show on miniatures,” says Bhatia, “on how the tradition is kept alive. It triggered the concept for this show. Gayatri Sinha told us how the same tradition is kept alive by a group of absolutely contemporary artists, that miniatures are at the back of their minds. They are ones who in their artworks had in some way reflected miniatures. The tradition never dies. Time and again it comes back. Changes are inevetable.” That is the background to “Fabular Bodies”.

All the works on display are sold out, to private buyers. Bhatia says, “We are only providing the platform.”

“Fabular Bodies”, at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (Prince of Wales Museum), Mahatma Gandhi Road, Fort, is on till August 14