When 'yoginis' hold court

Seema Kohli's exhibition, A Circle of Our Own, is an intriguing experiment with installations in a public space

On a winter morning at Sunder Nursery, adjacent to Humayun’s Tomb in New Delhi, the mist is rising slowly off the dew-laden lawns. Surrounding a pool of pink lilies, a group of stone-carved yoginis keep vigil over the excavated 16th-Century pond. Made from soft, salmon coloured stone by traditional stone-carvers in Odisha, the sculptures have been shaped to artist Seema Kohli’s requirements using conventional iconography for most part, but also creating “new” yoginis per her request: “To me, a yogini is any manifestation of energy,” the artist says, “all living beings are yoginis.” That explains their unorthodox names, as also