Do They See The Same Skies As We Do?: Chemould CoLab | Tarini Sethi

Humans and gods. Animals and mythological beasts.

The boundary between reality and fantasy blurs in these future worlds where leisure and introspection reign supreme. Created in direct response to the personal, political, social and ecological anxieties of the day, here artist Tarini Sethi restores balance to human relationships with each other and Nature. She draws from her own understanding of eroding mental health, scepticism of current political discourse, dread of communalism, and distress at the destruction of the natural world, to make art that defies these realities. These works do not start and end at Utopia though. In ink, acrylic and steel she depicts the chaotic process of this world-building. Her subjects – some quite human, some quite animal, but none clearly one or the other – fight and ponder, observe and converse, love and luxuriate, often within labyrinthine physical spaces.  

In Sethi’s worlds, bodies are freed from the idea of obscenity. They are instead perfect vessels for exploration, action and sexual emancipation. The metal sculptures, an extension of her drawing practice, give us fleeting entry into their domain. The flickering shadows they cast present an intimate and unfettered Elysian mirror world that one can see but never quite reach.

In this show, Sethi brings together a selection of ink drawings, acrylic paintings and metal shadow sculptures that explore the mythologies of her mind. In them, the viewer can meet a charming cast of characters and discover the building of the artist’s Utopia through its various phases.

by Cara Tejpal