The Spaces Between: Ahalya Rajendran

Ahalya Rajendran’s paintings exist in the delicate space between memory and moment, where time flickers and the familiar dissolves into the ephemeral. In this body of work, she captures fleeting instants, distilling them into quiet yet expansive compositions that echo her childhood, the rhythms of everyday life, and the intimate connection between nature and one’s self.

Working with watercolor, acrylic, and charcoal on handmade Wasli paper, Ahalya borrows from the tradition of miniature painting, using stippling techniques to build delicate yet intricate worlds. Her surfaces breathe with layered textures, deckled edges, and an organic irregularity, suggesting that each image extends beyond the frame. Recurring motifs - birds in motion, self-portraits, the moon, and dreamlike landscapes, create a world both deeply personal and universal, one where nostalgia and lived experience intertwine.

Ahalya’s paintings from Kerala are filled with a sense of openness: vast skies, flowing water, and greenery. These works carry traces of days alive with freedom, familial love, and an innate sense of childlike wonder. In contrast, her paintings from Bombay, created during her residency at Chemould CoLab, are more densely populated, drawing from the energy of places such as Colaba Causeway and Sassoon Docks. Yet, even as she captures the bustling movement and intensity of the city, her perspective remains tethered to Kerala, where nature shaped her way of seeing. The contrast between these two worlds infuses her works with a quiet duality, where movement and stillness coexist.

Her compositions live in the blurred boundary between past and present, reminding us that a moment, once experienced, is already slipping into memory. In “The Spaces Between”, she invites us to pause in the midst of chaos, to look at the unnoticed details of our own lives, and to step into her world, one where she is both the observer and the subject, weaving herself into the narratives she creates.

Through the interplay of presence and absence, Ahalya Rajendran’s works gently insist on the value of looking closely, of lingering in the spaces between: where time slows, and in a fraction of a second, a world is held.

- Parnika Singhee, 2025