MATERIAL SONNETS

Forming earthy, abstract topographies, Sarika Bajaj’s works occupy an interesting space between the conventionally defined categories of art-objects. The utilisation of feathers, the meticulous acts of knotting and weaving, and their aggregation within an organic, and amorphous whole, create meanings that are at once patently readable and obscure. Interwoven within a composite of membranes and threads, the quill-sections appear partially camouflaged within the rhythmic structure of the panels. The artist generates a natural geometry with the materials, contrasting the brilliance of the coloured threads with the muted tones of the quills and jute fibre.

Bajaj instantly elevates the mundane forms of the feather quills when integrating them into her process – a process that comprises gathering, preparing, segregating, cutting and tying. Her earlier practice involved the repetitive arrangement of feathers that she gathered around the city of Mumbai, her home. Conceptually, her investigations into notions of survival (of both humans and other living beings) and the precarious nature of existence drew her to the material as being symbols of temporality, freedom, and natural migration. The feather has been associated with deeper spiritual meanings in various ancient belief systems, and has sacred connotations in Indian mythology as well, connecting the human realm to that of the divine or trans-dimensional plane. For Bajaj, these objects discarded by birds also speak of the phenomenon of ecological degradation around the globe; they identify with life in Indian metropolises, with the unchecked urbanism and patterns of consumption that leave little or no space for other creatures.

Initially the act of weaving began when Bajaj attempted to recycle the unused shafts left over from her feather sculptures; later she began to enjoy both the process and the outcome. During the disorienting time of the pandemic, she found deep solace in the meditative craft of knotting and stitching, something familiar and beloved to her that she saw as a legacy from her mother, who excelled in embroidery, knitting, crocheting and working deftly with her hands.

Bajaj has developed an intuitive language and personalized aesthetics surrounding this unusual medium of feathers. She has delved into narrativizing it in different forms including performative acts with (her)self. Each work is embedded with multiple layers of memory, time, and presence, through the object’s materiality and the artist’s navigation of it. Each piece can trigger a range of responses – from the activation of a personal recollection, to the desire for tactile interaction; it can push one to contemplate universal truths, or encounter a plethora of meanings from the intended symbolisms.

There is acknowledgement of strength in fragility, fragmentation and unity; in schooling something wild and free like a feather, the artist is like a shaman, shaping them together in one form, without each piece losing its worth and relevance.

Lina Vincent 2023