Madhvi Parekh

Born : 1942 at Sanjaya near Ahmedabad

THE CENTRE AND THE PERIPHERY:

"One night he had a dream. In the dream he had wings. He could go anywhere. So he took off, but found himself hovering just above his home and his land. Because he wanted to escape from the scene vertically, not horizontally. From this height he could see his life altogether-the cow which had recently broken a leg, the soothing tree, and along with this, a living form which he couldn't quite identify" -Deepa 1

Madhvi, who has situated herself in the space of contemporary art practice, reverts for inspiration, from time to time, to her childhood village left far behind. The two inversely symmetrical positions renegotiate the rural and the contemporary in different manners.

Traditional folk and tribal artists of India are generally not known for doing autobiographical work, in which the artist himself or herself would appear as a character. Ganga Devi, the renowned Mithila artist, once did a series of paintings based on her experiences when she was suffering from cancer.She used an iconized image of herself which recurred as the central character in several individual panels to build a continuous narrative of her life.

Madhvi Parekh's images of fantasy and childhood memories, spread over her entire work, have this iconic-symbolic quality. They keep recurring- now in the centre-stage, now floating accross the landscape, sometimes framed within a window or door, or sometimes making their presence felt by their absence. When the same characters and objects such as anthropomorphic animals, birds with transparent bodies, smiling snakes heads, torsos, trees and buildings keep appearing and reappearing in her work, over the years, they assume the role of pictographs which, when reused in different contexts, continuously renegotiate the emic and etic structures of the language of her expression.

In most discussions about Madhvi's art, questions are raised whether it is rooted in a form of 'child art' or 'folk art'. While situating her work in either of these monolithic categories, critics have often confused between the images stemming from her memories of childhood and thise found in child art created by the child, and between the images derived from the memory of rural life and those emanating froma traditional folk art per se.

Madhvi does not come from any constituted tradition of folk atr, though her images do speak of rural as well as childhood memories as much as of child art practice.

Madhvi was not trained in an art school but it is not that she has had no exposure to the world of modern art or to new materials and techniques. She's poised on the fence between her personal world, 'unspoilt' by 'training' and that of formal history of art which continuously and consciously explores new possibilities of expression and thereby, in principle, availing to herself a broader space to wander about.

As such Madhvi is not a folk artist nor does her work belong to an established ideological or aesthetic movement of modern art, though one often reads qoutes from Paul Klee, Miro, Picasso or Clemente in her work. In her paintings, as in her life, she keeps transgessing between the two worlds, i.e., the one of her rural inheritance and of the universal modern art practice, renegotiating both. In this sense the staightjacket terms such as 'outsider art', 'neo-primitivism' or 'native' would not effectively apply to her. Madhvi is a contemporary Indian artist,not anxious to negate her rural inheritance, and at the same time reflecting in her work the contemporary world- it'spressures, it's ideological tensions, it's proclivity for fragmentation, and above all, it's eclectic art language. Madhvi is not a neo-primitivist in the sense that she is not a modernist who, from that position, explores primitive aesthetics and appropriates it in her work on modernist terms. If there is a 'primitive' element-simplification of form, emblematisation, linearity or elimination of depth, shading and overlap, and intuitive rather than designed, organization of space- it emerges from the conceptual and narrative pictorial devices which children employ, an element which shares certain commonalities with child art. But one feature of primitive art-inherited, community-based collectivity of idiom, and beliefs and practices, which provide a certain stylistic certitude to each individual genre- is not found in child art. Though Madhvi builds upon her childhood memories including her own language of expression that she might have developed as a child, as she grows, she lends to it the strength and complexities through layering of of cultural and artistic references- an element absent in child art.

Madhvi has been painting for more than thirty years. Her "craft-like sense of decorativeness", "cosmic sense that is at once the attribute of folk art and women's art" and her "handling of everyday life, including labour, leisure and ritual in the form of (mock) fable "2 , all stemming primarily from her rural inheritance, have undergone an intense process of continuous interface with the modern, initially arising out of the programme of training drawn by Paul Klee in his Pedagogical Notebooks, and meticulously followed by her.3 combining her her rural background, her child-like sensitivity and the "modernism's logic of abstraction....in a quasi-modernist manner"4 , she has evolved an effective language of expression which has become as natural to her as her mother tongue.

When working with water-colours, Madhvi almost lustily, revels in the translucent luminosity offered by the medium, using it to create a space within a space which then comes handy for narrativising a legend or the everyday life. A new element makes it's presence felt, in her recent works , pertaining to popular imagery culled from everyday life-cinema house like gaudy arches and curtains, windows having fancy colouration and motifs, scenes from the beach life of Mauritious. She often enshrines the main character or scene of her narrative in the centre, while detailing the related images in the margins.

Witha personal well articulated language of expression, Madhvi positions herself in a space outside the tradition-modernity discourse, while crossing borders both ways.

-Jyotindra Jain

1. Deepa Parekh, Fables of Everyday Life (Bombay, 1993)
2. Geeta Kapur,"Madhvi Parekh.", in Critical Differences. Contemporary Art from India, (London Aberystywyth Arts Centre, 1993)
3. Pranabranjan Roy, "Madhvi Parekh.Child's World, Mother's Fantasy", in: Expressions and Evocations. Fifteen Contemporary Women Artists of India, ed. Gayatri Sinha (Bombay, Marg Publications, 1996)
4. Kapur, ibid.

Solo Exhibitions
1972 : Chemould Art Gallery, Calcutta
1975 : Dhoomimal Gallery, Mumbai, New Delhi
1978 : Dhoomimal Art Gallery, New Delhi
1982 : Pundole Art Gallery, Mumbai
1984 : Urja Art Gallery, Vadodra
1984 : Birla Academy, Calcutta
1985 : AI-Khaleeja, Kuwait
1986 : Dhoomimal Art Gallery, New Delhi
1992 : Sakshi Gallery, Chennai, Bangalore
1993-94 : Exhibition of 30 years of works sponsored by Seagull Foundation and Vadehra Art Gallery, Mumbai, Calcutta and New Delhi
1994 : IWALEWA - Haus, Bayreuth, Germany
1995 : Gallery Foundation for Indian Artists (F.i.A.), Amsterdam, Netherland
1997 : Gallery Bose Pacu Modern, New York, USA
1997 : Gallery Foundation for Indian Artists (F.i.A.) Amsterdam, Netherland
1997 : Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai
1997 : Nazar Art Gallery and Faculty of Fine Art, Vadodra

Group Exhibition
1968 : Birla Academy, Calcutta
1969 : Joint Show with Manu Parekh, Chetna Art Gallery, and Mumbai
1971 : Birla Academy, Calcutta
1975 : 3rd Triennale of India, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi
1977 : 'Head Series' with Manu Parekh, Dhoomimal Art Gallery, New Delhi
1978 : New Contemporaries, Marg Publications', Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai.
1983 : Group Show of three women artists, Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal
1984 : Group Show of artists working at Garhi, New Delhi
1985 : 'Play' ICCR, Istanbul, Ankara, Yugoslavia
1987 : Watercolour Group Show with Arpita Singh, Nalini Malani and Nilima Sheikh, Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal
1987 : Contemporary Indian Art for 'Cry', Mumbai, New Delhi, Calcutta
1988 : Watercolour Group Show with Arpita Singh, Nalini Malani and Nilima Sheikh, Bangalore
1988 : Watercolour Group Show with Arpita Singh, Nalini Malani and Nilima Sheikh, Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai
1989 : 'Through the Looking Glass', Watercolours by Arpita Singh, Nalini Malani and Nilima Sheikh, CCA Art Gallery, New Delhi
1989 : 'Art Mosaic' Spastic Society, New Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta
1990 : Contemporary Art, 'SAHMAT' Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi
1990 : 'Tribute to Nelson Mandela', L.T.G. Gallery, New Delhi
1993 : Group Show by Vadehra Art Gallery, at Hussain Ki Sarai, New Delhi
1993 : opening Show of AMA Gallery, Calcutta
1993 : Group Show by Vadehra Art Gallery at Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai.
1993 : 'A Critical Difference', show of 9 Indian Artist at Camden Art Centre, London and other places in U.K.
1994 : Group Show by Gallery Schoo in London
1995 : Group Show of three women - painters at Gallery Schoo, Amsterdam, Netherland
1995 : Group Show of Watercolours at Chemould Art Gallery, Mumbai
1995 : Group Show of1uuDS', Maya Art Gallery, Hongkong
1995 : Christie's Auction - Show in New Delhi, Mumbai, London
1995 : Group Show by 'Cry', Mumbai
1995 : Group Show by 'Helpage India', Mumbai
1995 : Postcard for Gandhi SAHMAT at Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta, Chennai, Bangalore, Ahmedabad and New York
1996 : 'Inside Out' - Contemporary women Artists of India, a travelling show by Middlesbrough Art Gallery, U.K.
1996 : 'Watercolour Show', Gallery Espace, New Delhi
1996 : 'HARMONY', Nehru Centre, Mumbai
1996 : 'Contemporary Indian painters', Associated with Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai
1996 : 'CHAMATKAR' organised by AMA Gallery, London, U.K.
1997 : 'James Harvey Gallery, Balmain, Australia
1997 : '50 Years of Independence', Vadehra Art Gallery in NGMA, New Delhi
1997 : Colour of Independence, AMA Art Gallery in NGMA, New Delhi
1997 : Through the Looking Glass, Lakaeeren Gallery, Mumbai
1997 : Self and the World, Gallery Espace in NGMA, New Delhi
1997 : Major Trends in Indian Art, curated by Rm. Palaniappan in Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi
1997 : The Intuitive Logic - II, curated by Neville Tuli, New Delhi, Mumbai
1997 : Gift for India, SAHMAT in Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi
1997 : KALI Exhibition in the Tropical Museum in Amsterdam, Netherland

Artists Workshops and Auctions:
1973-84 : All India Graphics Workshop at Faculty of Fine Arts, Vadodra
1976 : All India Artists Workshop, Supported by Punjab University Museum, Kasauli
1980 : All India Artists Workshop, Supported by Bharat Bhavan, Kasauli
1980 : Workshop of artist recipients of National Award, Sponsored by Lalit Kala Akademi, Madras
1987 : All India Graphics Workshop conducted by Paul Lingren (USA) at Garhi, New Delhi
1989 : All India Artists Workshop, sponsored by Lalit Kala Akademi, Lucknow
1989 : Timeless Art, Auction by Sotheby's, London, Sponsored by 'Times of India', Mumbai
1989 : Artists Alert, Auction conducted by 'SAHMAT' at Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi
1990 : Artist Camp, Sponsored by IPCL, Vadodra
1990 : Discover India Art Studio's Workshop, sponsored by Media Transasaia (SWAGAT), Dalhousie
1990 : Auction for 'Helpage India', conducted by Asprey of London, Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai
1992 : Documentary film on Madhvi Parekh and Manu Parekh's works, sponsored by Ministry of External Affairs, India
1993 : Art Camp, at Leh-Ladakh by Jammu and Kashmir Tourism Department
1994 : Invitation from IWALEWA - Haus, Bayreuth, Germany, organised by Ulali Beir to paint city Kiosks (pillars) in celebration of 800th anniversary of Bayrenth city, Germany
1994 : Workshop in Varanasi, sponsored by ABC art Gallery, Varanasi
1995 : Workshop in Puri, sponsored by Samilton Hotel, Calcutta
1996 : Workshop in Bangalore, organised by Chitrashilp Kala Parishad
1996 : Workshop in Kalimpong, organised by the Rotary Club, Kalimpong
1996 : Workshop in Mud Island, Mumbai, organised by Harsh Goenka
1997 : Workshop in Vadodra, organised by ABC Ltd.
1997 : Workshop in Pahalgaon, organised by Jammu & Kashmir Govt. and Lalit Kala Akademi, Srinagar
1997 : Auction by Christie's, organised by Vadehra Art Gallery in London, U.K.
1997 : Auction by HEART, curated by Neville Tuli, Mumbai.