Veeranganakumari Solanki is an independent curator, researcher and art-writer based in India. Her curatorial experience has involved research and exhibitions working with artists from various disciplines and backgrounds, writing for international art publications and journals primarily on emerging South Asian artists and art practices. Her interest lies in the manner in which interdisciplinary forms merge with art to create dialogues that travel from public spaces into private ones. She is currently the Curatorial Brooks International Fellow at the Tate Modern.
Streaks of light, colour and shape glint through the red. Peering between the threads some objects appear, while others journey into imagination through the unknown maps of the ‘Falling Star’.
‘Falling Star’ (2017), the central piece to Monali Meher’s exhibition encompasses fifteen years of her journey as an artist that span across object, space, emotion, medium and change. Elements of the body and self emerge and converge to weave through the installation, sculpture, video and layered print and drawing display. Meher’s deep- rooted performative practice becomes a part of the viewer’s experience while navigating the spaces that circulate time and memory through recurring objects and elements of the artist’s practice. The processes of constantly facing change, whether in emotion or place, leave one vulnerable, both emotionally as well as physically. Yet, it is these exhausting changes that provide the strength to go further and face more challenges. ‘Falling Star’ picks itself up from this change to look at opportunities in uncertainty. The compilation of personal objects wrapped in red wool comment on the larger situations of world happenings from war to natural calamities and a confrontation of porous and shifting territorial borders to the association of materials and ownership.
The unknown maps that these object groups sit on only prod this unsettling feeling on the unknown further. These balls of red wool metaphorically reference the celestial and unknown, as they precariously perch ready to dive into the almost mysterious luminous maps that expand the vision beyond the gallery floor into another world. This is a world that we all know, we all identify with, but layer with pretence to forego difficult questions, emotions and situations. Meher’s works starkly expose these meanings that creep in unexpectedly from within us. The mystery of place and object threads its way across the works in this exhibition and beyond, with the colour red and a context to wool or textile remaining a mapped constant.
Exhibition Essay by Veeranganakumari Solanki, London 2019
Detail of Falling Star 3, installation, mix media, wool, printed canvas, 26 cm x 110 cm x 110 cm, 2017
Gallery view, Room 5
Detail of Falling Star 1, installation, mix media, wool, printed canvas, 30 cm x 80 cm x 110 cm, 2017
The wrapped red wool objects date back to Meher’s early works from 2004. She began wrapping personal objects as a way of creating a new skin to preserve the essence of the object’s spirit and associated nature of time and memory. This repetitive and meditative process also emerged from the constant state of flux and transition that the artist was in, when she moved between places. The identity of the object is usually conserved in these wrapped forms, where they retain shape as a metaphoric protection of the past and present while moving into the future. Questioning the idea of private and public in her practice, Meher expanded to wrapping objects that embodied public spirits – from ‘My Wrapped Agenda’ (2008), ‘Answering Machine’ (2004), ‘Wrapped Mirror’, (2011), ‘Wrapped feet’ (2013) to public library books, ‘Red Myth’ in Uithof, Utrecht (2006), the Gouda museum chandelier, ‘Auspiciously Red’ (2006) and the Bhau Daji Lad Museum’s staircase railings, ‘Running Thread’ in Mumbai (2018). This transition from private to public merge in a ball of red and sit gathered together on the cut- out maps of ‘Falling Star’.
My Wrapped Agenda, Paper, Plastic, wool, 90cm x15cm x 7cm, 2008
Wrapped Mirror, Mirror, wood, wool, 42 cm x 21 cm x 2 cm, 2011
Wrapped Feet, slippers and wool, 32 cm x 12 cm x 4 cm, 2013
The early 2000s was a period when Meher was rejecting the imposed identity of being Indian or South-Asian by creating a language that though rooted in ethnicity was accessible globally. The artist’s constant struggle with identity gets addressed through the various ways in which she experimented with her body and stereotypes. In Amsterdam, 2004, Meher’s work ‘Boiling Orchids’ displayed the flowers in a manner that highlighted emotions and human senses, while questioning the meaning of preservation and depiction of beauty.
In a recent series of photographs ‘Lilies’ (2019), discarded white lilies become the subject of fragile and surficial attractiveness. This threads its way into the reference of symbolic representation that is very prevalent in traditional cultures. Auspicious rituals and the sacred in Asian cultures are depicted with red that bleeds into self-awareness and the raw sense of basic survival that we as human beings constantly mask. In Hindu temples people tie these threads for a wish to be granted. Meher extended the use of symbolism in her works, where the red wool she uses on herself becomes a protective shield for her individuality and identity from being attacked. The other assemblages of red in the exhibition change meaning with object and association.
Gallery view, Room 1, Photographs from various performances
Lilies, Digital photograph laminated on Aluminium, 60 cm x 90 cm, 2019
Forward/ Backward/ Rise/ Fall, Performance, 53 cm x 36 cm, Thessaloniki biennale, 2013,
Photo credit: Eleftheria Kalpenidou
Golden Paithani on Chaise Lounge, Photograph, 72 cm x 55 cm, Museum Gouda, NL, 2006
Photo credit: Rob Van Uchelen
Between the familiar/ Unfamiliar, the Home and Heart, beats a golden kiss, Performance photograph, 60 cm x 80 cm, 2006, Tate Modern, London, Photo
With or without emotional hang ups, Live web Performance
credit: Ivo Gormley
Photograph, 60 cm x 80 cm, 2009
Photo credit: Harold Verbakel
First Departure, Performance photographs (1-10), each 40cm x 31cm, Sinop Biennale, Sinop, Turkey 2008 Photo credit: Emre Yalcin
Small precious structures find themselves mapped across the rooms of the exhibition. These ‘Spirit Houses’ are protective shrines for the spirit of the place. The ‘Spirit Houses’ series was born out of Meher’s Compeung Artists residency in Northern Thailand in 2011. These guardian houses varied visually from basic structures to decorative ones with elaborate details that were worshipped as living beings with offerings and incense sticks. Drawing from the varying aesthetics of these temples, Meher began creating her own ‘Spirit Houses’ with personal objects, belongings and leftover materials she had collected over time. Through the build up of object spirits, Meher references rituals that connect strongly with her roots that emerge in different ways. A clock on a haystack, plexiglass, used plastic candle- cups; books and piles of red wool make these ‘Spirit Houses’ accessible with imagery, but also elusive with the contextual reference of preservation.
Gallery view, Room 4, Spirit Houses
To My Mother, 25 x 18 x10 cm, Steel, wool, 2008
Wrapped railings, variable, Iron and wool, 2008
Spirit House for heap of souls, Installation, Objects and wool, size: variable, 2013
Detail of the installation, ‘Spirit House for heap of souls’
Gallery view, Room 4, Spirit Houses Objects and wool, size: variable, 2013
Detail of the installation, ‘Spirit house with found objects I, Clock, Hay and metal wires, size: Variable, 2016
Spirit house with wrapped books and Mask, size: variable, books, wool, mask, 2013
Spirit house with found objects II, Installation, Tinted plexi glasses, plastic cups, size: variable 2016
Gallery view, Room 3, Spirit house with found objects II, Installation, Tinted plexi glasses, plastic cups, size: Variable, 2016
‘Riceville/ Whiteville’ (2006), a performance-based site-specific installation that the artist created in Utrecht; this work addressed the issue of death and ceremonial procedures. Rice, a universally recognised staple became a primitive reference to enter the work that delved into moulds of architectural references from the surroundings as offerings for change and transformation in territorial landscapes. The ritualistic references of discipline, focus and concentration associated with ‘Spirit Houses’ also carry forward into Meher’s other works and performances.
Room 2, Riceville/ Whiteville, performance/ site-specific installation, performance video, 2006
Photo credit: Monica Ragazzini
In ‘Spirit House for Brightened Body’, (2015), ‘Green Bride’s Carpet’ (2015) and ‘Wrapped Bridal Photos’ (2005 – 2008), the use of images of the artist herself questions relational aspects of the outside and inside. Boundaries of comfort and the female body are pushed beyond tradition with attachment and detachment being elaborated in her performances.
Spirit house for brightened body, Installation, Digital photo, light box, wool, 200 x 180 x 70 cm, 2015
Gallery view, Room 6, Spirit house for brightened body, Installation, 2015
Detail view, Spirit house for brightened body, Installation
Green Bride’s Carpet, Mix media Drawing on photo, acrylic paint, 150cm x 100 cm, 2015
A workshop with Marina Abramovich, ‘Cleaning the House’ (2004), in Jerez, Spain, was a significant period in Meher’s life that influenced not only her performative practice, but also the way in which she experimented with medium, emotion, sound and the body. The artist’s early performances germinated from her need to be in front of the public and questioned whether her actions were acts for an audience or for herself. This led her to create the performance, ‘Fake Performance Scene of Tragic End in the Old Church’ (2010), that looked at material and idea with reference to architecture and her body. In this three-hour performance at Oude Kerk in Amsterdam, the artist highlighted
the essence of the church’s history and structural symbols by using her body across the space and the floor.
Ranging from tragedy to questions of heaven, earth and religion, the performances were drafted as a theatreset that transitioned through spontaneity and the vulnerability of the artist’s body in linear time while questioning her own artistic practice.
Fake performance scene of tragic end in the old church, Performance, Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, 2010.
Photo credit: Geert Jan van Rooij
The artist’s strongly performative practice is translated into the nonchronological display of works, where time and mediums converse with each other. Ephemerality is linked with the acceptance of decay to accept the passing of the old and coming of the new. The contrast of change is laid bare in performances such as ‘Old Fashioned’ (2003), in Amsterdam and in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, followed by performances in Beijing and Mumbai. The words –‘Anger’, ‘Hate’, ‘Crime’, ‘Violence’, ‘Racism’, ‘War’ – appear as text on a pile of potatoes that the artist then cleaned, peeled, washed and boiled, as a symbolic replacement of alternate action.
Room 2, Old Fashioned, performance video, 9:16 mins, PAL, sound, 2006
Old Fashioned, Performance, Beijing, China, 2006
Old Fashioned, Performance, Belo Horizonte, Brazil, 2003.
Photo credit: Marcelo Terca-Nada Old Fashioned, Performance, Beijing, China, 2006
Breathing (2004-05), exhibited at the Van Gogh Museum; Amsterdam involved the artist wrapping a sharp knife with wool to make the sharpness softer, and the violence disappear. Symbolically wrapping wounds in a meditative stance, breath becomes a significant observation in stilled time. This almost mundane and repetitive ritualistic act questioned the notion of daily change in practiced activities that highlighted ignored objects and transitional processes. This was also the first performance that Meher documented as a video work for future references and displays within alternate contexts of time and medium, thereby making it an important work in the artist’s practice.
Room 2, Breathing, video, 15:54 mins, PAL, sound, 2004
Room 2, Breathing, video, 15:54 mins, PAL, sound, 2004
bound/ unbound, Performance, Patan Museum, Kathmandu Triennale, Nepal, 2017
In a more recent performance, ‘Bound/ Unbound’ (2017), Meher invited her audience to tie objects with red wool to her body. She then toiled through the streets of Kathmandu and while walking, gradually unburdened herself of these materials as a symbol of letting go of baggage of association and memory. The process of walking has been a significant part of the artist’s performances. Whether it is in a space or outside, walking is something that the artist constantly engages with during her performances, such as in ‘Visiting Brooklyn Bridge’ (2016) in New York, ‘Visiting Pearl’ (2011) in Guangzhou and ‘Visiting Marmara’ (2013) in Istanbul.
bound/ unbound, Performance Photograph, 110 cm x 165 cm, Kathmandu Triennale, 2017,
Photo credit: Isaac Martinez
Visiting Pearl, Performance, Guangzhou, China, 2011, Photo credit: Joakim Stampe
The language of a place with reference to the body becomes vocabulary and material for Meher’s work. The act of walking backwards with incense sticks in some of her performances, germinates the fear of the unknown and translates this sense into the viewers as they begin to navigate space with a passed-on emotion of trust. The eyes of the artist are now reliant on the viewer, through whose eye movements and expressions she continues to walk backwards while leaving a trace of smell and sense of temporarily mapping journeys. In his book ‘Making Site-Specific Theatre and Performance’, Phil Smith speaks about the challenges of site-specific performance. He refers to the way Meher successfully turns the audience from passive into active by engaging their gaze into a collective one to map the streets of the city and landscape she is walking in. Shoes, which reference journeys, maps, personal explorations, travellers’ histories and the artist’s long engagements with the outside and walking, become objects of recurrent preservation in ‘Wrapped Feet’ (2013) and the veiled constellation of ‘Tracing the Threads’ (2017).
Visiting Marmara, Performance, Istanbul Modern, Istanbul, Turkey, 2013, Photo credit: Rob Sweere
Visiting Brooklyn Bridge, Performance, New York, 2016, Photo credit: Aleksei Wagner (SAWCC)
Tracing the threads, Installation, Faux leather, wool, printed canvas, shoes, cloth, metal, variable, 2017
Room 5, Details of the installation, Tracing the threads
Maps that recur through the artist’s various series physically and metaphorically, explore geographies of place and wanderings. An installation of glasses in ‘Mappings’ (2017), balances a patchwork of maps that suggest boundaries and politics, while also relating it to discovery and travels.
Mappings, Installation, glass, paper, cardboard & ink, 170 cm x 160 cm x 25 cm, 2017
The precariousness of this installation extends into Meher’s series of map drawings (2007) that are direct comments on situations. A ‘Red Map’ that reads “world poverty map” seeps into every country, while ‘Aboriginal Map’, ‘Chess Map’ and ‘Border Map’ are political plays of boundaries and borders. A series of ‘Rice Drawings’ (2007) looks at the more topographical aspects of maps, wherein the artist dominated aerial views of the earth with suggestive symbolic grain drawings. The grain again connects back to Meher’s ‘Riceville/Whiteville’ installation that references the feeding of the soul and reverence to spirits, also depicted in ‘Spirit Houses’.
Gallery view, Room 5, Mappings, Installation, 2017
Aboriginal Map, Mix media, 60 cm x 80 cm, 2007
Border Map, Mix media, 60 cm x 80 cm 2007
Room 5, Rice drawings on satelite maps of Bijlmer, Paper, Rice, Varnish, 59.5 cm x 79.5 cm, 2007
Red Map, Paper, tape, acrylic paint, 60 cm x 80 cm, 2007
Window drawings from Meher’s early period as an artist reappear again in ‘The Day After’ (2019). The early window works involved turning an audience gaze to layer with the outside as they read text the artist had written on these transparent screens.
Interspersed with nature and selfportraits, the recent series of photographs include text and branches of fallen trees to reference on-going themes of the interchangeable inside and outside as well as questions of materiality and commodity.
Room 3, The day after…, drawing installation, photos on wood, branches, black japan ink, variable, 2019
Room 3, Details of the drawing installation, The day after…,2019
Room 3, Details of the drawing installation, The day after…, 2019
The architecture and layout of spaces extends into a conscious engagement of navigation in Meher’s performances and the layered drawings. In ‘Curve, Carve, Cultus’ (2019), the artist transformed the space through a group of performers who constantly moved to trace contours of their bodies on a canvas carpet. While challenging the body and space, the performance raised questions of mapped time, stillness and permanence, all of which are pertinent to the artist’s practice in a broader context.
Café, Curve, Carve, Cultus, performance, video registration 1h 40 mins, HDV, sound 2019.
Photo credit: Alexander Deprez
Curve, Carve, Cultus, performance, March kunstroute Waregem, Zaal 29, Stedelijke kunstacademie Waregem, Belgium, 2019, at CJK showing in the Café, video registration 1h 40 mins, HDV, sound, in loop.
Photo credit: Patriek Roelens
Remains of the performance Curve, Carve, Cultus, March kunstroute Waregem, Zaal 29, Stedelijke kunstacademie Waregem, Belgium, 2019
The photographic-drawing ‘Flying Stairway’ (2008) drawn from the artist’s performance ‘Practicing Nostalgia’ (2003) plays an important role in the depiction of movement and an immersive presence of space. It resonates with ‘Le Scale’ (2012) where there is an endless movement of the artist walking on a staircase. One’s eyes are peeled to parts of the space that would otherwise go unnoticed through botanical organ drawings that thread their way to connect with the artist’s body.
Stairs, Le Scale, video 02:48 mins, in Loop, Casa Masaccio, San Giovanni Valdarno, Tuscany, Italy 2012
Flying Stairway, mix media drawing, 60 cm x 85 cm, photo on Hahne Muhl paper and black Japan ink, 2010
The ‘Golden Quadrilateral’ performance at MAXXI Museum, Rome (2011), displayed the use of light, sound and rhythm, layered with the artist’s graceful movement through space as an observation of the elements of incidents. The video and photographs are a narrative of occurrences with the audience from this performance. The works also reference ‘Between the Familiar/ Unfamiliar, the Home and Heart, bears a Golden Kiss’,
at the Tate Modern (2006), where the artist covered herself in gold paint with a halfdraped saree as she explored the art works exhibited in the Tate galleries. The act of reversing the role from the performer to the viewer is a deliberate attempt by the artist to raise questions of scrutiny and the subject of observation as an outsider.
Between the familiar/ Unfamiliar, the Home and Heart, beats a golden kiss, Performance, Tate Modern, London, 2006,
Room 2, Golden Quadrilateral, performance, MAXXI museum Rome, video, 11:07mins, PAL, sound, 2011. Photo credit: MK Search Art
In ‘Two-Headed with Fish Posture’ (2009), at the Museum voor Moderne Kunst in Arnhem, Meher wore a Venetian carnival mask at the back of her head where her interactions and dialogues expanded beyond the audience to her own works. In this performance, the head became the primary subject. With a duality that commented on mental, personal and emotional control drawn in opposite directions, the work referenced the past while moving into the future.
Two headed with Fish Posture, performance, exhibition ‘rebelle’, Art and Feminism 1969-2009”, Museum voor Moderne Kunst Arnhem, NL, 2009. Photo credit: MMKA Museum
Highlighting a body-part or organ is something one sees repeatedly in the artist’s drawings. The drawings from 2006 to 2012 – ‘Sand Clock’, ‘Cactus’, ‘Brain Tree Purple’, ‘Green Cloud’ and ‘Eye Drops Blue’ – combine trees, brains, land, eyes and aquatic nature to the inside emotions and perceptions of the human body, with a fluid effortless stream between the inside and outside worlds.
Sand clock, Mix- media drawings on rice paper, black japan ink, 56 cm x 76 cm, 2006
Cactus, Mix- media drawings on rice paper, black japan ink, 40 cm x 57 cm, 2005/06
Green Cloud, mix-media drawing on rice paper, black Japan ink, 55 cm x 42 cm, 2011
Eye Drops Blue, Mix- media drawings on rice paper, black Japan ink, 55cm x 42cm, 2011
Drawings, paintings and embroidery layered on photographs and selfportraits of the artist further highlight the use of emotion and the body as a medium. The process of covering, layering and revealing are a play on the interchangeable meanings of the artist’s works. Meher’s drawings can be looked at as personal journals of fragility and strength, where text and image combine in autobiographical reflections that expand into universal narratives of war, gender and identity. ‘Roots, Threads, Borders and Pieces’ (2017), exhibited at Lumen Travo gallery in Amsterdam, dealt with the artist’s recent struggle of migration, loss and change that were a result of
confrontations with transformations that the artist had to go through due to voluntary life changing experiences. In the ‘Running Thread’ series, the artist’s body becomes a flow of constantly moving and exchanging elements with time. Explorations with found objects and surroundings led to a series of mixed media layered drawings that use multiple references from the artist’s past mediums to her performative practice. In ‘Running Thread V’, the artist becomes one with the mapped floor objects that tie back to ‘Falling Star’ and a possible development of the artist’s future aesthetic.
Room 3 Running Thread V, mix media, digital photo on canvas, black japan ink, wool, 75cm x 100cm, 2017
Room 3, Running Thread II, mix media, digital photo on canvas, black japan ink, wool, 100cm x 75cm, 2017
Running Thread I, 100 cm x 75 cm, 2017
Running Thread IV, mix media, digital photo on canvas, black japan ink, wool, 100 cm x 75 cm, 2017
Running Thread VII, 120 cm x 90 cm, 2017
The use of fabric as a material also appears often in Meher’s work to create an alter- identity for the artist. In ‘Hunt Hope’ (2013), camouflage, red embroidery and thread link to the veil and the question of identity in war and politics, while also connecting with the artist’s use of costume and fabric. ‘Hanging Garden with Battic Frills’ and ‘Falling through Irkal Well’ (2010) are representative of costumes that were created with patch- work of traditional fabric and sarees from India. This layered created skin represents hybridity, where the drawn organs of the body are juxtaposed in a beautiful garden of representation to expose the inner struggle of change for a person. The body transforms metaphorically to represent Meher’s life struggles, responsibility, relationships, emotion, change and hope
Room 5, Falling Star 5, mix media assemblage with various objects and resin, 2019
Falling Star 4, mix media, various objects and resin, 2019
Middle space, Hunt Hope, digital print on canvas, wool, 60 cm x 40cm 2013
Hanging Garden with Battic Frills, mix media, digital photo, black Japan ink, 170 cm x 123 cm, 2010.
The artist’s recent work, ‘Vertical Roof’ (2019) features the search for transparency between the gaps that are bound by stitched red. This installation connects back to ‘Hidden Sky’, where textile stitched together created peepholes for the sky.
Hidden sky of Sunday Market, digital print on photo paper and wool, 40 cm x 60 cm each, 2013
Room 5, Vertical Roof, Mix media installation with Photos, wool threads, 194 cm x 124 cm, 2019
The exhibition becomes circular with the last display of the artist’s most recent work ‘Portraits of Ancestors’ (2019). A series of empty frames wrapped with personal cloths, fabrics and sarees are laden with memories and association for the artist – from family and belonging to identity, ethnicity and home. The videos and red threads map their way through the recurring imagery in the various display rooms, allowing viewers to take away personal experiences of navigation and mind maps. The layering process one constantly encounters in the other works, is laid bare for the viewer to step into, with their mapped memory of experience as they interlude the journey of the ‘Falling Star’.
Veeranganakumari Solanki (London, 2019)
