Living Up to a Promise to Rebuild in Style

From Revival to A Promise to Rebuild, Amdavadi artist Sheena Chawla has taken a substantial leap forward in her quest for discovery of the self and its innate powers. This is the firm feeling you get after you visit the second solo show by the young artist who comes across as thinking individual no less!

Titled thus, i.e. “A Promise to Rebuild”, the Inaugural Reception of this second solo show by Sheena Chawla was opened at Hutheesing Centre by the trio comprising of the senior police cop and an abstract artist himself Ajay Chaudhary, realtor Harshita Patel who represented Narendra Patel, and social worker Dr Nishtha Thaker Anand.

Coming close on the heels of another abstract art show “Into the Wild” by Siddharth Patel which ended on Sunday at Gufa Gallery, this one by Sheena offers a continuous opportunity to artists and art lovers of the city to view and relate still more at a stretch to the genre which seemed to be going on a “red hot’ spree in this new show!

An individual with professional background in commerce, fashion designing and even sports with her PG degree in commerce from local HL College, apparel designing and production degree from NIFT, Gandhinagar; and finally a degree in marketing and advertising from the London College of Arts, Sheena started a career around visual merchandising briefly before branching out to painting on a long term as part of an inner calling to “reawaken instincts for a better performance of roles coming our way in creating, recreating and shaping our own lives; and of course to finally become better versions of ourselves.”

Going by the genre that’s more impulsive, instinctive and spontaneous, her expressive strain fits in aptly with her credo to discover, rediscover and keep refining the human self.

In her present show Sheena has displayed twenty odd acrylic paintings on canvas besides a few in alcoholic ink and three very interesting installations, as also two very unique paper sculptures.

While the content of the paintings is richly narrated with very meaningful titles and profound thought-provoking verses self-written by Sheena in what tends to become a fusion of text and visuals and thereby a multimodal experience, most of the paintings here have a dominance of red, a little white and a dash of black colours – hence our refrain to call the show ‘red hot’! This against the dominant but pleasing hues of blue seen in her first show.

With excellent titles like Redemption of Creation 1, 2 and 3; Take a Deep Breath & Try All Over; The Start of the Death of An Ego; Sow the Wind & Reap the Whirlwind; The Glimpse of the Multiverse; The Incense of Our Breath; Inextricable Embrace; Slithering Passion at my Window and Bleeding Alchemy etc, the works tend to convey adequately both in terms of ideas, thoughts and visuals.

In the last four works which are a series unto themselves in terms of media, appearance and elemental patterns within the compositions and even as you feel there is an overlap, you experience a certain literally unifying synergy between the thought the title conveys and the visuals each work throws up!

Ask her what worked or weighed with her during the creation of these works on show and Sheena thinks she drew a lot of straight lines, some geometrical forms and other free patterns all at once as she felt a lot more uninhibited this time with her promise to herself!

The professional visual designer for merchandise that Sheena was, she has demonstrated it amply by displaying her works in the gallery with a pattern and a certain aesthetic of symmetrical placement where it was desired or dictated by the similarity of shapes and titles of the works.

For example the circular works at the show placed alternately on the first wall near the entrance; and the vertically aligned two works placed in two corners of the gallery and so on. The two-piece canvas roll installation is placed centrally and right opposite the entrance of the gallery. Similarly, a thirty-piece set of textured paintings adorns the centre of the fourth wall on a boxed surface.

To sum up then, A Promise to Build is truly a promise unto herself by the artist who comes across as a constantly self-appraising individual alive to the need to build further and further after a “Revival” of the self; and that that need is universal for a world to grow positively.

Coming in a series of shows that continue to commemorate the 45th anniversary of Hutheesing Centre, this one by Sheena is one good show to go to; and it is available till Sunday April 23.