Image Credit - Gallerie Nvya
Jayashree Chakravarty (b. 1956) graduated from Visva Bharati in the sprawling natural surroundings of Santiniketan. The township quickly turned into a concrete jungle, leaving few signs of its former natural state. This had an impact on her paintings, which expertly blend the landscapes of the old and new cities. In some of the pieces, a bird, a broken window, or a brick wall will occasionally poke their heads out of the mossy colour and mouldy texture. Her works in the shape of paper scrolls continue to be original in their conceptions and execution because she developed her own art-making procedures and used organic materials and different types of papers. Chakravarty describes her writing as autobiographical and surreal, creating her own distinctive idiom to convey concepts of truth, nature, and unity. She frequently tries out different organic materials, including paper, rice paper, tissue, and cellophane, to create fluid, transparent images that are open to various interpretations.
Chakravarty employs superimposed forms in her artwork, emulating the sketches made by cave painters before they mapped them on cave walls. She contends that interacting with people from foreign lands and a different culture broadened her perspective and made her reconsider some of her preconceived notions. The ink-on-paper sketches of Chakravarty are an experiment in turning subjective experience into mystical truth.
She completed her Master's at The Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda's Faculty of Fine Arts, where she was exposed to an urban sensibility. She was also an artist-in-residence in Aix-en-Provence from 1993 to 1995, when she had conversations with several of the group members and was affected by the French movement Supports/Surfaces throughout the early years of her practise. Jayashree has held exhibitions both domestically and internationally, including presentations at the Singapore Art Museum (SAM), Singapore, the Chicago Cultural Center, Illinois, USA, and the Musee Departemental Des Arts Asiatiques Nice, France. Her most recent exhibits have been in the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, the Musée Guimet in Paris, the Palazzo Madama in Turin, Italy, the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya in Mumbai, and the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in Noida and New Delhi.