Contemporary Tantra with Amita Bhatt at Blue Star Contemporary Museum in NHOME Magazine Oct 2013

NHOME Oct. 2013 edition

Pages 62-63

Amita Bhatt at BlueStar Contemp. Museum

(Can be read online at http://issuu.com/nhome/docs/nhome_septoct2013_issuu)

"Standing Out"

Amita Bhatt- Depends Who You Ask

Gabriel Diego Delgado

Gallery Director

J.R. Mooney Galleries

gabrieldelgadoartstudio@yahoo.com

Drawing installation creates an architectural environment epiphany

For three months (June 6 – August 24 2013) Blue Star Contemporary Art Museum was held captive by four women solo exhibitions, each radiating a unique spiritual sense of some sort of artistic shamanism and eerie existence; the kind of metaphysical vibe their staffers will need to expel by burning incense in the galleries after the de-installation- cleansing the museum of a certain unmistakable and indisputable mojo brought in by nature, beast, skeletal remains and material explorations.

This quadrant of museum exhibitions titled Texas Tough featured Jill Bedgood, Amita Bhatt, Sharon Kopriva, and Sherry Owens, each laying claim to coveted sections of the museum; installing work that seems to carefully activate each nook and crevice of their spatial divides of devout artistic devotion.

However, Amita Bhatt stood out for her simplistic attack of transcendent transgressions. Aware of her own confused presence in this unrelenting universe, Amita Bhatt delivered a riveting installation of larger-than-live charcoal drawings that make us ponder our own perspective on right and wrong; a meditative ambiance of confusing religious interpretations.

Museum goers understandings of Thangka paintings of Buddhist Monasteries and the 64 categories of Art in the Hindu culture were needed to play a vital role in the dissection, evaluation, decoding, and revelations in Amita Bhatt’s solo exhibition. With such rigorous scholarly attributes, one could only begin to dive into the artist’s mind and the foreboding elixir of guilt, confidence, reassurance, questioning, dichotomies, and pervasive misgivings of this supernatural realm of mythical, yet concurrently contemporary world.

The skirted back section of Blue Star’s Project Room was encompassed with, “Depends Who You Ask”, a solo exhibition by this Houston based-but India born artist consisting of 13 large drawings on painter drop cloths, measuring 9 x 12 ft. that covered the exhibition space from floor to ceiling.

This environment draped in a dark and eminent depression changed the scope of Blue Star’s interior. Creating a primordial cave painting of Lascaux environment, Bhatt unknowingly changed the architectural layout through a purely 2-D means by a juxtaposed visual illusion – the institution’s walls vanished in a mythological metamorphosis; now enter the religious experience.


“My work is anchored in the historic and global phenomenon of geographic and identity politics..the drama of life, desire, loss, hope, death, violence, conflict, dislocation, and eventual transcendence”, says Bhatt.

Audience goers were greeted by a hodge-podge of demonic caricatures and quasi-religious narratives of ambiguous sutras and ritualistic renditions inspired by Hindu mythology, current political affairs, and scholarly publications.

With twisted bodies and raw carnage; gods and mortals shared an intrepid, transient space and unworldly breadth - each entangled with intersecting limbs; a woven dialogue of lessons learned and questions pondered with a personified codex of visual dichotomies. It’s hard to distinguish who is enslaving who and why. But, none the less we are held captive by our own misguided understanding of each and everyone’s role in this demonic dance of dastardly dimensions; we are powerless to a visual spiritual train wreck that we cannot look away from.

“My personal experiences in riot torn Mumbai in 1992 led me to investigate the role violence plays in the global struggle for Power, Agency, Policy (making) and Domination on individuals, communities and on geographic fronts. I realized I had to examine violence as well as desire with all its manifest variations and complications and create a visual language that could bring together the philosophies and art practices of Tantra and contemporary social theorists”, Bhatt confessed.

Mesmerized by weapons piercing flesh, religious victories, deceit, punishments, and personal struggles, Bhatt uses the written word, novels, epic narratives, civil dissertations, and social commentaries to infuse us with this devil’s advocate approach; unveiling her true underlying premise behind the title “Depends Who You Ask”. We do not know which perspective to trust, to dismiss, or embrace; which one caters to our inner deviant sensibility- distorted from reality like some fun house mirror, allowing us to live viciously through ravage and famine.

Spanning several years of work, Bhatt regurgitated everything from her upbringing to pop T.V., diluting it with mythological references, some immediately identifiable, some more erudite than necessary. With each foot of drawing capacity, Bhatt packed in so many worldly references we are sometimes lost in the allusions that we can only stare confounded by our own individual recollections of self; unsure how to react, should we retreat or repent.

With a natural inclination to read left to right, we are confronted with a disillusion of start and stop. Cartoon-like captives, gorging gods and fashionable phantoms leave us no breathing room for digestion. The need for understanding Bhatt’s world lies in her personal objectification of transnational travesties, geographical upbringing, American assimilation and personal vendettas on universal norms of good and evil. We need her spoon-fed narration and decoded descriptions to see the likes of Athena and her shield and spear; Dionysus in his drunken stupor; the three headed dog-Hades; Hecate; and the antiquated Minotaur.

Older drawings stand out from the panoramic perplexing pictorials; a head made from a gun and genitals a grenade. We are assaulted with linear linguistics, a foreign language to most that do not thrive in this hard-living world of social and political faux pas.

Now with such a personalized codex of seemingly demonic demeanors, Bhatt delivered a fresh museum environment that necessitated the meditation benches provided by Blue Star for hour long immersion and meditative contemplation on visual apologies and open ended questions on a macro social and political schema.

-Gabriel Diego Delgado

gabrieldelgadoartstudio@yahoo.com