The journey of Seema Kohli in printmaking
An exhibition of etchings, serigraphs, and screen printing
The online exhibition is on view from 21st December 2020 to 3rd January 2021
For a resourceful artist such as Seema Kohli, working in a single medium could never satiate such a generous and restless creative spirit. In addition to dazzlingly detailed large-scaled paintings for which she is so well known, the legacy of her long career has been one of broad exploration and experimentation in both traditional and avant-garde mediums - diverse printmaking processes though performance and video. Seema’s work is inspired by and firmly grounded in her extensive knowledge of Indian spirituality, mythology and cosmology which is most often filtered through the lens of the sacred feminine. An overarching theme in her work has been the regeneration of life which can be seen in extensive and evolving series, Golden Womb and Tree of Life. Her informed and intuitive knowledge of India’s detailed taxonomies of mythological, historical and living spirituality is distilled through diverse bodies of work which offer unique pathways through different processes and forms.
For a painter with such a refined and meticulous control of her medium, printmaking has provided an opportunity for experimentation, chance and accident. As images emerge through multiple states there can be a keen sense of mystery and unpredictability. In some processes such as intaglio, the reversal of an image from plate to paper can be revelatory, akin to seeing a familiar image from a startling new vantage point.
While intaglio printmaking might seem to be the antipathy of the lush color palette characteristic of Seema’s paintings, it privileges a quality of line that underlies all of her work and is particularly reminiscent of earlier primarily linear work. Orchestrating a complex array of visual information through line and tone alone requires a strong command of value relationships grounded by shrewd composition and design. Two very different bodies of work illustrate this superbly. The series Unending Dance of Light share dense compositions and rich tonality. In Power Games, which unfolds at a panoramic scale of 20 x 40”, a woman in a yogic position rests one foot on the back of a small nude male in a vulnerable position facing away from her. The braid of her hair travels down her torso to her upturned foot, tracing the flow of energy in chakras of the subtle body. One arm reaches towards a small prone female figure floating amidst clouds who reaches back to her. Between these dual points of feminine energy lie what appear to be the physical or mental detritus of urban life - tanks, plumbing, spigots, spotlights and the quotidian concrete boxes typifying cityscapes that these two enlightened women appear to be liberated from. Similar in proportion and scale, a female figure in Wizard of Oz rests on an inverted tree of life as a lotus twines upward from her navel. Perhaps she inhabits Vishnu Narayana’s cyclical recreation of the world in an inversion of male and female power and energy. Two female figures rest side-by-side behind her with a sliver of moon betwixt. To their right, a series of blocky forms give way to what look to be signs of beach detritus such as striped umbrellas and jazzy star-shaped sunglasses. In this work, depicting water through the use of a murky value rather than color lends an ominous presence. Perhaps the image reflects the degraded condition of the once paradisiacal but now overdeveloped beaches in Goa where Seema has a second home. Riding the Mind and Come Play with Me are dense compositions of action and reaction where the heroic goddesses Durga battles the demon Mahishasura with her team of Saptamatrikas. They brandish swords and soar and dive through the air in a charged energy field of converging patterns of line and tone symbolizing the elements.
Her series Memoirs, created in 2018, is strikingly different in tone and temperament. Rendered in a fine and sometimes fragile black etched line, the ample white of the page infuses the images with a sense of light. Their panoramic proportions allow both lyrical and haunting scenes to unfold. In one, a three-headed Brahma and his daughter Saraswati encounter a gathering of women flying through the air or sitting in a circle, their long hair either flowing or braided. This female camaraderie of lively gestures, conversation and meditation feels like a utopia that is both comfortingly ordinary as well as transcendent. As with many of Seema’s works, abstract and representational forms exist in formal and conceptual synchrony. Most curious in this work, a black ovoid mass filled with small white biomorphic shapes enters the composition diagonally, meant to symbolize the life-giving placenta. It recalls images from tantric art that communicate complex concepts through radically elemental abstraction. At the bottom of the page small bursts of flames erupt, each carrying an embryo. They are shielded by the sheltering wings of the Phoenix, or perhaps one of many hybrid bird-deities from Hindu mythology. This fluidity of forms and symbols reflect Seema’s interest in the multiplicity of meaning found in diverse world religions and mythologies.
In two other images in the series, compositional shifts between large and small figures and contrasting tonalities of black and brown elicit a sense of shifting realities and time, or of narrator and narration. In one, a self-possessed Kali figure - which may be a self-portrait – confidently holds aloft the damaru drum symbolizing endless time, an attribute normally associated with Shiva. In her other hand rests a circular form resembling both an hourglass as well as the Hiranyagharba, the golden womb of creation in Hindu mythology, an overarching theme in Seema’s oeuvre. Waves of energy flow from her in the form of pathways that others stride upon. On the right of the page, from a low angle of view is a magnified portrait of her showing concentrated internal energy and focus. A subsequent image in this series depicts a bespectacled woman, who could be young or old, standing in front of a vine covered window. To her left, the strident-carrying dancing Shiva appears as either a vision, a dream or perhaps a talisman to help propel the transference of power and agency from male to female.
Building on the panoramic scale of some of Seema’s intaglio prints is the exquisite penultimate zinc plate etching, Mahavira – The Enlightened One, unfolding at a spectacular 50 x 120”. Created in warm brown ink, a selective use of gold can be seen in silhouetted figures of the Mahavira and Buddha. Floating among these sacred and familiar icons are reclining floating figures nearly camouflaged in a hypnotic density of wave-like patterns, shapes and bubbles. One figure carries the moon in her hand while another slumbers beneath, perhaps an alter-ego in the process of reabsorption into the atmosphere and elements. Closely modulated tones lend this image a velvety enveloping richness, while the variation and repetition of shape transmits a hypnotic sense of rhythm.
Two other series feature dozens of intimately scaled images. At just 4 x 4,” a series also titled Memoirs is a curious blend of iconography encompassing the common, magical and divine that spark surreal links and associations. A jacket embroidered with hearts, fancy high-heeled boots, a container of disinfectant, paintbrushes, teapots, a can of diet coke, a game of snakes and ladders, a meditating figure with a Shiva Linga, an antelope, a woman carrying the sun in her hand - they could be a book of dreams, or simply the random jarring and jotting of disassociated notes, non-linear thoughts, day dreams and fragmented memories that crowd our days and nights.
In each of Seema’s 64 Yoginis (Chaunsath Yogini) a circle inscribed in a square holds an image of a deity from this powerful female collective. Based on a Sanskrit term, the Yogini is a female master practitioner of yoga possessing magical and supernatural powers. Seema has a profound sense of identification with the energizing and uniquely transgressive force of the Yogini, having visited and enacted personal rituals and public performances at several of India’s both celebrated and abandoned Yogini temples. While drawing from traditional symbolism and meaning, Seema infuses the yogini with own sense of meaning and identification. Although Yogini’s appear prominently in her paintings and sculpture, this series of small etchings is unique in that all 64 Yoginis can be apprehended together as arranged in a downward facing triangle symbolic of female energy.
Serigraphy is an exacting and labor-intensive medium requiring the layering and ordering of multiple screens containing images and colors. Although producing serigraphs in a professional atelier has allowed for precise registration, Seema finds that working in her own studio allows her to take advantage of the vulnerability and surprise of error. In this case, imperfection offers more possibilities for creativity than perfection, as a slight misregistration between layers can create unexpected overlays and zips of color at the edges of forms. While in her paintings she arrives at one final work of art, through the serigraphic process each piece in an edition might be slightly different.
Seema’s exquisite version of the classic and exceedingly complex iconography of Viswaroopa is a tour de force of the serigraphic process. Here the cosmic Vishnu revealed to Arjuna in the Bhavagad Gita is envisioned as an undulating torrent of circles linked by lotus vines and wave forms of water and air. Each of the circles of various sizes holds one of Vishnu’s avatars along with Seema’s generously inclusive lexicon of imagery that includes yoginis, matrikas, ghandarvas, the Buddha, and even fragments of a city. Standing before them all is Vishnu’s boar avatar Varaha holding aloft Vishnu Narayana who, massaged by his consort Lakshmi, dreams this marvelous world into existence. Two rows of lotuses, frame and ground the image which bounds this explosive divine creative energy. No less vibrant in color but quite different in temperament, is Rising of the Kundalini featuring a central meditating figure who holds within her both day and night. Floating on an ovoid of lotuses petals, she sits between the cosmos and the city, framed by a double border of lightness and weight - the buoyancy of ghandarvas and the heft of elephants.
As the process of serigraphy opens up different explorations of color, form, surface and process, many of Seema’s enduring themes take on new life. In series of prints created in 2002, The Golden Womb, a circle sits within a deep blue 20” square, a compositional strategy she employs in many of her works. Here the circle can be seen as both exterior form and interior space - the shape or our world and the womb of life. Playful images curl up against and float beyond the circle’s circumference as women, demigods and cows tattooed with patterns of flora and fauna reflect flashes gold mingled with rainbows of color. As in so much of Seema’s work created throughout her bountiful creative career, they rejoice in the cycle of life and the potentiality of regeneration.
For Seema and many artists, printmaking not only opens up diverse techniques and effects that expand and transform their work, but importantly allows for a more democratic distribution than is possible with a single painting or sculpture. Although trading the privacy of one’s studio to collaborate with a team of assistants in a professional atelier may transport an artist out of the zone of concentration of creativity that many require, it allows for valuable outside input and response in-process. New images are born from the unique possibilities of the printmaking process while familiar themes can be revisited and reinvented. For Seema, printmaking has contributed a crucial component to her continually rejuvenated creative harvest.
