Transience and its Preservation

Lac, as material and metaphor, speaks to transforming fragilities. It leads Hemali Bhuta to explore issues of labour and processes of memorialisation. Adwait Singh responds to her quilts, carpets and cyanotypes.

- Adwait Singh

Hemali Bhuta. My pulse is beating and my veins throbbing and in wonder, my song bursts forth. Lac wax, dried leaves, dust, lac dye, hand-ground lac on handmade wool and silk. 96” x 96”. 2021. Photograph © Adam Reich. Image courtesy of Galerie Ceysson & Bénétière.

Hemali Bhuta’s solo exhibition at Galerie Ceysson & Bénétière in New York from the 8th of September to the 30th of October, brings together a new body of work, revolving largely around her research into the processes of lac extraction in Jharkhand.

Curated by Anne Couillaud, the exhibition bespeaks transformation of this resinous substance (lac) into things (bangles, cosmetics, sealants, varnishes, etc.) that have specific uses and meaning, as well as a certain spirituality that these processes and their parsing pose. These transformations are not spelled out, except where the exhibition didactic might be more forthcoming, but are to be deduced from the traces of constituent material, methods and performances conspicuously laid out. The exposed seams hint at veritable histories conjoined into tapestries, while the amoeboid sculptures placed in a corner betray the source of ruddy hues tinting these tapestries. Different applications and properties of this aureate resin are manifested, for instance, when it is beaten and stretched into a wavy sheet underscoring its brittle translucence. Non-sequentially and with great delicateness, Bhuta’s embodied immersion into human cultures and ecologies surrounding lac is narrated through remembered associations.