The solo show of Bakula Nayak at the India International Centre in New Delhi was aptly titled Intimate Strangers. Nayak&rsquo;s works are a very personal response to things that are found and collected by her, but probably held significant value and meaning for those they once belonged to. While searching for vintage papers, Nayak confesses that she often finds pages from personal diaries or random bills. &lsquo;At first glance they look like innocuous pieces of paper, but they make my imagination go wild. They offer insights into people&rsquo;s lives and I enjoy giving them a new life,&rsquo; she says. And so a ledger page from 1947, or a bread bill of a bakery in Paris from 1932, tucked away and preserved, come alive in Nayak&rsquo;s re-imagination of the stories around them.<img src="http://magarticles.magzter.com/articles/3785/307447/5bbe041df2067/1539179517018.jpg"" owidth=321 oheight=497" style="height:700px; width:452px" />Her artistic journey began five years ago when she lost her father. As a child, she remembered a mysterious red box that was always hidden away. While clearing things up, Nayak came across the red box and found that it contained a random collection of papers and letters her parents had written to each other, meticulously capturing details of their life. As a way to relieve her grief, Nayak began sketching on these pieces of papers. &lsquo;Over time I found notes my parents wrote about their dreams for me. How they were foregoing small pleasures to give me the best. It became impossible for me to read those letters. That&rsquo;s when I decided not to use personal papers to sketch on. I needed to let them be,&rsquo; shares Nayak. &lsquo;Then I became interested in looking for old papers from thrift stores.&rsquo;<img src="http://magarticles.magzter.com/articles/3785/307447/5bbe041df2067/1539179517034.jpg"" owidth=319 oheight=441" style="height:700px; width:506px" />Reclaimed photographs after a studio shut up shop in Pune or of old bill books, all indicate that nothing is permanent. Everything is bound to be discarded and left to perish, eventually, and this is what Nayak builds on, of giving old stories new meaning. A page from a gardening journal that Nayak picked up from a flea market in New York, for instance, gave her fascinating insights of the times. &lsquo;While the focus was gardening, it was evident that it was the time of economic depression. People were selling their homes either due to losing their jobs or often just shifting to old-age homes,&rsquo; she explains. For Nayak, it is the paper that dictates what is drawn on it. A trained architect, Nayak is comfortable with laborious and detailed drawings. &lsquo;It is so meditative for me that I have stopped wearing a watch.&rsquo;<img src="http://magarticles.magzter.com/articles/3785/307447/5bbe041df2067/1539179516989.jpg"" owidth=209 oheight=343" style="height:700px; width:427px" />As part of the exhibition, Nayak also gave viewers the opportunity to send vintage postcards of her artwork to the person of their choice, that much like her exhibition of paintings, vintage objects and other paper ephemera allowed us to take a fragment of lives past, of a shared experience with strangers, one that was unexpected in its charm and deeply resonant in its impact.

Intimate Strangers

English

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Hindi(हिन्दी)

Malayalam(മലയാളം)

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Telugu(తెలుగు)

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