IN FINE FORM

From sculptures with multiple menacing faces to mixed-media installations, here are the showstoppers from India Art Fair 2022

- SNEHA BHURA

One of the crowd-pullers at the India Art Fair 2022 in Delhi was a glaringly gaudy imp.

Around two and a half feet tall, the toy-like, earthenware figurine was perched on a platform in the booth occupied by the Mumbai-based art gallery Jhaveri Contemporary. The design was zoomorphic—the head had a snout resembling a pig, and four contorted faces, replete with teeth and gums, jutted out from the torso and limbs. On the head was a strange spiky helmet.

A dominant feature of the work— titled, matter-of-factly, ‘Figure with Spiky Crown and Pig I’—were the eyes. They were big, round and bloodshot. They were also glassy— like that of a comic-book villain, or perhaps something more sinister.

“It has got an expression that’s ambiguous,” said Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, the sculptor. “It’s either menacing, or it’s smiling and is happy, or it’s about to engage in some kind of behaviour. I am into these kinds of ambiguous expressions. From a sculptural perspective, this is a figure that sticks to the warrior archetype. It is a kind of fantastical warrior figure.”

Nithiyendran, who was born in Colombo to a Tamil father and a Dutch Burgher mother, is best known for his irreverent approach to ceramic media. Audacious in his use of colour and ornamentation, he creates mangled, toy-like figures that seduce and repel, entice and frighten. “Sometimes, subtle works that are more poetic often lose their ability to speak. In my practice, I have a sense of hyperbole and exaggeration and performance within these figures,” said Nithiyendran, who lives and works in Australia.