Zero in on the meaning
Brunch|December 28, 2024
Gunjan Chawla Kumar's Sifr series is meditative and repetitive. It shows that something can come from nothing
DEENA PINDORIA
Zero in on the meaning

Gunjan Chawla Kumar's work seems simple, the lines minimalist and modern. It's anything but. The artist draws on Indian and South-East Asian textiles and crafts, tribal and pre-historic arts, even archaeology for her works. They involve meticulous handmade processes and philosophical inquiry. It makes her practice both deeply personal and universal.

On Instagram (@GunjanKumarStudio) she describes her ongoing series Sifr, as "an attempt to render sifr, shunya or zero" the essence of all phenomena. The works incorporate pure coloured pigments on Indian muslin. She whirls her pigments "like a dervish" to create "handmade cones, thousands and lakhs of them," in bright colours and interesting shapes, on a flat plinth. Each piece, though distinct in shape and design, is meant to symbolise the duality of nothingness-the cone is a vessel for emptiness and infinite potential at the same time.

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