Seema Kohli’s new exhibition is an alchemy of ideas

Nonika Singh

‘Cut from the Same Cloth’ is not just the title of artist Seema Kohli’s ongoing exhibition at Bikaner House, New Delhi, it’s the philosophy of her life, the core of her artistic practice. “We all come from one single source, the same womb. We all are connected,” she observes.

Just as the supreme consciousness is cutting out different bodies from a common source, she creates a vast gamut of images from the same artistic soul. Be it acrylics or embroidery, performance art or poetry, Kohli works in several mediums. Amrita Pritam, the grand dame of poetry, once told her: ‘Don’t drink from one well.’ So, she digs deep into different reservoirs of inspiration — mythology, folk forms, Sufism, Sikhism… She has been shaped by many spiritual practices and art, for her, is “an inward journey and communication with the self”. Like the mystic poet Bulleh Shah, she is a seeker. She quips: “At 62, I am like a child, especially in my quest for art.”

Her artistic inquisitiveness persuades her to experiment. Turning to embroidery as a means of expression, she is against categorising mediums. She reminds us how American artist Bisa Butler has transformed quilting into a fine art. Kohli was fascinated by embroidery back in 1991, only she did not find it feasible at the time. In her current exhibition, 15 works are embroidered with silk and cotton threads, beads and sequins, and in one painting, she has even used gold tissue from Benaras.

Art for her is an alchemy of complex ideas; she draws as much from kaal (time) and Shakti as from the Mayan civilisation and Greek mythology, especially how the feminine is interpreted in different cultures. As she puts it, “Mind is a fertile space where streams of varied thoughts meet. I try to visualise what is happening in this space.”

Art, she insists, is a coded language akin to Dastangoi, the art of storytelling. Only, in her works, stories are told allegorically. Often fables such as that of Arab saint Rabia, who was sewing the name of Allah when her master saw a huge light around her and freed her, inspire her, but do not reflect directly. The idea of thread and needle stays with her as that of Kabirpanthis and Bhakti saints who consider the body a garment.

Be it the tree of life, the concept of golden womb, the Hiranyagarbha, or Sufi texts, Kohli reimagines it all in the visual language of beauty. “Beauty is part of our existence. We seek beauty and joy even in darkness.”

She believes love is what the world needs and what all Sufi saints and religions underline. “We all are surviving because of the other. We all are tied by a silken thread.” And so are the myriad streams of her art. Thus, it’s not just poetic thoughts with which she often opens her exhibition, but each atom of her creativity becomes a ‘talking piece of art’.

“Why do you weave the five elements with juices, the extracts of rasa…” writes Kohli, whose work entwines many rasas. “If life is an experience to be felt and we can’t let go of moments of sadness”, her works are as much a whole as a sum of a million stories and a million ideas.

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