Creating art out of the past

A hunger to collect antiquarian books, historical maps from the 1800s and 1900s, ancient postcards, wooden letterpress drawers, typewriters, collaged art catalogues, gesso, gold leaves, vintage medicinal and laboratory glass containers, teak and glass cabinets, vintage radios and compasses — and transforming them into art is what makes New-York based visual artist Samanta Batra Mehta’s work eye-catching.

One of Samanta’s most interesting collection of works is titled The Other Side of Time. “It comprises photographs, prints, drawings and installations to depict themes that incorporate personal identity, gender constructs, social order and colonial history. The collection has works such as the Awakening, constructed from scrambled texts from a book published in 1897 that I found in an antiquarian bookstore in New York,” the artist explains. There are other works like decoupage on painted wooden objects such as chowki and mirror-box, vintage wooden shelves with jars and ancient maps inside them, shoe inserts, medicinal glass bottles turned into installations among others.

Ask Samanta about the influences on her works, and she begins with the paintings of well-known Scottish artist Peter Doig. “Then the art of Louise Bourgeois, Ana Mendieta, Maya Lin and Marina Abramovic have also been influential in my own artistic journey. The brilliant mind of Agnes Denes, the minimalist paintings of Agnes Martin and the sensuousness of Chris Ofilli’s works draw me in.  The raw architectural spaces of Geoffrey Bawa and the voluptuousness of Isabel Allende’s written words always invite inspiration. And how can I forget the drama of Alexander McQueen’s designs?”

Cultural dislocation often fosters myriad modes of expression among immigrant artists. As an Indian artist living in New York for the past decade, she obliquely alludes to issues of identity, dislocation and migration in her works. The artist shares, “I grew up in an urban, non-traditional, erudite setting in Mumbai. My mother is a graphic designer and my father is in shipping.

So there was a lot of exposure to arts, books and travel since my childhood. My move to New York about 11 years ago catapulted my latent desire to make art the centre-stage in my life. It was in this vibrant city that I wholly started engaging in the cultural landscape — attending exhibitions, reading art books, attending workshops, lectures and engaging with artist groups. As a largely self-taught artist, all of these experiences have brought a unique point of view to my art.”

Explaining some of her cherished art works, Samanta says, “My work Here I lie in my own separate skin (2010) examines the ideas of displacement, dislocation, migration and negotiation of our identities based on our skin. This work harks back to my experiences when I had just moved from India to the US, a time of tremendous learning (and also angst) for me. My vacations in Croatia in 2005 and 2007 marked a turning point in my artistic preoccupation. Croatia was carved out of the former Yugoslavia in 1991 after a bloody civil war.

It was reliving moments of the tumultuous history of this nation that vicariously resurrected my family’s difficult past. Like millions of others affected by India’s Partition, both sets of my grandparents had to give up their homes during India’s Partition and begin life anew as refugees in independent, secular India. My works, Stories from a Broken Land, The Grammar of Longing, The Other Side of Time were spawned from the feelings of displacement, loss and migration surrounding the Partition.”