In Canticle, Boshudhara Mukherjee’s first solo exhibition at TARQ, Mukherjee showcases a series of woven canvases from her meticulous practice. The exhibition encapsulates the meditative and almost hymn like aspect of Mukerjee's practice, in both large and small scale. Her complexly woven paintings, like a canticle have within them, non-rhythmic yet repetitive forms and patterns, all of which contribute immensely to her striking visuals.
In an attempt to merge the gap between ‘Art’ and ‘Craft’ Boshudhara has developed a unique technique: while she paints the canvas using acrylic and oil she also weaves the canvas, transforming its very nature as a carrier of paint. The canvas is the protagonist of Boshudhara’s art practice, going beyond its usual purview: it becomes a space: the painted canvas is cut and woven, sometimes more than once, creating and recreating the patterns, distorting them to create new, unexpected forms.
Boshudhara draws inspiration from a pool of varied and eclectic sources: the delicate lines of a miniature painting, abstract expressionism, geometric patterns of neo-plasticism, repetitive patterns of architectural screens, as well as her grandmother’s sarees. This mixture of influences of form and technique give Boshudhara’s work a deep, layered meaning that calls to be unravelled, explored and found. She uses a variety of media in her works, most of these common materials of everyday use: plastic, paper, tapes, and cloth. These are either layered onto the canvas or stripped and woven into the work. The objective is to recycle the material, to re-contextualize it, strip it of old connotations and render a new meaning.
According to independent researcher Monisha Ahmed, "Boshudhara’s is an art of conscious and deliberate destruction but balanced with a sense of reconciliation. First creating disorder, she then restores each piece to its own entirety, almost like a completeness born out of turmoil. Incongruities certainly exist but within that a sense of calm prevails as the connections are rebuilt with one canvas strip repeatedly going over and under the next one. Building order where she once destroyed instills a spiritual oeuvre to her pieces as they hang as sentinels of the two diametrically opposing, yet connected, sides of life – creation and destruction."
