I Tell You: Suns Exist
As worlds go, ours is unique. Whether you believe in the big bang theory or the seven days story, one inalienable fact remains. We live in a mysterious, miraculous world. In a universe of stars, this third rock from the sun is the only one we know with ingenuity at its farthest depths and loftiest peaks. Sure, it has laws. And yet we’ve found ways to adapt, concoct and re-imagine our surroundings to make it a space for us to thrive.
It is this space we are now fighting for. In the face of grave environmental and political threats to our hard won existence, it seems arduous to contemplate a gentler time. And yet this is what Seema Kohli offers us. Birthed over the last few years, when a world wide pandemic forever altered our sense of invincibility, these works offer us an oasis. A space to reflect on life and its purpose, to reestablish our fading connection to our surroundings. A space to exist in all our resplendent multitudes. It is a world we must strive to bring to life. A world where as sure as the sun rises and sets, we assert our right to live free.
This exhibition envisions Seema’s own private multiverse. A creation of innumerable possibilities, shimmering landscapes and all-encompassing love. Lived experiences and inner visions are nurtured into life on canvas. The works channel our collective despair, rage and desperation in the face of an increasingly troubled world. Seema, like our beloved Stefani Germanotta, “live[s] between fantasy and reality at all times”, inviting us to soar with her figures, escape into her private dreamscape, and imagine a kinder and inclusive world. And like the inescapable Rumi and his beloved Shams, Seema entreats us to believe: yes, suns do exist.
Works in this exhibition also highlight the ecological changes Seema has observed around her neighbourhood in Delhi. She laments the destruction of the forests around her home, rapid concretisation pushing what’s left of the wildlife behind a looming wall. For Seema, the wall is meant to protect the once plentiful species of deer, peacocks, monkeys from the perils of city living, as much as it is to prevent them from escaping ‘the wild’. A demarcation as futile and arbitrary as the one between reality and fantasy.
Seema was drawn to make “I Tell You Suns Exist”, inspired by a lotus pond she encountered at the Relia home in Ahmedabad. It brought back childhood memories of traveling through Punjab every summer and encountering a marsh filled with lily pads and flowers, and her sister hustling through muck to retrieve these prized blooms. Here, gregarious lotuses shoot skyward, gleefully swaying to a cosmic chant, their upturned leaves unfurling in this nighttime scene. A graceful swan seems to have drawn its surroundings onto its plumage. A delicate figure of a yogini in padmasan perched atop it. The calm reflective surface of the pond, showcases the wispy clouds above. The only source of light comes from a full moon perched above. Beneath the surface of the water is a world teeming with life, a microcosm of all life that shares this planet. For Seema, the lotus is a symbol of strength and resilience. Of coming to life in adverse conditions, a hardy perennial that thrives in the unlikeliest of situations: the plant while completely submerged in muddy waters, sets forth root systems that surge heavenward to cast out exquisite flowers that have found space in history, mythology and folklore across the subcontinent. Its likeness is found on tablets, manuscripts and texts for millennia and yet, today we encounter it solely as a symbol for divisive politics. By including this much-maligned flower at the centre of this work, surrounded by joyous scenes of harmony, Seema seeds a hope for a gentler more secular future.