Storm in my teacup

In “Unending Dance of Light: Storm in my Teacup” Seema depicts the churning of the oceans, a well-known story in Hindu mythology. Many elements are here: Vasuki, the king of the serpents who acts as the churning rope, Kurma the turtle, Vishnu who holds mount Meru, the churning pole, on his back.

The narrative here has been put through the press of the artist’s imagination. The churning of the oceans is happening in a teacup, “the whole universe is arising out of a teacup,” declares Kohli delightedly. There are coat hangers, ladders, a table laid for tea, clocks and egg timers. Across from an electric whisk and iron in the upper part of the work is a deer with horns that melt into roots creating a womb like space, and thence into the Kalpavriksha tree, the tree of wishes, one of fourteen treasures to emerge from the churning of the oceans.

“Storm in my teacup” and its pair (“She”) exemplify perfectly the over-layering of macrocosm and microcosm, mythology and domestic life, spiritual and material that is existence for the artist. “It’s all one, it really is… and the churning is constant,” she says.

Storm in my Teacup
Tea stains, gouache and ink on arches paper
13ft x 4ft

Hiranyagarbha
Tea stains, gouache and ink on arches paper
13ft x 4ft