Enasha Thakker

About

I come from a land (India) that is focused on precision yet, at the same time, is the birth place for 2-D Ancient art styles like Madhubani, Kalamkari, Meenakari and Warli that celebrate human error. The human “error” is nothing but adding a touch of Humanness in our designs that adds life to the work. The chaotic network of strokes and colours forming myriads of structures and shapes as we see in the world around us. My work celebrates human error in its rawest forms and attempts to track the roots of the same.  

Culture and religion centres the identity of my country. Therefore, since the start of my journey in RCA, I have worked towards cultural taboos and the duality of the same. My initial works like ‘Rati’ speaks of cultural taboos surrounding female pleasure. Whereas ‘Duality’ uses an anaglyph style of art and speaks of taboos around menstruation and touches upon concepts of benevolent sexism.

My most recent project ‘Draupadi’ is a re-imagination of a missing chapter in the mythological epic of Mahabharata through the perspective of Draupadi, a feminist icon whose story has been deep-rooted in benevolent sexism. It is presented through the means of a 3000 year old  practise of storytelling called Kalamkari in the form of a traditional Indian garment; A sari. It questions the roots of the Rape Myth Acceptance and is abundant in symbolism interlaced with cultural motifs.

As the nature of things go, with the evolution of design and digital design being the future of art, traditional art forms are at the risk of extinction. I have observed a trend towards more “clean” designs so to say along with it being digitally produced. Don’t get me wrong, I love the simplicity and class a minimal design holds but, in this process the styles that elicit natural strokes with the beauty of human error are being forgotten.

In my opinion, there is now an oversimplification of most designs that give a more mechanical feeling to the work. It is as if an order is being forced on art, in a way to contain it. I want to incorporate and study hand drawn art forms into the digital world and maybe immortalise it in the virtual world. An underlying aim of mine is to create a unique style of art that appreciates the Indian art forms.

I take the role of a Chitrakatti, who happen to be the original story tellers in my country dating as far back as 3 millennia. I re-imagine these stories through the Female lens and use it to challenge the norms around femininity using traditional Indian art forms as their base and inspiration.