The North East States Exhibition of Art, organised annually by the Srimanta Sankaradeva Kalakshetra in collaboration with Lalit Kala Akademi, witnessed a marked change in the qualification criteria this time. The new rule is that the participants must have at least one solo show to their credit. While this might have been hard for those who are serious artists without a solo show against their names, the idea behind the new rule was to bring down the number of participants, which used to be quite huge, and make it convenient for the jury to attach maximum credibility to the selection process. To be fair to the decision makers, the criterion they finally settled for worked reasonably well this time.

Among the artists whose works finally adorned the Lalit Kala Gallery – Rajkumar Mazinder, Parul Narzary, Lwihwr Lwihwr Muchahary, Paltu Barman and Vareimi Shinglai were named for this year’s awards. The works done by Lakshidhar Bordoloi, Atul Ch Barua, Banshem P Lanong, Chirojyoti Bhattacharjee, Priyom Talukdar, Sundar Saikia, N Rajesh Singh, Paran Bonti Devi, Pushpita Paul and Bidyapati Sinha were selected for ‘honourable mention’.

Rajkumar’s My Soul is Burning (mixed media, paper) is as remarkable for the repetition of form – crouching shapes of Gandhi amidst splashes of fluid red – as for their significant posture, in which they are shown to pick up something off the ground. While the scattered red may speak of many things – terror, bloodshed and the resultant chaos and suffering … this posture hasn’t been chosen without a reason. Here, we find Gandhi collecting the pieces of peace, perhaps with a hope of joining the threads of life someday. And this ‘Gandhi’ exists in a lot many of us, if not all, which is evident from the repeated forms, as well as the title.

Two open windows, behind a woman in deep meditation, are significant parts of Parul Narzary’s work Untitled (acrylic, canvas). Through the window on the left, one can see the moving sculpture by Ram Kinker Baij – The Santhal Family. The window on the right shows fiery red flowers of Simolu. It’s as if the grandeur seen outside one window is being soaked in and blossoming outside the other. The flowers kept on the floor also seem to enhance this feeling, even as the artist decorates the world around the woman with folk designs. The spiritual air of the work is worth experiencing.

Paltu Barman casts nude humans and animal forms throughout a resort-like setting and engages them in conversations laced with eroticism. Female nudes outnumbering male counterparts dot the whole semi-natural landscape, which is segmented into strikingly bright colour patches. While sexual freedom and animal instincts are seemingly glorified, the eroticism unmistakably borders on porn in some areas. In Untitled, Barman artistically depicts a fantasy world, where inhibition is an alien word, and sexuality is inextricably linked to free spirit and happiness.

Incorporation of ethnic elements by Vareimi Shinglai in his sculpture My Culture My Identity (mixed media), and the folk touch by Ratul Gogoi in Mother Plays With Child (wood) were praiseworthy. N Labango Meitei also incorporates Manipuri folk elements in his mixed-media work Place of God, engraving the awe-inspiring dragon on a slate hanging from a vertical structure.

Priyom Talukdar creates a dream atmosphere in Soul of Music, with a stringed instrument and its exponent drawn like forms of tree, from where butterflies fly away and merge with the animated sky. With eerie darkness and streaks of light playing hide-and-seek, the artist manages to create a lyrical quality in the woodcut work.

Bidyapati Sinha’s energetic form of a crowing cock in Good Morning (dry pastel) is replete with quick movement of lines, which makes the ‘scream’ reverberate across the surface.

Structured composition, prevalence of sad colours and punctuating red arrows enable Prabin Kumar Nath to express a psychological state skilfully in Pensiveness.

Santanu Dhar mimics Jackson Pollock’s ‘action painting’ in Untitled-24, but while the American legend used to drip colours onto his canvas to freely let go and used no central image, Santanu tries to improvise by using an image and giving the colour tracks a more ‘guided’ look.

Many other works selected for the exhibition are worthy of praise, although awards or honourable mentions eluded them. A section of these artists among others include: Girish Bora, Madhusudan Das, Dadul Chaliha, Minakshi Borgohain, Bikash Acharjee, Aditi Chakrabarty, Subhakar Laskar, Kamal Mahanta, Akarnav Goswami, Padma Singha, Jyoti Kr Kalita, Monika Devi, Monika Gogoi, Mukul Sarma, Upasana Bora, Shyamali Chaliha, Arundhati Choudhury, Chandan Bezbaruah, Joydeep Bhattacharjee, Debojit Boruah, Diganta Hazarika, Lohit Rajbongshi, Pallabi Boruah and Pallabi J Sarma.

The exhibition comes to an end on February 1.

Debashish Bezbaruah