Silent Expression
Sonali Laha
My work primarily deals with body, space and the concept of soul. Through my working process, I try to investigate the journey of how body, soul, and space react to various situations in the course of time. I always try to manifest my strong feelings and experiences through my works. Intimate memories have a crucial influence in my works. We live in a time where people are focused on decreasing their dependency on and attachment to the human body. We are almost living in virtual reality. We do not have time to connect our mind and body. It has become very hard to deal with physical and mental decay. Here, I am trying to focus on the situation, where a body can connect with the mind and reach to a different inner world, free from this virtual world.
All the things we use in our daily lives are these forms that have deep, long histories and for me those are the special things to pay attention to. In most of the works, the body postures are still, and frontal. The frontal gaze help me to get in one-to-one contact with the viewers and try to raise certain questions or confrontations about the concept of beauty and its representations in the society.
My work is inspired very much from self aesthetic, inner spirituality, autobiography, and meditation. I draw from Indian traditional tempera painting, miniature painting, Kalighat painting, art movement style like expressionism art, and from everyday life. I use materials such as watercolor and traditional tempera painting on paper and sometimes on wasli paper. Whenever required, I also present my works through installations. In the painting medium, I love to explore various mediums according to what my subject demands. In my work, I try to freeze some moments in life, which are very static and silent in expression. It’s about the phase, where you have chaos in mind but actions are numb. I try to capture such moments through my work.
