SALT OF THE EARTH
Latika Katt
Anant Art Gallery, 2006
Catalogue Essay: Keshav Malik
An artist’s responsibility is to activate. Activation is done by craft. The artist must put his or her material in such a way that it produces power. If it has power it can transform. Latika, with all her spiritual passion for the good earth has the power to transform, and which means she is able to dominate untruth. And being able to so dominate it she can change the way we see. An artist takes people out of themselves, by the element of surprise. Latika's contact with rural life and aboriginal art has awakened something primordial in her, so she transforms whatever she experiences into a sort of dreamtime, the authentic paradise of harmonious and fresh shapes, colours, and at moments, deep intensities. Here is a detachment from the banal modern self, and so also from clock time. It's like floating out into open space, severed from my temporal orientation.
(excerpt from the catalogue essay ‘Bridging the Great Divide‘ by Keshav Malik)