TOPOGRAPHIES OF THE SELF
SHALINA S VICHITRA
Anant Art Gallery, 2005
Catalogue essay: Bharati Chaturvedi
Shalina paints imagined borders and countries, intermingling with tangible ones. Unstopped by seas, lakes, mountains and neighbouring nations, even such countries that Shalina has copied off the map appear to be random clumps of land mass. Like the processes where she engages in unappealing the earth and letting the magma harden on the surface, Shalina now reconstructs the patches of land on the surface into imagined entities not within any geo- political net. One can almost hear John Lenon in this fantastical world: Imagine there’s no country, it’s easy if you try.
(excerpt from the catalogue essay ’Topographies of the self’, by Bharati Chaturvedi)