Missives I and Missives II

Missives' featured works by Israeli artist Ghiora Aharoni. The exhibition was part of the museum's programme to showcase the work of international artists who have worked with Indian crafts people and are influenced by India. Drawing inspiration by a trove of love letters written by his mother in the 1950s as an adolescent girl in Israel, Ghiora explores universal notions of desire, ritual and courtship in the exhibition. He also explores his deep engagement with India and Indian craft traditions and craftsmen that become both the instrument and the foil through which he essays his narrative of longing.

In a two-part installation that begins in the Industrial Arts Gallery within the Museum and continues in the Kamalnayan Bajaj Special Exhibition Galleries, Aharoni combines the crumpled letters with vintage photographs from India, connecting his mother’s sentiments to a universal and elusive landscape of experience and memory. Snippets of the letters are also embroidered on phulkaris and integrated with drawings of symbols, architecture and images of daily life observed by him during his travels in India.The exhibition reflects the artist's personal and cultural journey which begins in Jerusalem, eventually traversing through unknown Indian villages and chaotic mega cities in the country.