By Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum
Curated by Tasneem Zakaria Mehta (Sep 8– Nov 30, 2013)
Missives I and Missives II (2013) by Ghiora AharoniDr. Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum
‘Missives’ marked Ghiora Aharoni's first solo exhibition in India. It was part of the Museum's ongoing exhibition programme to showcase works by artists who have collaborated with Indian crafts people.
Inspired by a trove of love letters written by his mother in the 1950s as an adolescent girl in Israel, Ghiora Aharoni explores universal notions of desire, ritual and courtship in the exhibition 'Missives.'
By printing over scaled reproductions of the letters on fragile Japanese paper, they are transformed into precious objects/artifacts, amplifying their earnest, teenage yearnings.
The crumpled letters, combined with vintage photographs from India that document random, specific moments in the lives of others, connect his mother’s sentiments to a universal and elusive landscape of memories.
Aharoni’s relationship with India and his deep engagement with Indian craft traditions and craftsmen become both the instrument and the foil through which he essays this narrative of loss and longing.
Installation View (2013) by Ghiora AharoniDr. Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum
There Is Always Something To Make You Wonder In The Shape Of A Tree, The Trembling Of A Leaf (2013) by Ghiora AharoniDr. Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum
Crumpling the letters preserves his mother’s privacy though at the same time reveals random threads of phrases and their emotion – creating a tactile yet ephemeral metaphor for concealed feelings.
A Road Not Taken (2013) by Ghiora AharoniDr. Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum
His work also takes us on a personal and cultural journey which begins in Jerusalem and meanders through unknown Indian villages and chaotic mega cities, through roadside photography studios in small towns and grand heritage buildings in Mumbai and Delhi.
But You Promised To Keep... (2013) by Ghiora AharoniDr. Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum
Faintly Like A Memory (2013) by Ghiora AharoniDr. Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum
A Landscape Of Impossibility (2013) by Ghiora AharoniDr. Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum
I Am My Beloved And my Beloved Is Mine (2013) by Ghiora AharoniDr. Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum
Aharoni created collages of ideas and memories by overlaying reproduced letters with vintage photographs and his own, forming layers of meaning.
When Ink Is Stubborn (2013) by Ghiora AharoniDr. Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum
The drawings, decontextualized from their original setting, evoke a visual vernacular that is both personal and communal.
Installation View (2013) by Ghiora AharoniDr. Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum
During his travels in India, Aharoni came across the traditional textiles of Punjab - phulkaris, These are shawls which are given to a bride at the time of her marriage.
Is This The Sky I See? (2013) by Ghiora AharoniDr. Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum
He worked closely with Indian embroiders to render his drawings and quotes from his mother's letters on to the Phulkaris. These signify many emotions: anticipation, love, memory, home, spirituality and time – which eluded his mother and the object of her desire.
For You, I Declare (2013) by Ghiora AharoniDr. Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum
To Samuel (2013) by Ghiora AharoniDr. Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum
Like the warp and weft of the beautiful phulkaris, Ahorni’s vision, time and memory weave through the exhibition, presenting a haunting narrative of many different loves.
Assembly Required (2013) by Ghiora AharoniDr. Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum
The works are integrated with drawings of symbols, identifiable architectural details, such as the Knesset Eliyahoo synagogue in Mumbai, and images of daily life observed by Aharoni during his travels.
The Infinite Thing We May Become (2013) by Ghiora AharoniDr. Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum
With You, I Make My Home (2013) by Ghiora AharoniDr. Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum
To Jerusalem and From Jerusalem (2013) by Ghiora AharoniDr. Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum
From Jerusalem (Detail) (2013) by Ghiora AharoniDr. Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum
"When Aharoni montaged the crumpled fragments of his mother’s letters as well as his own drawings of symbols, architectural forms and objects of daily life on these phulkaris, as well as on the fragile Japanese paper, in the process he not only subdued sentimentality but interwove the thread of one woman’s world with that of another and thereby caused a shift from the personal to the conceptual."
- Jyotindra Jain, Indian art and cultural historian.
From Jerusalem (Detail) (2013) by Ghiora AharoniDr. Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum
Individually, these dialogues represent fragments of buried, yet unsentimental memories, as well as an expression of the artist’s passion for India and its culture. Collectively, they embody the experiences – from the quotidian to the sublime – that occur at the intersection of travel and memory.
Aharoni's (born in Rehovot, Israel, in 1969) works are in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Morgan Library & Museum, New York; The Vatican Library; Centre Pompidou in Paris; Washington D.C.’s National Gallery of Art; and the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi. His work has been exhibited at the Rubin Museum, New York, the Jewish Museum Vienna and the Museum of Contemporary Art, London.
All artworks courtesy: Ghiora Aharoni, from the exhibition, 'Missives' at the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai (September 8, 2013 – November 30, 2013)
