Imagination, media, inspiration: artistic highlights and insights from the Tao Art Gallery
In our photo essay from Mumbai’s outstanding Tao Art Gallery, we feature a range of artworks and curator insights on creativity.
Launched in 2014, PhotoSparks is a weekly feature from YourStory, with photographs that celebrate the spirit of creativity and innovation. In the earlier 760 posts, we featured an art festival, a cartoon gallery. a world music festival, a telecom expo, a millets fair, a climate change expo, a wildlife conference, a startup festival, Diwali rangoli, and a jazz festival.
A must-visit creative space for art lovers and buyers is the Tao Art Gallery in Worli, Mumbai (see our earlier exhibition coverage here). For over two decades, through the ups and downs of the 2008-2007 financial crisis and 2020-2021 COVID-19 pandemic, the gallery has stood the test of time.
The gallery team is headed by Kalpana Shah, an acclaimed artist herself, along with Sanjana Shah (Creative Director) and Urvi Kothari (Gallery Manager). The exhibitor lineup, some of whose works are featured in this photo essay, includes Sanjay Kumar, Vipul Prajapati, Smita Mandlik, SH Raza, Kisalay Vora, and Bhartti Verma.
“Our dreams are doorways into the worlds we know of somewhere, subconsciously, but don’t enter easily. It is through art that these become more accessible, more amenable,” describes Sanjana Shah.
The works of experimental multi-media artist Seema Kohli were recently showcased as well, under the exhibition titled When the Moon is Nine Months Full. It was curated by Shaunak Mahbubani, who is based in Mumbai and Berlin.
Kohli’s solo show was part of the Mumbai Gallery Weekend 2024. It included paintings and sculptures celebrating the subliminal rhythms of our planet. Images of mountains, stars, and trees reflect the interdependence of nature.
“Kohli’s works offer precious unions of Saivite and Sufi, corporeal and cosmic, multiple and whole, sea and seed; talismans towards healing in these fractured times,” writes curator Mahbubani.
The artworks focus on themes such as the labour of birthing, care, repair, and resistance undertaken by women for centuries. Connections are made between feminine and forest, and the preciousness of nature is contrasted with the pressures of economic growth.
Her large-scale murals also adorn the walls of airports (Delhi, Mumbai) and government buildings (Supreme Court, New Delhi). Exhibitions and fairs which have showcased her work include Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India Art Fair, Venice Biennale, and Art Basel.
“I extensively explore the female form as an embodiment of the cosmic feminine energy of Shakti,” Kohli affirms.
The basement of the gallery also hosts the aptly named Dreaming Studio, which features diverse artworks by Kalpana Shah. They include a range of convex and concave plates with acrylic art combined with beads and pearls.
“Art is human creative expression. Colours are emotions, strokes are the conversion of power or energy into form, layers are experiences, and the weaving of structure is the end result of the whole movement,” Shah describes.
“My poetic inner world inspired me to dream of a beautiful, soft, blending, loving and caring world reaching out to space,” she adds.
“The combination and balance of my heart and mind has brought the final expression in beads which are layered on canvas or plates, and has made me wonder at my own creations,” Shah signs off.
Now what have you done today to pause in your busy schedule and harness your creative side for a better world?
(All photographs were taken by Madanmohan Rao on location at the exhibition.)
Edited by Swetha Kannan