Searching for the Present, Where? Being-becoming in Akbar Padamsee's Figurations (1995-2006)

This research essay was published in the monograph dedicated to the first major exhibition dedicated to photography and drawings by theAkbar Padamsee in India after his demise early 2022 at the age of 91. “Searching for the present, where?...” is drawn from The Guild and some important private collections. The exhibition is a tribute to Padamsee’s commendable contribution to the Indian art. This is also the first time the photographs and drawings spanning from over a decade are contextualised in an exhibition form. Padamsee’s previous exhibition of photographs at The Guild was in 2006, titled, Akbar Padamsee, Photographs 2004-2006. This exhibition celebrates Padamsee’s cognitive pondering of body as form. Curator Srajana Kaikini delicately brings in art historical and philosophical discourses around human form and representation while delving into varied dimensions of artist’s practice. “These series of drawings and photographs speak about the body as a place of being and becoming. These are figurations, subjects set in motion. In this world view of the self, perhaps social signifiers like clothes, location, context and thinking of the body singularly may be perceived superfluous. Embodiment of the self, here, is presupposed. The interest is, therefore, to look for when and where these embodiments become present to us. While some drawings bring to us glimpses from other selves - lives enmeshed in sanchaari bhaavas (fleeting emotions), the photographic images speak in their own language trying to grow from the moment captured into new kinds of beings, creating their own sthaayi bhaavas (foundational emotions). They are not so much abstract as they are intentional – they need us to speak to them, for them to speak to us.” Excerpt from the Curatorial note by Srajana Kaikini