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Rashmi Mala???s work explores ??? Everyday??? as a mode of enquiry into the domestic sphere. Engages questions like How to address and articulate danger and violence within familiar spheres? Or destabilises fixed notions of home and other intimate dwellings as a place of safety. Randomly looking at the household objects which can also carry the potential to generate or inflict danger, she seeks to enquire about the traces of intimacy and violence attached with them.

The intimate enemy here particularly looks at violence, both physical as well as emotional . uncanny realities are always around like the silent presence of something like a handkerchief. Primarily choosing watercolour as a medium she also delves with other materials like embossing on paper, embroidery on textile, wood etc. .

Rashmimala, born in Guwahati, Assam did her education in art from the MS University of Vadodara. Which includes Graduation and Post Graduation in Painting and in Art Criticism. Acquiring a National Scholarship for the young artists of India from the ministry of Human Resource during education. She is also involved in various research projects participated in several art camps and conducted many workshops.

Her of recent group shows include at Kochi-Muziris Biennale Collateral Group Show, 2013, Group Show, Coomaraswamy Hall, Mumbai, 2012, ???Subject-Object??? at Gallery Ragini, New Delhi, 2011, ???Three persons Show??? at Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai, 2011, ???Black and White in the Horizone???, at Faculty of fine arts gallery, Baroda and Gallery Beyond, Mumbai, 2011, Group show at The Strand Art Room, Mumbai, 2010, ???Multitudes??? at Durbar Hall, Kochi and Maxmuller Bhavan, Bangaluru, 2009 etc.

About Inscriptions on the surface of the transitory

This collection brings together the works of three artists dealing with the intimate, the personal, and the immediate- in a language that is subtle, noiseless and nuanced. It seemed an interesting proposition to put them together, to find common threads in the differences and differences in the commonalities. They work primarily with line and texture, except for Rashmi, but her language is more graphic than painterly. It is not 'drawings' in the conventional sense of the term that brought these artists together in this colelction; on the other hand, their works fit almost perfectly to what Meredith Malone once wrote about drawings of some minimalist, post-minimalist, and conceptual artist:

" (the works) readily embraced drawing's salient attributes-its mobility and elasticity, its economy and antimonumental character, its exploratory nature, and its facility for acting as a mediator, translating abstract concepts into form--to produce works that are notational, diagrammatic, and reductive. Often small in scale, delicate, playful, and highly nuanced, these drawings suggest a level of intimacy and direct encounter with the artists' thoughts and intentions that is less readily apparent in other mediums. Drawing is approached here as a powerful if under recognized lens through which to explore the productive tensions between rational calculation and subjective expression, concept and material form, and precision and disorder that animate much of the work on view in this collection." (Meredith Malone, The Porous Practice of Drawing: System, Serially, and the Handmade Mark in Minimal and Conceptual art).

Rashmi’ s interest lies in interpreting her observations of the immediate and 'seemingly' ordinary. She picks up common place objects from domestic life and converts them in to protagonists, by removing all the peripheral props, thus burdening her objects with the job of narrating stories of life without any supporting cast & crew. The domestic interior world of Rashmi's work allows nature to come in only in the form of food (consumerist callousness of human race ?). Nehal and Sarita build up their images through mark making. Nehal's mark making seems to be a process of allowing the lines to flow freely, and then gently - without much nudging and coaxing - guiding them in to a coherent entity. Her work looks like a reductive, almost abstract representation of vast landscapes and her fluid non-representative lines sometimes transform into small but recognizable motifs- such as leaves, flowers, etc. Leaves and seeds seem to be regular imageries in Sarita's work, suggesting decay (fallen leaves) and new beginnings (seeds) - the natural cycle. Sarita's mark making process seems to be the opposite of Nehal's - starting with preconceived marks and then allowing them to find their own way towards conclusion and totality. The works of both Nehal and Sarita are results of dialogues between the spontaneous and the guided, and how they negotiate with each other' under the observing eye of the artist.

In this collection, Nehal presents a selection from her recent body of works, done in lines – mostly fluid, but also lines like stitches, lines like doodling. In some works she uses color minimally, with a sense of absolute necessity. Few of her works are in color- color muted and atmospheric, although they are different from the works done in lines, they evoke a similar spatial character – landscapes without horizon, sometimes panoramic, sometimes topographic, inviting the viewer to walk in and explore the possibility of journeys without obstacles, and without pre- decided paths either. Rashmi presents a series of objects (and grains and ants) in close ups, mostly put together in repetitive sequences. Her repetition is neither playful nor mechanical but almost like chants – as if saying the same word again and again to make a point without elaborating much. In most of her works there is a conscious attempt to not fall for the lure of variations, and the works come alive precisely because of this apparent lack of variations.

Sarita’s work is microscopic - enlarging the minute to an extent that its identity blurs into abstract forms at a casual glance. A patient viewer will find a lot more to discover in this maze of criss-cross lines and grey & silver marks. One series, for example, has holes (made by burning) which are then inserted with silver foil from behind - very subtly, to the point of going unnoticed. Her work demands patience and attention, revealing itself through a process of absorbing rather than just 'seeing'.

The works of these three artists stand together with their..,
choice to weave micro-narratives rather than grand narratives,
pursuit of the minute rather than the monumental,
creating ripples rather than waves,
making notations rather than statements,
their modest desire to inscribe, not on the altar of time but on the surface of the transitory.

Nikhleswar Baruah