Rohini Devasher’s Speculations From The Field

Text by Huzan Tata. Images courtesy of the artist and Bhau Daji Lad Museum.

Explore the worlds of art, science and fiction through the artist’s work and research in astronomy…

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Can you imagine a sky without stars? In Delhi-based Rohini Devasher’s latest show, she explores terrestrial sites, space, and time – the locus of human imagination and its extraordinary ambition. The artist, who has a love for astronomy, worked closely with the Bhau Daji Lad Museum in her research of maps forts, observatories and skies for her artworks. Trained as a printmaker and painter, Devasher’s interest in the stars and everything above and beneath them – brought out through her creations in various media – fascinates with every viewing.

5 Questions with the artist, Rohini Devasher

1. Artistic Motivations “I am interested in what a ‘site’ or ‘field’ instigates. I have found myself drawn to sites which have a certain uncanny and remote quality – sites of astronomical or other technological strangeness, for instance the Second World War Maunsell Seaforts off the coast of the UK.”

2. Inspirations “Anything that has a curiosity, depth, an openness and an intelligence. Books, people, images, texts, art, interviews, articles, movies, documentaries, music…the list goes on.”

3. On the wall at home “I studied printmaking for my MA, and have continued to make new editions on and off after that. One of the wonderful things about the process is you swap prints with people whom you have worked with or just people whose work you love.”

4. Concerns that find a place in your art “A loss of wonder…I have a five year old and I am terrified at the thought of what it will mean for a generation to grow up without the stars. I am interested in encounters between the human and non-human, ‘natural’ and ‘technological’ where intersecting patterns between the two are made visible. How has our experience of wonder changed?”

5. If not an artist, you would be… “Maybe something in the field of palaeontology because it brings together history, biology, geology, ecology, anthropology, archaeology, and even speculation to a point – all the things that fascinate me.”

Speculations From The Field is on display at Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai (Veer Mata Jijabai Bhonsle Udyan 91/A Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Road, Byculla East) until October 4, 2016