Ajaibghar
Ajaibghar (House of Wonder) is an installation based on a series of 10 Deccani ragamala paintings at the Indian Museum in Kolkata. Made in collaboration with musician Hania Luthufi, the primary element of this installation is a series of 10 pieces of second-hand household furniture (one corresponding to each raga referenced in the set of paintings), which have been transformed into painted music boxes. Appearing rather ordinary on the outside, when one opens a drawer, lifts the lid of a chest, or opens a cabinet door, a painting is revealed and a sound piece begins to play; shut the drawer, lid, or door, and the sound stops and the painting is obscured. In this way these pieces hope to reactivate the aural and visual entanglements which the ragamala painting tradition perhaps aspired to embody while simultaneously attempting to concretely connect Hindustani “ragas” to their etymological root of “coloring” or “dyeing”. The gesture of opening and closing in order to see and hear, mirrors the intended intimacy in the viewing experience of a miniature ragamala painting as well as a literal manifestation of the interiority which is targeted by a Hindustani classical musician. Having ordinary home furniture be the containers for these works, calls to mind the ways in which the “classical” is inevitably drawn from and dependent on the daily and the ways in which the daily and domestic are essential sites of the ultimate classical aspirations of wonder and transcendence.
Ajaibghar (Gaurmalhar) // 2024
Found furniture, oil paint, single channel sound
19.75 x 13.625 x 7.875 inches
Ajaibghar (Kakubha) // 2024
Found furniture, oil paint, single channel sound
23.625 x 16.875 x 15.375 inches
Ajaibghar (Todi) // 2024
Found furniture, oil paint, brass, candles, vintage tea towel, single channel sound
30 x 28 x 8 inches
Ajaibghar (Meghamalhar) // 2024
Found furniture, oil paint, single channel sound
33.875 x 25.25 x 15.375 inches
Ajaibghar (Sarang) // 2024
Found furniture, oil paint, single channel sound
37.75 x 23.25 x 9.875 inches
Ajaibghar (Deepak) // 2024
Found furniture, oil paint, stereo sound, LED bulb
Lamp base and shade: 23.625 x 16.125 x 16.125 inches
Stool: 30.75 x 15.375 x 15.375 inches
“Chakrabarti lets the interior spaces, particularly the zenana of the Nawab’s house (Begum Jaan’s domain) spill into the exhibition space. Reimagined as a red room á la Matisse, she loads this milieu with a diversity of references. The Venetian Red, for example, comes from hematite and was used across history from the primal 17,000-year-old cave paintings of Lascaux to the murals of Pompeii. Chakrabarti has been scouring mining waste to mill and extract her own pigments to paint bodies with literal landscape dust. It wouldn’t be a stretch to connect these impulses to the animalesque in Lascaux or scenes of unbounded pleasure in Pompeii or more directly to the Deccani Ragamala paintings in the Indian Museum in Calcutta that she reinterprets in her Ajaibghar series. Furniture is foraged and painted red with golden borders, and imbued with music. Claiming both intimacy and touch, the raga spills out only when you open a drawer or pull a door.
The lonely Begum Jaan is no different from the nayikas. In Todi Ragini, the heroine evokes both tenderness and sadness separated from her lover. Lost in a forest, her tunes attract a black buck even as the trees suggestively sway as music. In her interpretation in Ajaibghar (Todi), the time of the day remains suspended in a study of a blue sky with clouds, while two buck candle-stands are perched atop the drawer. In Ajaibghar (Hindol) the two arms of the nayika hold the ropes of a swing across an arrangement of two chairs, suggesting a solo flight. The swinging, is a rhythm unto itself. All these boxes open out to the sky at a time corresponding to the ragas, to suggest freedom with its possibilities. All these images also show the protagonist holding onto herself, another body, or an object — a fleshy grip that extends into a wanton desire.”
-- excerpt from کروٹ | करवट | Karvat (2024) exhibition text by Mario D’Souza
Ajaibghar (Hindol) // 2024
Found furniture, oil paint, single channel sound
37.5 x 21 x 32.5 inches
Ajaibghar (Asavari) // 2024
Found furniture, oil paint, single channel sound
30.75 x 13.375 x 6.75 inches
Ajaibghar (Devagandhar) // 2024
Found furniture, oil paint, single channel sound
30.25 x 20.875 x 12.625 inches
