Objects in this picture are louder than they appear

I meet Bhasha Chakrabarti a few days before her solo exhibition, Karvat, opens at Experimenter Colaba in Mumbai. Wearing a neon-green handwoven cotton sari with white boots and pigtail braids, she’s busy adding the finishing touches to one of her paintings. A body memoirist and an orchestrator of emotions through her art, she immediately tells me that her latest exhibit is inspired by Ismat Chughtai’s seminal short story, Lihaaf. Published in 1942, the story is an exploration of queer female desire and pleasure, told through the metaphor of a quilt.

Chakrabarti leads me into a gallery room, whose walls and floor have been painted a deep shade of red—an interpretation of Begum Jaan’s zenana in Lihaaf. “This is the heart of the exhibition,” she says as my eyes scan the room, where 10 standalone antique furniture pieces—including a lamp, a side table, and a wall-mounted grandfather clock—appear unassuming and quiet, as though safeguarding a collective secret. However, when Chakrabarti leans towards a chest of drawers and slides open a compartment, a raga elegantly spills into the room.

Through the performance of opening a vanity door, tugging a lamp’s chain-switch or unfolding a chair, the pieces transform into music boxes. Through the series, there is a suggestive play of conceal and reveal. The viewer assumes the trifold role of the voyeur, lover, and performer—where the musical sculptures, when opened individually, in pairs, or as a group, invite the viewer to step into the role of an orchestra conductor. “Art is something that everyone can look at, engage with, and have a legitimate opinion about. To me, the best work is the kind that allows people to explore it from multiple entry points and have a conversation about it together,” she says.

Called the ‘Ajaibghar’ series, it cleverly gestures towards the anatomy of ragamala paintings. While the furniture’s façade is painted red with golden borders, its interiors vividly depict the shifting moods, seasons, and colours of the sky (from cyan to indigo). The paintings also feature nayikas (the women protagonists), who embody different emotional states. Whether it’s ‘Ajaibghar (Devagandhar)’, which reveals the pensive chin of a woman resting on her knee, waiting for her lover; or ‘Ajaibghar (Kakubha)’, depicting a woman’s slender wrist clutching a garland of flowers—Chakrabarti’s paintings exude sensuousness with fleeting glimpses of the forlorn nayika. “The outside of the furniture serves as a border, while the inside is the painting,” she explains. On another level, “these objects explore the dailiness of the domestic.”

Chakrabarti’s long-time friend, Hania Luthufi, a Hindustani classical musician, sang and composed the sonic landscape for each piece and served as the model for the nayika's gestures, Chakrabarti says, when she sees me curiously eyeing a tattoo gracing a nayika’s ankle in ‘Ajaibghar (Meghamalhar)’. “If there are two bodies together, it’s her and me. If it’s one, then it’s just her.” This is something central to Chakrabarti’s work, where her friends, family, and herself, predominantly feature as her subjects.

Born in Hawaii to philosopher parents, the 33-year-old artist has lived in multiple geographical milieus, including New York and New Haven. Although she appreciated the arts growing up, she often viewed it as something distant and “museum-ised.” However, her career took a pivotal turn when she attended exhibitions featuring thought-provoking works by artists like Carrie Mae Weems and Kara Walker, whose work addresses racism, sexism, family dynamics, and power play. “Their art resonated with me, and I realised that this is the kind of work I wanted to create,” she recalls. Two months later, in 2014, she quit her job and took off to Kala Bhavana in Santiniketan to become an artist. It was a bold decision, reflective of the intuition with which Chakrabarti operates.

Her work emerges from deep contemplation. A quilt-maker and painter, in her decade-long practice, she has been drawn to the tactile nature of textiles, and how it simultaneously conceals and reveals. The textiles she uses in her work are pre-owned clothes that belong to old lovers, friends, and family. “I’m a hoarder!” Chakrabarti laughs. “I’m really sentimental about things; I take clothes from lovers all the time and use them in my work. I think a lot about representing bodies through material. Clothes are like talismans, and I try to include a physical piece of clothing of the person I’m painting—I like that residue of the body.”

Chakrabarti’s work is rooted in themes of gender, identity, power, inequality, and othering in various spheres. “In fact, I have often thought about the ways in which classical disciplines have traditionally excluded certain groups of people, especially people like me, based on religion, queerness, or caste,” she says. Her mission is to engage her viewers more directly and with more intention. While her work is thought provoking, sensual, and intense enough to hold your attention, I can attest that you won’t stop playing with the singing sculptures once you start!

Karvat is on view from October 26 to December 20 at Experimenter Colaba, Mumbai.