Seema’s ode to the forms of energy – each distinctive and with its own unique properties – stems from her own belief in the self. Within each individual reside several energies that shape a personality, and the struggle for recognition of one single consciousness.

Immersing herself through the readings of The Bhagwatgeeta, Shakti, Sufi contexts and various other philosophies – The Other Self is the coming together of different stories emerging from different characters and their relationships in harmony with humanity.

Seema Kohli’s works reveal a claiming of feminine subjectivities, an altered concept of feminine sexuality. She ventures into her experiential interpretation of morals, faiths or religion through mediums of Paintings, Sculptures, Performance Video and drawing live at the Exhibition space.

“If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation” – J Krishnamurti

There is an indolent tendency to view Seema Kohli’s aesthetic as decorative more than subliminal. But to do that would be erroneous. For Seema’s thinking is more deeply rooted in current concerns than one might expect, central to which is her quest – personal as well as universal – for freedom. It rises from her belief that the mind, like all things that nature has created, is free. Nor is she unique in this belief, echoes of which have existed among iconoclasts for millennia. Laws that govern our universe might shackle the human body, but the mind remains inviolate, capable of its own revolutions, its own retreats.

It is of such profound belief that Seema’s clairvoyance is possessed. Faced with the spectra of annihilation, her art is a reminder that it is not too late to steer the wheel of time towards a world cast in grace and beauty. If humankind does not heed the surging tide of animosity and destruction, then all we might be left with are regret and nostalgia. Hopefully, that turn will not come, and Seema’s reflecting glass will continue to show us not a world lost but a world rendered perfect by our other self.

Seema Kohli’s choice of the Bhagwad Gita as a subject is entirely natural, given her inclination towards spirituality, Sufism and universal harmony. The Gita, of course, does not rule out conflict, but it does so for its eventual realization of a destiny foretold. Its nuanced telling is based on the restoration of order and congruence.

As these paintings exemplify, Seema’s quest to unify the celestial and the terrestrial coalesce in the figure of a woman, while Vishnu roils the skies in his chariot of serpents. This depiction of righteousness is essentially a manifestation of one’s self with the other self, a discourse on that which is wrong and right, unjust and just, and the consequence of exemplary morality for which some sleight might, in fact, be justified. It is this dialogue with morality that forms the bedrock of the epic and the subject of not just this but the majority of Seema’s work.