Rose Viggiano like many other printmakers such as Zarina Hashmi, Krishna Reddy and Marino Marino works within the realm of abstracting sculpture or using printmaking as an extension of their sculptural practice. Viggiano extends prints into sculptures where she builds a three-dimensional quality in their presentation. This act is very unique and she does so without destroying their integrity as prints. They provide the lightness of paper planes or of gliders, allowing the same emotional response that Alighiero Boetti’ s Aerei (Airplanes) 1983 at the MOMA, New York, gives when viewed by someone in the audience. They become ‘ A piece of the moon ‘, ‘Bees, Wing, Owls , Clouds and Walking Sticks’; the titles of her prints. She is a bee-keeper in Upstate New York where she finds them as friends for an alternative therapeutic health practice. She has been for long observing flight and the humour that is inherent with freedom.

She talks about her work, ”My sculptures represent my magical thinking about possible places and life forms residing in other dimensions. These creatures and places are afloat and moving through space with some unknown direction and purpose. They reside on the other side of a thin veil, and on rare occasions one may be lucky enough to glimpse them and their environments. My bronzes have landed on earth from an industrial world not so unlike ours. A little menacing, dark and mechanical. Why did they come here? This remains a mystery.”

Lalitha Lajmi moved away from her earlier series during months in lockdown that saw her scribbling on an unending japanese rice paper scroll. Brought to her many decades ago by a relative who was a flight captain. She could only draw from memory. Unlike other printmakers her work has always had a strong narrative on personal autobiography, but ‘Memory Roll II ‘is a departure from her earlier work ‘Memory Roll I ‘where birds, a foetus and a brain in a line form a spinal cord of memories that beckon happiness.

”The thought was that I would start with the beginning of life because creativity begins in the womb. When I worked with watercolours, I did a series on the psyche of the child,” she says. “These scrolls were not for an exhibition. This was for myself. During the lockdown, I wondered initially what I would do because I’d already done etchings, watercolours and oils. So I thought I would try to draw in pencil. I used to work in oil earlier but you need daylight for oils and I had no time during the day earlier. I’ve got daylight now but I’m already done with those mediums.” – Lalitha Lajmi to Ritika Kocchar for the Hindu in an article on her practice – Artist for all seasons: Lalitha Lajmi, January 9th, 2021 , The Hindu

Bronze’s in a group – start moving, gun it up, all hands to work
Bronze – 5 x 5 inches each

Lalitha Lajmi and Rose Viggiano have never met, never collaborated but they provide in this dual presentation a certain needed critique of life in cities such as New York and Bombay, on our methods of healing and how memory serves our life? But also, where anatomy moves within the history of depiction. Since Leonardo Da Vinci’s ‘ the Vitruvian Man’ perfection of the body is left to the beauty of one’s presence and not defined by the physicality of the human form. Stuck in our homes fearing death our presence has only been defined in our imaginations thus allowing us the freedoms to fly away.

A Torso is printed.

Lalitha Lajmi born in 1932, Kolkata is a painter and printmaker based in Bombay who uses traces of auto-biography, imaginative tales and psychoanalysis to paint and publish art works that sit on many panes of genre, technique and concept. Recent solo exhibitions include ‘Memory Roll’2021 Gallery Art & Soul, Mumbai, ‘The Minds Cupboards’ 2013 at India Art Festival and Clark House Initiative; ‘The Masque of Life ‘2014 Jehangir Art Gallery and ‘Performers’ 2015, Gallery Art & Soul, Mumbai.

Lalitha Lajmi speaks to Ritika Kochhar of The Hindu (January 9, 2021) about her new series the Memory Roll I & II and artistic life and the reflections of the self:
https://www.thehindu.com/society/artist-for-all-seasons-lalitha-lajmi/article33527166.ece

Rose Viggiano, born in 1947, enjoys exploring many different materials and processes – from working with paper to bronze casting. Her prints display a distinct sculptural quality and her works discuss nature in curiosity of their form but also are informed by her proximity to nature in her personal space. She has exhibited at group and one person shows in the US and abroad which include the Whitney Museum Downtown, Manhattan; Hudson River Museum, Yonkers and the International Arts Festival at Asilah, Morocco. With solo showings at the SoHo20, New York City and Museo de Guanajuato, Mexico. She has a Doctorate in Art Education from the Columbia University, MA in Printmaking from SUNY Albany, a BFA in Sculpture from Philadelphia College and her undergraduate studies were at the India University, Bloomington where she specialized in Sculpture.

Art & Soul premieres humorous monologues on surviving the pandemic by Rose Viggiano:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0ZFBkbzzyU

Ananta Singh, 1997, Patna, is a curator based in Bombay and is interested in patterns thrown by the interplay of lights and shadows, that arose from her interest in photography and videography with which she continues to experiment across the visual arts. Looking for such parallels due to interplay of colours in other art forms she has learnt to realise a vocabulary of art peculiar to her person. She has been associated with Art & Soul as a curator where she recently curated the solo of Ghanshyam Gupta, Colour Sculpting, Retrospective in Colour Chaos, 2020. She has a graduate degree in Political Science and Economics from Stony Brook University, New York.