Chamber of secrets

Munshi is showing a selection of 14 odd photographs along with an installation of painting called the Chamber at the Tao Art Gallery this March. The exhibition,titled Shrapnel,is curated by art critic Ranjit Hoskote and presented by B&G art foundation. The show is a reflection of the Pandit diaspora “a neglected strand of the tapestry of Kashmir’s tragedy,” according to Hoskote.

Interestingly,the photographs began as studies for paintings that the artist intended to create. However Hoskote advised Munshi to develop them as works of art in their own right. “Initially I was shooting with a smaller camera but not able to capture the magnitude of the loss or the decaying beauty of these buildings that are over a 100 years old,” says Munshi,primarily a painter,who studied art at the Faculty of Fine Arts,MSU,Baroda. His painterly prowess is brought out in a simulation of a room created out of paintings.

“This is the street where I used to live,” says Munshi pointing to a photograph of a winding street,slick with snow and sleet. The derelict buildings and crisscrossed telephone wires and people walking through the streets clad in shawls give the image a kind of slow-motion feel.

“I once celebrated festivals in the common courtyard with different communities who lived in harmony in these great buildings,” says the 54-year-old artist who left Kashmir to study in Baroda. Currently based in Delhi,the painter has been practicing for 17 years and has had over 20 shows. “This is the first exhibition where I talk directly of the Pandit exodus,” adds Munshi.

The Chamber is an installation conceived by Hoskote. “Earlier I was going to display the paintings in a linear fashion,however their impact is felt more when assembled as a room that encloses the viewer in its claustrophobia of violence,” says Munshi.

The works are an amalgam of abstract automobile parts and exploded shrapnel juxtaposed with portraits. Afghani boys,Black Cat Commandoes and screaming victims of violence in Kashmir look out. The works painted in burnt umber and raw sienna reflects the charred remains left behind after bomb explosions. “I am a pacifist,” he says,“But it is important to remind people of the times we live in.”