Speaking of her metier, artist and filmmaker Nekshan Dabu, originally from Baroda but now resident of Bombay says, "I don’t have a particular material or medium that I would want to stick to; instead the technique of art is to make the objects unfamiliar, to make forms difficult; to increase the difficulty and the length of perception... With every history of the material is also its history of the immaterial... Therefore as an artist the constant quest is to travel into the other dimensions and create my own with the works.”
The 31-year-old’s mixed media sculptures and installations were on display at the Chemould Prescott Road gallery for three weeks in July 2010. At "Reverie,” a group exhibition with four others, the artist showed five dramatic artworks, all of which were created in 2010. One of these was Untitled Video with sound, in four editions, bringing to the fore the filmmaker in her. The Red Requiem was a large installation of a bicycle wheel and acrylic mounted on canvas. Also using acrylic on canvas and bone, Dabu has created The Red Reveries of Resurrection, a sculpture depicting a bony reptilian skeleton. Five editions of an installation with digital print in frame were titled The Spectacular Afterlife of 401 Sardines, in which masses of fish eyes stare into eternity.
The Red Requiem (l) and The Spectacular Afterlife of Gulabi, mixed media works by Nekshan Dabu
Also dramatic was the mixed media piece titled The Spectacular Afterlife of Gulabi comprising a cow’s skull and part of her spine, with a magnifying glass and other objects strung from her horns. Percy Bamboat, the affable manager of the gallery provided Parsiana with a brief background to this piece. About a year ago Dabu and her husband were on a motorcycle trip through Kutch when they came upon an area where farmers of that region leave the carcasses of their dead cattle. The bleached bone of the cow’s skull intrigued the artist and she traced the farmer who had owned the animal. A great favorite of the farmer, the cow named Gulabi has now been immortalized by Dabu. The artist writes: "Gulabi’s magnification and reflection try to occupy an illusory space... the work questions and plays with such dualities as solidity-emptiness... reality-reflection... flesh-spirit... the here-the beyond... that create the conflict between the internal and external... conscious and unconscious.”
Nekshan Dabu: playing with dualities
Having obtained her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Maharaja Sayaji Rao University in Baroda, Dabu went to England for her Master’s degree. She also studied filmmaking at the New York Film Academy, according to her bio data. Since 1999 she has participated in a number of group shows in Baroda, Bombay, Berlin and England. Dabu has also curated an exhibition for fund raising for mentally handicapped children in Baroda. Among her other accomplishments is conducting and participation in workshops in a number of different art disciplines. Dabu has worked as curator of Baroda’s Art Core Gallery. Having written and directed two short films, The Veil and Camera Obscura, Dabu has functioned as production designer for some Hindi movies and non-fictional shows.