The Body As Metaphor



Hem Jyotika’s art revolves around the physical body presence of women and children. The delineation of women is not as mere academic nude study of a female body but is an embodiment of the female psyche refracted from the many angled prism of a civil society that is fractured. The artist’s protagonists are searching for personal, familial, and social space within the attitudes and mores of an antagonistic society. The women are surrounded by empty architectural or natural spaces and seem enveloped in eloquent silence. Space is a predominant extension of Hem Jyotika’s trope- the space a women is given in the social frame work. And the space she actually occupies is the painting’s frame-the very presence of her body is a space that becomes a metaphor for her troubled universe, a space that she occupies perforce unwillingly as a dictat of the social order- a space that she occasionally wishes to vacate. Yes, to the overt view in some paintings it seems the woman is trying to escape out of the physical coverings of her own body-escapings from her given space, her own skin into adventurous space of the unknown… and what is holding her back, and pinning her to her defined social position of society - the multitudinous hands of society! Hands are a recurring leitmotif of Hem Jyotika’s art – hands that are expressive of dilemmas and confusions, hands that sometimes cross spheres and sometimes bind the figures into expressive bundles of unspoken pain- and hands that reach out to touch new horizons. In the given universe no escape is possible; but escape can be consistently imagined and speculated upon. In her art Hem Jyotika speaks to the viewer through the forms of marginalized women and children, their faces shadowed by a patina of pain and misfortune. In her new works her figures seem to be animated and restless placed in an environment of shifting cacophonous forms and colours. In these acrylics and oils Hem Jyotika journeys from figurative to the abstract- merging nature, shadows, and light to build a web of abstractions around the female physiques. She uses cool blues and vibrant greens to suggest evershifting moods – and sometimes her palette bursts into inflamed vermilion-orange to suggest dissipating heated physiques - trapped and overheated vibrations of the inner universe. Hem’s figures don’t copycat the human form in the overtly correct physical perspective. The torsos and legs are elongated beyond natural renderings- giving a suggestion of effervescence- of being there and yet not there. By removing the solid natural proportions of the human figure, Hem lends to her females an elfish iridescent feel as if the ravages of this earth and ever- organic time can not touch them. Her figures have shed their physical realities becoming an idiom for the wandering desires of the female universe - continually struggling to break loose and continually struggling to be free. 



Bina Mishra , Artist