The Namaste France Festival with its ongoing exhibition 'Life will never be the same' connects with the audiences here by accentuating a lamenting tone to nature.Indian artist Jayashree Chakravarty's soaring works with long suspended scrolls that have nature both as the subject and as the material, have been displayed at the exhibition which will be on till February 15 at Musée Des Arts Asiatiques in Nice, France."There is an urgent need to remain connected to nature, which is the basic necessity and is being overlooked," Jayashree Chakravarty told IANS on Wednesday. "I believe audiences in any part of the world will be able to connect with my reading of present urban shelter for nature, and how ecology needs a balance between nature and culture, human and the rest of the species on this earth."The artist's preoccupation with the shrinking natural habitats has been central to her work for some time. And she explained why."As I witnessed growing of a new township in Kolkata, I have been documenting what I have experienced since 1981 to 2016 and also through my mind's eye what I imagine. I have tried to put all my reading through lines and marks into my work," she said.
"Change of natural land and shrinkage of water body creates a sense of loss that we are losing out on the natural quality of the land," she added.The exhibition encapsulates many overlapping emotions and personal experiences of the artist. Schematic forms of tiny houses are drawn all over, while the outsized pair of fish clings to each other. Humans enter the frame at times, poised in meditation and withdrawal, searching within for inner calm and a pure space.Whirling concentric rings in dense black and white smoky lines amplify spatial and temporal turbulence, with man-made structures tossed carelessly by this onslaught.While the easel paintings could not contain the artist's exploding universe, she had to find newer ways to hold the profuse outpouring of her imagery. She took to preparing paper scrolls, and from there, moved on to creating physical structures in paper."Suffocating visuals surrounded by growing concrete jungle, the heaviness in the air, increasing heat, throwing away weeds or unnecessary plants from the gardens made me rethink about the material I use in my work," Chakravarty said. "I started picking up smashed weeds, roots, dry leaves or young plants for my work, and embedded them within the paper scrolls to give these natural aspects a life after death," she added.