Puja Mondal’s works come out of an artistic sensibility that navigates through different media and method creating a language that has multiple trajectories. She incorporates accidental dents, marks and scratches creating a tactile character in the work resonating concerns and fear she confront as a young practitioner who had experienced the onslaught on the major educational institutions in the country in recent times.
Literature plays an important role in her work where writers like Italo Calvino have fascinated her through his writings at different points of time. Multiple Textual references from historic writings, novels, poems, speeches and other literary sources are often located in her work. It helps her in creating a layered pictorial surface that has multiple trajectories involved in it. It was her exploration with miniature painting and Jaipuri fresco technique that created this current body of work for the show Material Metaphor. The delicate and nuanced lines navigating through the textures and physical terrain of the material surface create an interesting play between the painted lines and the physical surface. The nuanced handling of the minaturish lines creating organic forms with scientific precision compels the viewer to look closely, imparting a sense of rustic but deeply existential like the Dohas of Kabir.
