Manisha Parekh-Forms of Script style of her own
What if a child’ day raises and night falls surrounded by colors and heaps of canvases? Is one going to imagine beyond the colors in the days to come? That is Manisha Parekh, who has seen art since childhood because of her artist parents. Colors and brushes were her surroundings like playmates and toys of a child. Her imagination transcended the colors and beyond in the days to come.
One of the important languages of art is in the style of minimal expression. Manisha explored maximum possibilities in that style. She enjoys using different materials and knitting the designs, arranging the materials of installations. Of course she uses colors but colors are less dominant in her compositions, and creates an art expression of her own style. She designs the forms in a harmonious and rhythmic way. Life and nature has it’s own robust and delicate tunes twined with each other. For example a creeper, saplings and leaves or flowers create their own harmony with each other. That harmony is infectious to rope us too in.
The materials she uses are the organic materials like paper, wood, ropes, textiles, jute, clay and those are traditionally used in the folk arts. She finds new meanings in rare combinations of materials that were not found earlier. For example paper on wall or on floor, will differ the platter of meanings as per it’s base and combination. Similarly form of a circle if it is combined with a half circle, can lead to one another different form of delicate meanings. If a rope is arranged as a loop on a linear thread, does not it look like a 3 dimensional form of a script? Some of her works look like embroidered threads or sprouted roots narrating the future tree or shrub and their upcoming stories. Titles of her exhibitions too lead the similar meanings, “Shadow Gardens” is the title of her London show, “Wooden Woods” of exhibition at Bodhi Art, “Memory membrane” at Sakshi gallery. She exhibited internationally at Germany, Havana, Istambul, etc, also at Indian galleries. Another point to acknowledge her contribution to the field of art is she is the founder member of “Khoj” a platform for artists who believe in experimentation.
She completed her formal education of art under graduate and Post graduation studies at Faculty of Fine Arts Baroda. She did M.A at Royal college of London on Inlaks Foundation scholarship. Baroda Fine Arts Faculty has a curriculum. Students have to complete around 100 or 200 sketches and submit to their tutor every day. That fine tunes the hands of drawing of students. It seems she never liked that practice. Manisha does not begin her work on the basis of sketches or preplanned drawings. She picks the choicest materials, club with or arranges along with another material or color over it as per the direction of her thought process and creates the art works. Manisha’ work is adorable not only because of her contemporary conceptual understanding, she based her work in those materials of folk art and designing the forms and figures of craft practices with new meanings.