Drawing Room: Why Prajakta Potnis’s art gives Palak Modi chills

Prajakta Potnis, like so many artists, makes use of the home house as the focus of her pictures, portray, sculpture and installations. Abnormal objects reminiscent of kitchen home equipment turn into vessels to depict financial, emotional and gendered violence. Potnis’s intelligent works spotlight how innocuous objects are formed by the rhythms of labour, caregiving and societal expectation. In Capsule 202 (2016), Prajakta Potnis captures the within of a fridge, alien and remoted. Specializing in surfaces that crack, stain or present indicators of pressure, she makes seen the strain that builds up in houses over years. She doesn’t dramatise these concepts. She simply permits the tiny shifts in temperature, texture and materials to talk for themselves. Prajakta Potnis’s Capsule collection highlights how innocuous objects are formed by the rhythms of labour. A very good instance of that is Capsule 202 (2016), from her long-running picture collection. The scene, a close-up of the within of a freezer, appears virtually otherworldly. Metallic ridges on the roof look down upon waves of ice, caught mid-movement. Ridged gates and hole grooves add texture, contributing to the sensation of being boxed into an enclosed medical chamber. The picture might seem calm and even scientific. However the longer you view it, the extra alien it appears. This isn’t a freezer, anymore. Its pristine, white, icy floor exhibits delicate indicators of disturbance, by scratches and discolouration. Mumbai-based Potnis graduated from the JJ Faculty of Artwork and has clearly thought lengthy and arduous concerning the position a kitchen performs in simplifying and glorifying the lifetime of a homemaker. She’s thought-about how on a regular basis meals has helped outline colonial prowess. I first noticed her work whereas researching feminine Indian artists whose work entails the intimate and the political. Her collection of symbols piques my curiosity as a result of home objects are virtually invisible to us as soon as we’re accustomed to their presence. By paying heed to them as websites of feminist critique, Potnis turns mundane objects into metaphors that talk volumes about gendered, capitalist expectations and the frailty of the human physique. Her works depict mundane objects as websites of structural, systemic violence. The place most artists use the human physique explicitly to make a press release on gender politics, Potnis takes a detour and permits objects to face in for our bodies. It is a quieter however extra insidious critique. By depicting mundane objects as websites of structural, systemic violence, she challenges the thought of the protected home atmosphere itself. With my background in psychology, I’m notably focused on how environments situation us. This attracts me to Potnis’ apply. Each of us deal with sluggish, typically imperceptible processes that form human behaviour in our work. Whereas she makes use of home areas and objects, I study the nuanced methods during which the digital atmosphere influences our sense of self, reminiscence and a focus. So whereas our contexts differ, we share an curiosity in depicting the long run results of hidden programs, whether or not home or digital, and the way they affect us over time. New Delhi-based artist Palak Modi explores the interaction of dying, decay and regeneration in her apply, to showcase the fragility and resilience of the human situation. From HT Brunch, November 29, 2025 Comply with us on www.instagram.com/htbrunch