A gulf of unknowingness separated them – across generations, continents, countries, and contexts. Avinash Chandra (1931-91) could not be any more celebrated in London and New York, where his career flourished till early death took him away. For a while, his art, too, seemed to have disappeared with him, till it was reclaimed and resuscitated for the marquee: a diasporic artist who came good when his art returned home.
Growing up in India, in the care of relatives with the even earlier passing of her artist mother, Alita Chandra (b. 1964) found herself uprooted from their shared world and language but could not escape its long reach and succumbed to its inevitable lure. Her training in design and textiles served as the bedrock that would nurture her practice.
For the first time, the two Chandras bridge their detached careers to share a platform in which the art of the father and the daughter can be seen together. The viewer is urged not to look for similarities or differences – their pedagogies are too varied – but to seek, instead, two exciting aspects (and outcomes) of this exhibition: Avinash’s unseen, early works, and Alita’s own, rarely shown works. That these discoveries occur in the same space isn’t merely serendipitous – it is the mark of haptic memories, the one informing the other in ways the mind cannot fathom, but the lineage of art can begin to unravel.
Kishore Singh