Koumudi Patil

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Koumudi Patil received her B.F.A from Sir J. J. School of Art, Mumbai and M.F.A from Kala Bhawan, Santiniketan. Koumudi is currently working as a Faculty at the Art and Design Programme of IIT Kanpur. Patil has also been involved with several public art projects and group shows over the past few years. Koumudi Patil’s first solo exhibition ‘You are getting under My Skin’ was at The Guild, Mumbai in 2009.

If you find the smell of talcum powder is more than a touch reminiscent of your childhood, then perhaps, you belong to that clique of kids who turn up pale-faced in all family photo albums. Koumudi Patil remembers feeling vampired-out, after she had endured the talcum treatment to drain away the brownness that is so inextricably her. This early encounter with colour sank straight to the hypodermis and cut really close to the bone. Since that first exposure Koumudi has been diligently accruing evidence, but a chance reading of the Shakespearean tragedy Macbeth, revealed the apposite thought, “Out, damn'd spot! out, I say!”; and so critical mass was generated. The artist appropriated this delusional lament made by Lady Macbeth and cut a video after it. In it, she employs the split screen technique to create multiple areas of interest. The action in these tiny pockets revolves around the hypnotically repetitive process of application and removal of an uneasy maquillage routine. Although the title to this show, You are getting under My Skin, is a contemporary expression indicating irritation and discontentment, instead of going all out with malapropos visual rhetoric, Koumudi makes a case for loss by invoking an intuitive poetry. Comprising four photo sequences and two videos, Koumudi’s debut solo is a mindful exploration of skin as a liminal entity. Skin is a spotted argument to say the least. And megalomania, often striking entire populations, has contributed greatly towards this largest human organ suffering several hematomas. The show grows organically out of the many identity crises that get routed through the binary logic of gender, colour, race, class and caste. In our post-colonial context, Koumudi reminds us that we are still dodging colonisers who come knocking at our doors attired as hard sellers of parochialism in all its stifling permutations.

(Excerpt from an essay by Gitanjali Dang)