Life in the Bubbles: Dhruvi Acharya’s Pandemic Art
“Lockdown Day 2” by Dhruvi Acharya
Dhruvi Acharya’s Lockdown series from the exhibition Painting in the Time of Corona provided a glimpse into the way many would feel during the pandemic, inhabiting a surreal, bewildering alternate universe. Priyanka Sacheti interviews the artist on her process and the future of her work.
A stony-eyed face exhales into a seemingly starry sky, its figure composed of multiple overlapping bubbles. The piece is called ‘Lockdown Day 1’, a dreamlike, artistic reaction to the very first day of India’s National Lockdown, following the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic across the country. The artist behind this work, Mumbai-based Dhruvi Acharya, began working on a daily art series ever since Lockdown was announced on March 24th, and then, she began to share the pieces of art on her Instagram page.
After Acharya's solo show at Nature Morte in January this year, she was spending time in the studio, experimenting with no major work in progress. “My work is usually informed by things I experience, think, read and hear about. On the day of Janata Curfew, when we were all very aware of how the global pandemic could now begin affecting us, I went to the studio to paint. The work I made was about what was on my mind: the coronavirus,” she says.
Acharya's work focuses on the psychological and emotional aspects of an urban woman’s life in a world teeming with discord, inequalities, gender disparities, violence and environmental catastrophes… A masked woman holds up a loaded palette and brush in front of a pile of assorted objects, an empty speech bubble floating above her head.
Painting, she describes, helps her focus on various thoughts and make sense of the world. She says that this creative outburst felt so right at this time that she continued to paint daily through the Lockdown.
Few people had an idea at the time of the extent to which the world and one's sense of normal would be entirely upended and disrupted in the months to come. Using a variety of media such as graphite, thread, gouache, and watercolors, Acharya's work, however, provides a glimpse into the way many would begin to feel in the coming days, as if they were inhabiting a surreal, bewildering alternate universe. In ‘Lockdown Day 2’, for example, a figure exhales bubbles while surrounded by bubbles; ‘bubble’ incidentally would form part of the new pandemic lexicon, whether it be air-bubble arrangements between countries regarding international air travel, or bubble hangouts.
Bubbles had permeated Acharya's earlier works too, what with comic book-inspired empty thoughts and speech bubbles conveying ineffable emotions; in the Lockdown series, the bubbles additionally refer to bodily fluids as well.
The sense of the body is ever-pervasive in her work, and no organ more than the lungs, which is the part of the body that the COVID-19 virus primarily attacks. ‘Lockdown Day 14’ leaps out from the Lockdown series with its vivid imagery of red flowers and trees bearing teeth-hearted red flowers; below, in the figure lying prone on the bed, the lungs feature as the primary and predominant aspect of the body.
“Lockdown Day 13” by Dhruvi Acharya
The onset of the pandemic with confinement to home and drastically-reduced social interaction has resulted in an undeniable mental health crisis and even pandemic nightmares as people continue to struggle to accept the radically altered contours of the world as they once knew it—and many of these works also appear to be directly or indirectly rooted in the otherworldly universe of dreams and sleep. Acharya however says that there was no conscious focus on a theme as such. “When I am making watercolour works, I usually have a general idea of what I may want to paint about but have no specific image in mind—I just put brush to paper and let forms appear on paper and respond to it,” she says, adding that this time was no different. “The work reflected my fears, hopes, and thoughts on the fast-changing world around us.”
Acharya's work focuses on the psychological and emotional aspects of an urban woman’s life in a world teeming with discord, inequalities, gender disparities, violence and environmental catastrophes. In another piece, a masked woman holds up a loaded palette and brush in front of a pile of assorted objects, an empty speech bubble floating above her head. Perhaps, a self-portrait, perhaps a commentary on women artists trying to create amid the increased work and responsibilities as a by-product of the pandemic. What is undeniable is how the pandemic has once more skewed gender responsibilities and burdens, what with women having to shoulder the vast majority of the burden of home and family care; the painting would therefore be perhaps a work that many women would relate to.
Acharya mentions that another reason for the daily Instagram posts also due to the reactions of the people expressing how much they related to the work as they too were collectively experiencing similar emotions during the Lockdown. “I just decided to keep posting when I finished a work, as I was working daily anyway. After maybe making 7-10 works, I made it challenge for myself to try and make a piece a day through the Lockdown.”
Acharya adds that while painting for 10-12 hours daily for 40 days was inevitably exhausting, she felt at peace working every day as opposed to sitting at home and stressing. “It was a new experience and rather a nice one to share my work on Instagram and get immediate feedback, versus working for years for a solo show where people saw your work in person.” She elaborates how one is usually not present in the gallery to get direct feedback, even though it is undeniably a “big positive” for the audience to engage in person with the works.
Acharya held her first online exhibition in May, Painting In The Time of Corona on Mumbai’s Chemould Prescott Road's gallery website, where the proceeds of the sales went to those severely impacted by the pandemic, being in dire need of food, medication or shelter. “When I began posting on Instagram, people started writing to me, asking if the works were for sale. I hadn’t thought about selling the work during a global pandemic; however, I then realised it would be a great way to raise funds for donating to the less fortunate among us,” she says. She spoke to her gallerist, Shireen Gandhy at Chemould Prescott Road, who not only agreed to the sales but also created an online exhibition out of the works.
Her second exhibition, 'Evaporating Voices' was part of Nature Morte's online viewing room. Acharya made these works during June-July; while the National Lockdown had been lifted since then, the atmosphere of stress still hung heavy in the air with Mumbai still under many restrictions and continued confinement to home. “This was also the time when my studio and residential floors of my building was sealed due to many residents having COVID-19. I could not step out of my home or go to my studio in the same building for 3 weeks,” she recalls.
“Lockdown Day 20” by Dhruvi Acharya
She worked on these nine watercolour works in her living room, from where she could glimpse the monsoon skies, the rain and the floods. She could also notably see hundreds of trucks traversing the road and pouring rocks into the Arabian sea, in process destroying the original coast to create land for Mumbai’s coastal road. “This road is being constructed to transport a small percentage of the population at a very great cost for the environment and a high financial cost to taxpayers,” she points out. “It subsequently led me to create a body of work about the destruction of the environment, submerged cities and the virus.” One senses a strong sense of disruption, chaos, and uncertainty in these works, such as ‘Exhaust’, which depicts seemingly submerged, dismembered figures grappling with change in an seemingly apocalyptic world.
Given that the pandemic has indelibly impacted the manner in which one views and engages with the art, what does Acharya make of the two online exhibitions she has so far participated in?
The color palette of mauves, purples, violet, and aubergine evoke the sense of an impending storm, reiterating the idea of a suspended reality. It also provides an apt backdrop for figures struggling to reconcile their present circumstances with life as they once knew and lived it.
“I think it is good to be able to see the work people are creating while we are all pretty much isolated. But I miss seeing art exhibitions in real life, and the small images on the phone do no justice to experiencing art in flesh.” She points out how all those who purchased her work by only seeing it online told her afterward how much more they enjoyed experiencing the painting once seeing it in person. “We have to do our best to experience these in any way we can, especially in times like these when everything is in flux,” she says, emphasising how crucial it is for everyone to remain connected to art.
In context to how the pandemic will shape her future works, Acharya says that the nature of her work—which involves varied art materials, layering, and detailing—means that viewing her art would nowhere be close to seeing and experiencing the work in person. “But I had started making an animation film last year, and have been thinking that this would be the perfect time to complete it.”
The fluid, lucent quality of watercolours—Acharya’s primary medium—greatly contributes towards cultivating the sensation of being submerged in an unfamiliar space. Reccurring motifs such as mouth-studded red flowers, masked mouths, and weightless bubbles appear as weighty globes in the works and conjure up scenes that ultimately defy description. The color palette of mauves, purples, violet, and aubergine evoke the sense of an impending storm, reiterating the idea of a suspended reality. It also provides an apt backdrop for figures struggling to reconcile their present circumstances with life as they once knew and lived it. In “Lockdown Day 8”, for example, a figure seemingly attempting to meditate is surrounded by numerous pleading and distracting snow-white palms. The work appears to say that perhaps one cannot be solitary in a time such as this one, everyone's personal struggle being subsumed into a collective one; and indeed, uniting us all.
“Lockdown Day 8” by Dhruvi Acharya
And yet, one can still locate pockets of seeming peace and introspection in the discombobulation evoked by the works. A masked figure in a whirlpool gazes contemplatively at what appears to be a sparrow, bringing to mind many of us who became balcony-birders during the lockdown. A woman emerges from a mauve lotus-laden pool, balancing the waxing and waning moon in her hands, suggesting the inevitable passage of time and transitions.
If the pandemic has marked this year by its grave associations of loss, death, illness, and trauma, it has also compelled many to significantly slow down, to take pause and stock of priorities and what ultimately matters in one's lives. In Acharya's perceptive, penetrating works therefore lies a portrait of a pandemic and those afflicted by all its manifestations.
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Priyanka Sacheti is a writer and poet based in Bangalore, India. She grew up in the Sultanate of Oman and has previously lived in United Kingdom and United States. She has been published in many publications, including Guardian, Literary Hub, Hyperallergic, and Scroll, with a special focus on art, gender, diaspora, and identity. Her literary work and art have appeared in various literary journals and anthologies. She's currently working on a poetry and short story collection. She can be found on Instagram: @anatlasofallthatisee and Twitter: @priyankasacheti.
