The Haunted

Yardena Kurulkar’s sculptures capture the shadowy spaces between life and death

It’s a nightmarish vision straight out of Pompeii. Figures caught between perpetual life and death, their bodies in a constant tussle between movement and stasis. Yardena Kurulkar’s show, although titled Transience, has, ironically, the air of a place frozen in time. An ancient archaeological site in which viewers are allowed a glimpse into a sacred past. Many of the artworks feed into this atmosphere–—Neant, a rich black-and-white aerial-view photograph of a broken clay foot, for example—but more so her rough sculptural pieces. Gap in the Void are 42 (the age at which the artist apparently had a premonition of death) disembodied heads moulded from clay and placed in glass cubes on racks that look like old laboratory equipment. The cubes are half-filled with water and a film of oil that stops just below the noses. The heads, with their puffed cheeks, seem to be holding their breath. It’s a discomfiting sight, but one that forces you to think not just of the physical material used—clay and water, the components of life—but also the symbolism of being constantly on the brink of no breath or death. Between Then and Now, however, comprises a series of clay heads placed in empty glass containers, seemingly endlessly waiting. 

The artist’s involvement with the idea of impermanence is also evident in her other works. Her short video work, 5 Seconds Later, shows a clay cast of a female figure dissolving rapidly into dust—the image changes every five seconds. Reminiscent of Raghu Rai’s shot of a partially buried infant during the Bhopal gas tragedy, a series of photographic images, also titled 5 Seconds Later, shows a clay child’s head sinking into water and resurfacing. While this carries connotations of birth, what makes the image disquieting is the presence of air bubbles when the head sinks out of sight. It is eerily life-like and, at the same time, a clear counterfeit. Also using the figure of an infant is Transience—a babe swaddled in cloth whose folds are beautifully realistic, placed in a glass chamber (again reminiscent of birth, or post-birth). It lies on a raised platform on which the lullaby ‘Rock-a-bye baby’ is printed.

Classical sculpture, particularly of the Renaissance, was meant to echo or capture life. What fascinated the audience then (as it continues to do so now) is how ‘life-like’ a figure could be, despite being carved out of marble or stone. It was an attempt not just to preserve life, but also to conjure ideas of permanence and immutability, no matter how fraught with doubt and fear. Kurulkar’s works, however, are about capturing shadowy spaces, the slips in-between life, death and beyond.

Transience is showing at Gallery BMB, Mumbai till 7 September 2011

About The Author

Janice Pariat

Janice Pariat is the author of three books. She is based between Delhi and Shillong. Her novel Everything the Light Touches releases in October 2022

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