To Mother, With Love | Lifestyle News, The Indian Express

To Mother, With Love | Lifestyle News, The Indian Express

Published: March 17, 2019 7:57:42 am

To Mother, With Love

In an exhibition, printmaker Rajinder Kaur pays a tribute to her mother.

Rajinder Kaur at the exhibition

Printmaker Rajinder Kaur’s artistic journey is defined by the image of the sewing machine, an ode to her mother, Gurmeet Kaur, who is a seamstress and pillar of strength and support for her artist daughter. Rajinder’s starting point as an artist is her immediate environment, her home and her mother, the centre of her life and art. And it’s her mother’s journey, linked with her own, as a daughter and artist, that Rajinder expresses in the exhibition, ‘Stitch In Time’, organised by the Punjab Lalit Kala Akademi.

As many as 40 works, done over the last eight years, are exhibited using various techniques of printmaking. The exhibition, says the artist, is a dream come true — a validation of her mother’s struggles and her own passion and commitment towards her work. “The possibility of it all, and in the process discovering so much about yourself and your work, is fulfilling,” says Rajinder, who has a masters degree in fine arts (Printmaking, 2015) from the Government College of Art, Chandigarh.

Rajinder’s machinery and tools she used to sew and stitch, became her constant companions. Her education was single-handedly supported by her mother, so the references that the artist has included express her admiration and appreciation for her mother and her dignity of labour. In many works Rajinder is seen studying and drawing in her mother’s workshop as a little girl and later as a young woman. “It was my first classroom and continues to be,” she says.

The finesse and intricate stitching work involved with tailoring helped Rajinder to devise practices which helped her develop a visual language that is gradually becoming a recurring leitmotif in her works. Rajinder draws inspiration from the intimacy that a small stitching machine allows between the human being and its user, which slowly grows into a bond between elements such as threads, needles, measuring tape, scissors, cloth, hangers and people. The measuring tape, depicted in many works,is close to the artist’s heart — she uses it in varied ways and colours.