Narratives — grand and intimate, have always been the basis of Indian art traditions; mythological, hagiographic or didactic, the images tell stories of gods, men and women. Sidharth adds to and transcends this tradition in his new series Kathakari that is based on his life and the characters that populate it. Each painting in the series tells a separate story but within a continuous narrative located in his personal history as well as in the larger shared experience of Punjabiyat. Prakriti or nature itself becomes a character from his life story, like the neem tree in the painting Pawan Guru. The tree, like the still centre, is unmoved while the cycle of linear and cyclical time moves on; birds nest, children play in its branches (like Krishna playing out his lila) and mother-father sit in its shade performing their karmas as they weave dreams. The title refers to a hymn by Guru Nanak evoking nature, which instructs, nurtures, and provides the epos of human engagement with the past, present and future. Another work Dyal Das paints a picture of the teller of stories, who in the vein of the seers of yore, is blind and yet whose stories can see through the veils of maya that is reflected through the blue-grey colour of the backdrop. This space is peopled by voice-pictures created by his narratives, folk and Pauranic both, mediated through this dancing-singing old man who lived in the village Shivalaya. And, then, there is the story of his sister-like-friend Aashi who flew to Canada after she married; who as a young village girl playing with dolls and dreams and as a middle aged woman becomes a repository of memories of people and places she left behind. In art and literature both, language communicates with the viewer/reader, and in Sidharth’s works, the Katha becomes the locus around which multiple symbols, characters and icons interplay to create layers of meanings and interpretations without compromising on the universality and holisitic harmony in his works.
— Dr Seema Bawa is an art historian, curator and critic
