Umbartha

Umbartha, a Marathi word that translates into the doorstep or threshold, is layered metaphorically with implications of home, travel, crossovers, change, time and memory. In Monali Meher’s exhibition at VHC, the works on display range from the artist’s primary works when she had just left India in the early 2000s and build up to more recent ones from 2017 by which time India and Belgium were both home to her. Having lived in Europe, first Amsterdam and now Ghent, Meher has also exhibited and performed across India at galleries, museums and public spaces. Umbartha, the artist’s first exhibition in Pune, the city she was born in is a homecoming of works that explore transitory notions of the threshold. In the context of the large oeuvre of the artist’s practice on display, Umbartha ensues Falling Star (2019) an exhibition that encompassed fifteen years of Meher’s journey as an artist. Wrapped objects, residual performances, drawn emotions and photographs thread mediums across space and time. Self-portraits, scale and installation extend the viewers eye beyond looking and into experiencing.

Arrivals and departures over thresholds are apparent in the way Meher’s works oscillate materials, processes and concepts. Umbartha as a metaphor and form also holds a significant place in Pune’s cultural history. As a departure, the release of
Umbartha by Jabbar Patel in 1982 featuring a young Girish Karnad and Smita Patil set a new benchmark in vernacular film history for women in society with a narrative that explored a
woman’s life – her choice to leave home, establish an identity and pursue a career – all at the risk of alienation from her family. In considering the crossing over of thresholds as an arrival or homecoming, Meher refers to a traditional marital ceremony, Grahpravesh during which a new bride crosses over the doorstep of the house to enter her husband’s home for the first time. The discoveries, risks, thoughtforms and
achievements that these bold steps over thresholds reveal are an ongoing process of Meher’s artistic practice.

Upon entering the exhibition at VHC, red Wrapped Bows (2015)
stretch the viewer’s eyes to peel heights and nooks of space that may otherwise go unnoticed. The red thread is a primal
root that links Meher’s Umbarthas across time. It has travelled with her through explorations in mediums of performance,
photography, drawing, sculpture and installation. Meher refers to red wool as a comment on the world’s state of calamity in war and nature while also wrapping and covering objects in their entirety to provide them with a second (perhaps protective) skin to appear mysterious and preserve the original spirit of its
being. Layered with memory, place and time, the identity of these objects is transported into the artist’s own experiments with self-recognition and identity that bring with them cities
and countries that Meher has lived in over the years.

The body and self- portraits transform metaphorically to represent the artist’s life struggles, responsibility, relationships, emotion, change and hope. In Hunt Hope (2013), camouflage,
red embroidery and thread link the veil to question identity in war and politics while also drawing in the artist’s use of costume and fabric. The process of covering, layering and revealing act as a play on the interchangeable meanings of the artist’s works. Meher’s move to Europe in the early 2000s
was a constant acceptance and rejection of self-recognition. She turned to her body to look at the sacredness of what she held of home beyond the threshold.

Drawings, paintings and embroidery emerged as a part of this process alongside photographs and self-portraits to highlight the use of emotion and consideration of the body as a medium.

A workshop with Marina Abramovich, Cleaning the House (2004), in Jerez, Spain, was a significant period in Meher’s life that influenced not only her performative practice, but also the way in which she experimented with materials, emotion and
sound. The artist’s early performances germinated from her need to be in front of the public and questioned whether her
actions were acts for an audience or for herself. The contrast of change is laid bare in performances such as Old Fashioned (2003), in Amsterdam and in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, followed by performances in Beijing and Mumbai. The words – ‘Anger’, ‘Hate’, ‘Crime’, ‘Violence’, ‘Racism’, ‘War’ – appear as text on a pile of potatoes that the artist then cleaned, peeled, washed
and boiled, as a symbolic replacement of alternate action. In a more recent performance, Bound/ Unbound (2017), Meher
invited her audience to tie objects with red thread to her body. She then toiled through the streets of Kathmandu and while
walking, gradually unburdened herself of these materials as a
symbol of letting go of baggage of association and memory. The process of walking has been a significant part of the artist’s performances. Whether it is inside a space or outside, walking is something that the artist constantly engages with during her performances, such as Visiting Brooklyn Bridge,
New York (2016), Visiting Pearl, Guangzhou (2011) and Visiting Marmara, Istanbul (2013). Often walking barefoot, Meher also looks at this as a way of earthing herself, similar to Terra (2009) that directly links the earth and soil back to the artist’s first Umbartha at her home soil, Pune.

Landscapes and languages of places with reference to the body are a part of Meher’s vocabulary. First Departure, a series of photographs form Meher’s performance at the Sinop
Biennale, Turkey (2008), sees her atop an abandoned truck that resembles a sight one may have experienced in certain instance of mass groups of people or migrants travelling from
one place to the next – leaving home yet rooted. Shoes thread in here with their references to journeys, maps, personal
explorations, travellers’ histories. The artist’s long engagements with the outside and walking, became objects of recurrent preservation in Tracing the Threads (2017). The maps on which
these shoes are threaded are also a layer of Meher’s practice to locate geographies of place, wanderings and eventually homecomings to Umbarthas.

— Veeranganakumari Solanki, 2023

References from: Falling Star, Monali Meher, Works 2004 - 2019, Solo Exhibition, 2019 at CJK Mariakerke, Ghent, Belgium