Gallery Silver Scpaes
Weaver from Kalahandi
Weaver from Kalahandi
Couldn't load pickup availability
Oil on Canvas, 5 ft x 4 ft
In "Weaver from Kalahandi", Manu Parekh masterfully interweaves human emotion, socio-political commentary, and spatial symbolism to construct a powerful portrait of rural resilience. The canvas is dominated by the striking figure of a weaver rendered in a haunting palette of muted greys, deep blacks, and sharp whites. The face is divided tonally, evoking a duality—perhaps of dignity and despair—set against a stark yellow background that lends an inner tension to the work.
The weaver’s expressive hands, disproportionately large and entangled in gestural sweeps of white and black, suggest both the act of weaving and a deeper entrapment—possibly alluding to the cyclical poverty that afflicts Kalahandi, a region long symbolic of drought and deprivation. The crossed arms and pointed fingers, reminiscent of iconography in religious or revolutionary art, draw the viewer’s attention to an invisible tension—caught between labor and protest, production and paralysis.
Foregrounded is an exaggerated incandescent bulb, inside which a conical coil appears almost like a fossilized insect or a sacred object—perhaps symbolizing lost potential or the burden of illumination in dark times. The background architecture evokes the structural mechanics of a loom, but also a cage, reinforcing the metaphor of confinement within both industrial and social frameworks.
The composition is spatially complex, with strings crisscrossing the canvas like the warp and weft of a loom, yet also resembling snares. Parekh thus uses the visual language of the loom as both subject and symbol, grounding his abstraction in the tangible world of the weaver while charging it with metaphorical weight.
This work stands as a testament to the dignity of manual labor, even amid systemic neglect, and showcases Parekh’s enduring ability to fuse expressive figuration with conceptual depth.
Why Choose Us
Art has always, naturally, reflected the development and exploration of different thoughts and perceptions, and our current postmodern era is no different. It is interesting to see how art has evolved visually, yet the traditional methods of composing art remain a valid means of expression.
All it takes for an artist to rise above normalcy, is inspiration, which fuels his passion to paint beautiful creations throughout his life.
The valuable expression of art is always there with us, but now this expression is yet to take an interesting diversion with our art gallery, Gallery Silver Scapes, located in Hauz Khas Enclave. Art is no longer considered just decorative but has evolved and come forth as a major form of investment yielding high rates of returns for its buyers, making it an expression commonly used.
Mrs Mayor was walked into the art world by the legendary modernist Bimal Das Gupta, one of whose biggest collections remains with Gallery Silver Scapes. In the 1980s, as head and first curator of the Habiart Gallery founded by Mrs Rekha Modi — a childhood friend — Mrs Mayor worked closely with and curated shows for renowned artists such as A Ramachandran, GR Santosh, Rameshwar Broota, Sakti Burman, MK Bardhan, Dhiraj Chaudhury, M Sivanesan, and Arup Das among others.
Besides modern masters, she also worked with young contemporaries such as Sudip Roy, Paresh Maity, Subroto Kundu, Vinod Sharma, and many more. Artworks commissioned by her are now part of prestigious collections, such as those of the India Habitat Centre, Ranbaxy, Pepsi, Hotel Lalit, Bank of America, and many more private and public collections.