Reena's debut solo show was held in 1998 simultaneously at Gallery Chemould and Pundole Art Gallery in Bombay titled "Orchard of Home Grown Secrets". The show was a conglomeration of painting, sculpture and photography, where the three disciplines were used simultaneously (and separately) to make individual pieces. While she maintains a concentrated studio practice, her sculptural work is often entwined with elements in her painting and vice-versa.

Artist Statement

Many of my earlier ideas ripened and were developed to culminate in a reasonably large body of work for my first one person show titled 'Orchard of Home Grown Secrets' . The show embodied the full spread of language, subject matter, assessed the fluctuation in medium and encapsulated concerns prevalent in previous works by grouping smaller works under broad titles to finally define the show in 10 large pieces.

Let us begin with 'Joint Family'. 1998(Pictures I003 and I005 )

hen we approach the work at first it appears like a large house with three windows and doors. On closer observation you'd realize it comprises of three complete houses inserted one into the other, structured within smaller independent units, like offspring sheltered under one large antecedent umbrella house.

The construction seems to be multiplying, to produce homes within homes. The idea of familial connections and links extending from home to city/nation/world finds place in this construction.

Like in the paper house, the work here seems to embody the simultaneity of ideas like embracing a closer, a more unified picture on the one hand and fragmentation/disintegration of failing family systems on the other.

Patterned across the external walls and roof are creepers and foliage branched to resemble family trees that carry multiple images of memory remains and traces of overlapping histories.

The home here is also seen as a green house, a place of germination whose nucleus is formed by a pair of copulating snakes (the Hindu motif of fertility) found on the house floor.

The sparse interior of the house resembles the many cumbrous living spaces that dot the city with their all-inclusive provision for kitchen, bed and bath.

The assembled structure of the paper houses evokes a spirit of encampment where the viewer becomes one of the visitors who temporarily occupy the inside of the living space (standing between the detachment and the intimacy
of domestic architecture).

The core of this work and some others in the show was centered around notions of belonging and the need to define one's relationship with one's surroundings, thus raising questions with regard to the ownership and possession of land or objects. Once again there is a complete shift in scale
that makes the house appear almost like a toy with the key out on one side.

The addition of the key here in some way annotates the sense of everything having been programmed, governed by an all-pervasive external force. Perhaps the understanding of a transitory relationship of oneself with one's surrounding acts as a deterrent in overtly attaching value to any object, be it a painting. This also goes on to explain why I consciously refrain from signing my works.

Like the house in 'Joint Family' the four sets of house of cards jointly called 'Orchard of Home Grown Secrets I' are made in paper. The setting up of these triangular formations echo childhood nostalgia because of their fragile delicacy in handling. The card houses embody the gamble referring to the fine-balancing tightrope life in the city as the eye travels the many-layered storeys of the bridged web of hands.

If you observe all these upward pointing structures, you'll see that they are finally reflected in the mirrors below.

But the triumph of integration seems to overpower the threat of decline or descent. (pictures no. I001 and I007)

'Recitals from the City Garden' was visualized in the form of water tanks projecting halfway out of a wall. Their metal framework was a take-off from the many fish tanks ordinarily found, so also, the back-lit translites simulated the white lights used to light up these tanks. (Pictures no. I008 and I009)

At first, wax dolls, used in churches as a ritual offering to attain either certain body parts in exchange for the wax model of the same part, or as in this case little human figures, were bought, stuffed, treated with plaster, painted and then arranged in a configuration that resembled the triangular pyramid contour. Both the card house and the figure groupings in the tank constructions were modeled on the same formation. The wax candles were lit and photographed in the process of their burning down.

The tableau of a chair is formed by rows of wax dolls that slowly melt down in the tanks, even as they climb on to each other holding paper boats, paper houses, paper planes etc.

The closely placed boxes assemble the manufactured photographs of the sequence of changes, recording unextinguished histories of a submerged city (going by the title).

The dense circuitry in both these constructions (the card houses as well as the recitals) poses the simultaneous dynamics of destruction and re-creation, loss and recovery, a sense of order within urban chaos.

The other large piece in the show was a tall freestanding spiral staircase leading right up to the gallery ceiling titled 'Escapades of the Ladder Occupants'. (Pics no. I004). The spiraling steps heighten the continuity of the climb.

I conceived this work to be seen as a segment of an infinite vertical rise. Like some of our high-rises it had openings along its exterior in the form of windows that carried a translite each inside them. These backlit painted photo collages illuminated the lives of its inhabitants. You could find a person seated on a puzzle you think he s trying to solve, until you look closely to find him rearranging the world. (Picture no. I010) Or the histrionics of finding a man balancing himself on a fine bridge that links the window to the other side. (Picture no. I011) What will also strike you after all the effort of peeping into these windows is that these are actually outdoor landscape settings, seen through open curtains.

'The Reservoir', another work in the same show comprised of two parts, one suspended from the walls while the other sculpted part stood on a stand. (I002)

In the painting, the fish traveled over the surface of water with floating pieces of paper strewn around it.

This work explores the same central notion of belonging, of one's relationship to one s surrounding. The fish seems to have embodied its surrounding to become the sum total of the contents of its living habitat. As you can see the sculpted form of the fish is painted in the same color of the water that surrounds the other fish. This complete mass of water, shaped like a fish resembles a toy piggy bank because of the keyhole and the suggestion of stored images within it.

All this time while I was working on the larger pieces of the show I simultaneously painted ten smaller paper works and two tarpaulins.

The ten paper works (6 of which are shown in picture no I012) are like the zoom-in close ups of some areas within the show that get further elaborated and incorporated into the larger more complex works.

They focus on singular images, some of which look cropped while others hardly squeeze into the frame.

The objects or images repeated are either encased one into the other or overlapped, suggesting some of the overlaps within history where cycles of change come full circle and repeat themselves.

The smaller works also lend themselves for experimentation to offer fresh openings for other works.

'Half full/ Half Empty' was a tarpaulin of a floating boy sipping into the same container he occupied. Again, the shared relation with his surroundings and the intake. In this picture the addition of the two other glasses was made, like the suggestion of the three worlds. (Picture no. I013)

Another same sized tarpaulin 'Deposits' was my last picture in the show that gathered the remains to form a pile of debris.

I have been interested in the process of growth, of building, followed by decay and renewal. Having gone through these works you'd realize that I I'm not interested in telling stories of a particular individual or incident. The ephemeral nature of the lives of people are addressed through the constant appearance and disappearance of the lives of the objects and things that form their world.