Prutha Goa

Unnati Singh’s exhibition Webotika-I am an Alien and this is my Spacecraft at the Cube Gallery at Moira, challenges the norms of quintessential art and jolts one out of the humdrum of routine. A written text that is part of her painting says it all about the appearance of her work ‘When life is not pretty, why the f**k should I make pretty pictures?’ This is not visually soothing art and it provokes one to introspect, so be warned. ‘Webotika’, a word coined by curator Katharina Domscheit-D’Souza, is a combination of three words: web – denoting the World Wide Web, the web of network that connects humans and nature together, and the web created in nature by the spider; robotic – signifying artificial intelligence, the desire of man to scale the heavens by playing God; and erotic – a much evident presence in the paintings in the form of phalluses, vaginas, breasts and body fluids. The exhibition consists of a series of paintings on canvas; three series of paper drawings: I am an Amplifie

KitaMika has a childlike quality that belies the idea that you are speaking to a young mother-to-be in her early thirties. This wandering soul has found her footing as an artist and she pours her very being into her art. Her art is an expression of pure emotion that her subconscious captures with a comprehensive intellect. The young Japanese artist has a tortured past that fuels her creativity. Her mother was institutionalised with paranoia when KitaMika was a child and, at the age of eight, KitaMika saw her father divorce her mother. She lost her father to suicide after his second marriage. KitaMika’s relationship with her stepmother was a tumultuous one and she was brought up mostly by her grandparents. At the age of nineteen KitaMika made her first trip to India and she has been a regular visitor from 2003. It is her love of religion and culture that has set her travelling to different countries. ‘I have travelled all over Asia and Africa but I always find myself back in India,’ say