Breather between breathtaking and breathfulness

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
— The Hollow Men, TS Eliot

“I think of my works as meditation, [samadhi],” says Trishla Jain. And it shows.

Looking at her canvases, you realise two processes are at work — one, the very essence of the creative process that takes form in her paintings is on display; two, this process is reversed by an active act of immersion for the viewer who now becomes part of the creative process. In other words, we are in the Shadow zone — the breather — between conception and creation, between emotion and its response.

Jain’s solo exhibition, The Quiet Interlude, that opens this Saturday in New Delhi, underlines the binary of yantra (geometric forms) and tantra (fluid forms) for sadhana (meditation). The order and precision of the grid, the square, the circles in many of the works give way to more open form in others, both capturing the breathtaking and breathfulness.

She elaborates on this visual systolic-diastolic in terms of the breathing process. “In the early days, I was practising pranayama — mindful awareness of breathing — while I was applying the grid.” The mandalas in many of her works become operational sacred spaces, palpable, for instance, in the pointillistic mantra of Cave, with its radiating squares-with-insquares, as well as the dhun-like cascading circles of Around, both watercolour and ink on canvas works that draw the eye in, and then further in.

Delicate balance

Geometry is an intrinsic part of Jain’s physiometry forming the yin and yang of form and content. The works from her Tantra series extend the mathematical order of her Yantra paintings without disruption. The ‘opening up’ of grid-circle-square gives the ‘breath-in, breath-out’ process emblematic of her works a liberating air that turns measured respiration into meditative susurration.

“The application of watercolour also turned to this microrepetitive format — four strokes with an inhale, then four strokes with the exhale,” explains Jain. “And this would create a very ‘present moment-mindful’ art process. The process is the moment both in time and space.”

One can weigh the gossamer lightness of the filigree shapes in Rising, its dark blue-white background hinting at prayerful depth. This freedom from the grid echoes fractals — mathematical shapes containing detailed structure at seemingly arbitrarily small scales — providing the viewer the sense of order that has been given room to roam, and breathe. Illuminated from the Tantra series recalibrates this delicate balance in brighter hues, the tunnelling effect more emphatic in this interludial zone.

Joyful stillness

If every line, dot and grid in Yantra is representative of inhalation and exhalation of the artist’s breath, the breath is let go in Tantra. As an artist, meditator and mediator between the creative process and the creation, Jain finds nothing more inspiring than the mind’s capacity for deep stillness, peace. For her, this is a “whole-body, all-encompassing phenomenon that includes joy, exuberance, a sense of energy and crescendos at the idea of joyful equanimity.”

Joyful equanimity is, indeed, what gives flesh and breath to The Quiet Interlude — each work aligning mind and breath in the hyper-conscious space of each canvas. Because between the inhalation and the exhalation falls the Shadow. There lies the art.

The Quiet Interlude will be showing at Living Traditions Centre, Bikaner House, New Delhi from April 5 to 8.