Art India

Mumbai-based DARA K. MEHTA offers a glimpse into his personal collection, where the boundaries between time, culture and art converge.

The first time I encountered Ranjani Shettar’s hanging installations, I had no knowledge of who she was or what her practice entailed. Their uniqueness and wow-factor completely blew me away—these are works of contemporary art that I have the greatest affinity with.

Fortunately, a few years later, I had the chance to encounter and acquire these magnificent installations, which I had instantly fallen in love with.

However, I didn’t want to simply pack it away in boxes. And, of course, there was no way an installation of this scale would fit in my apartment in Mumbai. This led to long discussions with Deepak [Talwar, gallerist] and Ranjani about reimagining and installing it differently.

The two images seen here—one at my home and the other displayed at the gallery—show how the work has taken on a life of its own, each beautiful in its own way, yet both conveying a sense of colour, form and shadows, which are integral to the work.

These pieces could have been made anywhere in the world, by an artist of any nationality, but they retained an Indian base in both their colouring and thematic elements. It marked a new phase in Ranjani’s artistic journey, incorporating spherical and helical elements, which shifted the iconography, and that for me created an even more interesting composition.

One of the joys of installing this work in my house was spending two days with Ranjani on how it should be hung and being part of a collaborative process along with Deepak and her. The way she was able to adroitly adapt the work to a significantly different space, both in shape and size, has led to people asking if the work was commissioned for this area.