UNNAMED

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop

- Strange Fruit by Abel Meeropol

Brought up in a privileged liberal house-hold with traditional roots, Anjani Khanna like numerous others has had to confront the postcolonial dystopias created by a layered society in churn. Every morning, the newspaper screams another atrocity, another display of brute power. The daily onslaught almost ceases to outrage. Each bloodied page turned, another exhausting reminder of impotence? Of complicity? With no escape.

Trying to confront and accommodate the apparent differences of gender, community, wealth, education and experience, Anjani’s work has alluded to a syncretic humanity. Her yalis — composite quasi human-animal forms, point to a need to look beyond division. Disturbed by images of two young girls found hanging in Badaun, Uttar Pradesh, in 2014, in what was then an unusual event, Anjani finds this has become increasingly commonplace. Newspapers with reportage of unnatural violent death collected from different parts of the country wallpaper the cell where the porcelain bodies hang. A cry for deliverance?

ANJANI KHANNA trained at Golden Bridge Pottery, Puducherry. She has been a resident artist in the US, Europe, China, Australia and India. Recipient of a Senior Fellowship from the Government of India, Anjani also has grants from the India Foundation for the Arts and has received a NCECA Multicultural Fellowship. She is an Arthink South Asia Fellow and a member of the International Academy of Ceramics. A founder-director of the Contemporary Clay Foundation, her work is in international and Indian public and private collections. She writes on the Arts and has a degree from the University of Cambridge, UK. She works at her studio in Alibag, across the Mumbai harbour.

www.anjanikhanna.com