THE BROKEN PROMISED

The Broken Promised, a tongue-in-cheek work by Shirley Bhatnagar, uses humour to address serious concerns. In this installation her dinner table is beautifully laden with teapots, soup tureens and larger than life tableware, which are all in fact quite unusable. A large imposing teapot seated on a pedestal has a drooping spout negating its main function and a gilded plate with roses metamorphoses into a thorny creeper. Spoons and forks with spikes make no sense while flimsy handles are defunct. The artist uses ceramics for its ability to easily take shape as well as for its inherent breakability to express the elastic and broken promises made time and again by politicians. She illustrates several politicians’ statements from around the world that are absurd, ludicrous or downright divisive. Some of the famous quotes by politicians used in this artwork are from as early as 1940 to the present day. For Shirley, the promises are fancy but useless – just like the ceramics on her dinner table and prove that nothing ever changes with political rhetoric.

Currently based between Delhi and Jaipur, SHIRLEY BHATNAGAR, graduated from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad majoring in Industrial Ceramics. Since then she has worked on many public and private commissions. Shirley has headed the Fired Material Application discipline at the Indian Institute of Crafts and Design, Jaipur, and currently she is visiting faculty in several leading design colleges in India. Shirley works on projects focusing on the revival of traditional crafts. She has four solo exhibitions to her credit and numerous group shows.

www.irregularbeauty.com