Expo in Auroville showcases works of two artists engaging in different media

A work by Sameer Rao on show at an expo in Auroville.
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Special Arrangement

The Centre d’Art in Auroville is hosting an expo showcasing the works of two artists who engage in different media and follow contrasting ways of representing nature.

“Fieldnotes” by Madhuri K. presents a photo expo that is all about the rhythm of the seasons, crop rotation, rice growth, the alternation of day and night, sad or happy events, birth, death, while “Marking Luminescence” by Sameer Rao depicts quiet interior landscapes — spaces shaped not by geography, but by sensation, and long-lingering memory fragments.

According to a note from the Centre, although the two artists work with different media, they do reveal many affinities. Madhuri’s photographs and Sameer’s wooden cuts draw their inspiration from an imagination shaped by images of nature, reinterpreted through the lens of emotion and inner experience.

Their artistic practice seeks to reclaim space in order to create memories within a geography close to abstraction. They favour refined techniques, such as silver photographic paper prints for Madhuri, and wooden cuts prints on handmade paper, cotton, and silk for Sameer.

Madhuri resorts to an abstraction of forms that are not immediately recognisable; a human or animal shoulder, feet, horns, fur, skin, earth, plants, textures, marks in the ground like scars, or scrawls to be deciphered. Shadows and light in stark contrast in these photographs, dominated by an organic, dense, and inhabited black.

The works are a tribute of sorts to life on a huge agricultural complex, Auroville’s Annapurna Farm — a reality in which Madhuri has been living, working, and photographing for the past five years.

Sameer’s imagery does not aim to describe the outside world directly; instead, they form terrains built from impressions: a ladder, a footprint, an animal form, a soft patch of colour, a cluster of dots, the grain of plywood, the gentle pull of cotton. Together, these elements settle into expanses that feel lived-in, travelled through, and remembered.

In these works, abstraction becomes a way of organising memory. Shapes appear like markers on a map: hints of land, pathways, shifting fields, or ambiguous forms that echo both nature and dream. There is a steady rhythm across his works, a way the elements return — not as repetition, but as continuity. Footsteps, animal forms, shadows, patterns of dots or lines: these are like recurring features of his internal terrain. It’s akin to discovering a land, not by its topographical features, but by experiencing it through thought and emotion.

The show is on till January 10 (Tuesday through Friday 2 p.m. to 5.30 p.m.; Saturday 10 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. and 2 p.m. to 5.30 p.m.).