Experimenter presents Mashrabiya, Praneet Soi's third solo at the gallery, bringing together an expansive body of work spanning a decade, at Experimenter – Hindustan Road, Kolkata. Mashrabiya, a latticed, ornate-patterned, wooden window found in medieval Islamic architecture, is often used as a metaphor in Soi's multidimensional and geographically spread practice. Drawing from fraught social, political, economic contexts, historical research, personal encounters, architectural details and a growing archive of media imagery, this exhibition offers a lens into Soi's experimentation with a range of image-tropes and their representation.
Mashrabiya brings together the varied strands of Soi's ongoing immersion (since 2014) with craftspeople in the valley city of Srinagar; his engagement with traditional porcelain craftspeople in the Southern Chinese city of Guangzhou (2015); and his own studio-based practice in Amsterdam. Such immersions are important to Soi's praxis. They become sites where knowledge is gained, experiences are shared and friendships are formed, underscoring how his perspective is sutured by the thread of personal experiences and multiplicity of thought.
Through painting, sculpture, and painted papier mache and porcelain tiles, the exhibition investigates the notion of a migration of form through techniques such as collage, fragmentation and deconstruction. The process builds a lexicon of intricate motifs and patterns and a tactile materiality characterised by the primacy of hand. Intervening in and subverting existing hierarchies, this exhibition follows Soi's interest in constructing a personal framework through which an alternate view of the landscape and its interpretation is possible.
