-
“Do you know how to sow seeds?”“Yes.”“Do you know how to light a fire?”“Yes.”“Do you know how to put it out?”“Only a small one.”[1]Experimenter presents Do You Know How To Start a Fire?, a solo exhibition of paintings and works on paper by Reba Hore at Experimenter – Hindustan Road. The title of the exhibition is excerpted from a conversation between Reba Hore and Naveen Kishore in 2006.
Rooted in an impassioned and spontaneous visual language, Hore drew from her everyday field of vision. Her works bring forth a gaze stemming from an entangled knot of experiences that subverted the conventional understanding of her interior world. The mundane, daily-ness of domestic life often seen as inferior and redundant—as the binary opposites of the intellectual and cerebral exercises in the public world, takes on a directional change in her works. While the forms, figures and landscapes remain almost indiscernible and abstract, Hore’s work encapsulates a fiery self-reflexiveness. As the title suggests, Hore holds within her practice the embers of a quiet and controlled fire. She articulates a perspective which is uniquely and unapologetically her own—a sense of agency brimming with an unfettered abandon.
[1] “Selections from ‘Reba Hore in conversation with Naveen Kishore’”, INCA: Reba Hore, accessed September 18, 2024. http://www.onlyconnect.plus.com/inca/archive/rebahore.html
-
In Hore’s words “As a person, I am dependent on my feelings, I am emotional. My paintings have a lot of spontaneity about them. There is a concept, a theme, which arises from what I see around me, from what in that moves me. But it only arises as a motive, a goal, an aim.”[2] In a world predicated on the normative expectation of being productive at ordained hours, Hore’s works are also a testament to taking agency of one’s own time and energy to negotiate with the inner self and one’s surroundings, while transforming it into an intimate and radical act, animated with a sense of liberation and fulfilment.
[2] Reba Hore, Reba Hore: My Story – This and That, translated into English by Somnath Zutshi from the Bengali text ‘Amar Katha, kichhu-michhu’ © Chandana Hore, produced by the Seagull Foundation for the Arts on the occasion of the exhibition Reba Hore: Works in Watercolour, Oil on Canvas, Bronze and Terracotta, 24 January – 22 February, 2012 at The Seagull Foundation for the Arts. Pg 40–41
-
-
Reba Hore (1926–2008) was educated at Calcutta University and Government College of Art & Craft in Kolkata. Hore completed her graduation in Economics and became an active member of the Communist Party and was involved in student movements from a formative age. She lived and worked in Kolkata, New Delhi, and in Santiniketan.
Reba Hore | Do You Know How To Start a Fire?
Current viewing_room
