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Dubai-based artist, Manisha Gawade, has shown her colourful abstract works in several countries, including India (her homeland) and Dubai (her adopted home). On her recent visit to Delhi, she spoke to MARWAR about being a modern artist from Dubai while still painting the vibrant colours of her native Rajasthan.
Text: Christine Pemberton
Surrounded by an eclectic bunch of canvases, paintings-in-progress for her current collection, and her 3-year-old daughter’s Barbies, our conversation with Manisha Gawade reflected the parallel dichotomy that makes her work so alluring. Her hearty laugh punctuated the serious appraisal of her work, and filled our time in her South Delhi home with good cheer and spirit. Gawade describes herself as a Delhi girl, but with strong Rajput roots that have marked her character, thought process and value system. For more than a decade now, Gawade and her husband have lived in Dubai and this cosmopolitan city has had an inevitable influence on her work.
Dubai and I
From the deserts of Rajasthan to the sandy wastelands of Dubai, which are being developed at breakneck speed, Gawade began her story from the year 1999. When she first moved to Dubai, she says, it was virtually impossible to find paintbrushes and paint,
January-February 2012 Marwar india 119
let alone canvases. Each time she returned to India, she shopped for art supplies before anything else. Now, however, Dubai is embracing art in a big way with several galleries mushrooming in various parts of the city, and young Arab artists busy experimenting with different mediums such as painting, digital work, sculpture and photography. It is almost as if, she charmingly says, following it up with a big laugh, “The Dubai authorities woke up one morning and said, ‘Whoops, we have the biggest, tallest things all happening in Dubai, but no art.’” Needless to say, paintbrushes are no longer on her shopping list in Delhi!
Surrounded by an eclectic bunch of canvases, paintings-in-progress for her current collection, and her 3-year-old daughter’s Barbies, our conversation with Manisha Gawade reflected the parallel dichotomy that makes her work so alluring. Her hearty laugh punctuated the serious appraisal of her work, and filled our time in her South Delhi home with good cheer and spirit. Gawade describes herself as a Delhi girl, but with strong Rajput roots that have marked her character, thought process and value system. For more than a decade now, Gawade and her husband have lived in Dubai and this cosmopolitan city has had an inevitable influence on her work.
From the deserts of Rajasthan to the sandy wastelands of Dubai, which are being developed at breakneck speed, Gawade began her story from the year 1999. When she first moved to Dubai, she says, it was virtually impossible to find paintbrushes and paint,
January-February 2012 Marwar india 119
let alone canvases. Each time she returned to India, she shopped for art supplies before anything else. Now, however, Dubai is embracing art in a big way with several galleries mushrooming in various parts of the city, and young Arab artists busy experimenting with different mediums such as painting, digital work, sculpture and photography. It is almost as if, she charmingly says, following it up with a big laugh, “The Dubai authorities woke up one morning and said, ‘Whoops, we have the biggest, tallest things all happening in Dubai, but no art.’” Needless to say, paintbrushes are no longer on her shopping list in Delhi!
