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“Enlightened Obscurum”
Bansri is an Indian painter living and working in Mumbai. She thinks of herself as “a storyteller of the world about us”, raising the relevant questions about life, soul, and awareness. Art – like meditation – is a means to dive into oneself. “My art is like a mantra given by my master – love, live, laugh, give!”.
She found her artistic vocation in 2001 when her native village in Gujrat was hit by an earthquake reaching a maximum felt intensity of X on the Mercalli intensity scale. The earthquake killed around 20,000 people, injured another 167,000, and destroyed nearly 400,000 homes. Amongst the ruin of the disaster, art stood for Bansri like the only hope to help herself and her community. “That’s how I started a loving caring tango” with painting, along with an operating role as an activist in her own community. Sharing and social awareness have since been the deepest impact in her life and her artistic path.
Her inner push to help soon became involved in many humanitarian projects. Bansri works as an art facilitator in Shivkul Commune: an institution in the foothills of the Himalayas in Uttaranchal India, now having joint efforts to build up a school with a principal base for arts and culture. Also along with the American painter ROMANHO, she is co-founder of “NHO“: a global campaign against child abuse in the poorest countries of India.
Her technical process finds her more inclined to linen canvases and oils, but she may also pick up pen and ink, waters and charcoal as fine ingredients for what she calls “my art curry”. It is definitely a unique style of melting borders between techniques in a strong and personal manner. “When I paint I try to bring into my oils what I love in waters, and the texture and quality of charcoal. It’s not conscious but it happens that way […] My art develops the best when I know where not to interfere.”
It’s a process near to a sort of automatic writing. “When something keeps hammering, again and again, I do write on it.” Bansri does not identify with her work, but rather offers herself as a medium to reveal hidden meanings that go beyond her ordinary state of consciousness, dwelling in a middle-earth between human and divine: “my works often reveal wisdom to me more when I stare at them in between.”
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