Threads of memories: Artist weaves in gossamer demolished Delhi home in Venice

Artist Sumakshi Singh's Venice Biennale installation, 'Permanent Address', revives her demolished childhood home in Delhi through a haunting threadwork mesh suspended from steel wires.

Artist Sumakshi Singh's now-demolished 'family home' in Delhi floats like an apparition at the historic Arsenale building in Venice - an intricate mesh of threadwork suspended from thin steel wires adding to the haunting appeal of the razed house revived through the magic of art.

For Sumakshi, this installation, titled 'Permanent Address', currently displayed at the India Pavillion of the ongoing Venice Biennale, is both an act of artistic resurrection of the house which her maternal grandparents built and lived in as well a means to come to terms with the loss of the 33, Link Road home at Lajpat Nagar.

The house, with an Art Deco feel to it, was built over the years starting 1951, and demolished about eight months ago.

In her biennale work, the Gurugram-based artist has depicted this house as fragmented and partially demolished, saying she ''wanted people's heart to break'' after seeing it.

In an interview to PTI over the phone from Venice, Sumakshi shared that in 'Permanent Address', she has attempted ''nearly life-size recreation in gossamer'' of the post-independence house that her maternal grandparents built after arriving in India as refugees from Pakistan post the Partition.

''After my grandparents died, this place (33, Link Road) felt so solid and permanent, but it started to feel a little bit vulnerable, like a ghost of a space. So, I went into the house before it was demolished, and I measured every single brick, every crack on the brick, every hinge, every bolt, every small detail, and tried to replicate it in my work,'' she said.

It was built over several years, and so ''no two bolts are of the same size'' and solid metal grills in the window have layers of enamel on it, the artist recalled.

At the Arsenale, the traditional venue of the biennale, slender steel wires hold a maze of threadwork and intricate embroidery depicting bricks, windows, doors, cracks on walls, ornamental grills, evoking a ghost of the past, a lost link, and a memory frozen in gossamer.

''I wanted it to look transitory and somewhat transparent. I didn't want to 'build' a three-dimensional house. I wanted it to look like what a flower looks like when pressed between the pages of a book, and becoming flattened memory of something that existed. It's akin to ethereal veils of memories that are arranged like a labyrinthe,'' she told PTI.

The artist, in a philosophical tone, underlined that everything in life is temporary, yet humans, deep inside have a ''poignant sense of desire to find something permanent'', a thread that binds when things appear transitional.

The artistic avatar of 33, Link Road house rises 20 ft high and stands 27 ft wide, compared to the original house, which was 60 ft wide and had a height of 35 ft, she said.

''But, inside the assembly of threads, every brick, door or staircase has been depicted life-size. The assembly of the facade, I have made a bit shorter by reducing the upper floor to fit in at the venue,'' said Sumakshi.

In her work, she has also recreated on a small scale the zodiac artwork that existed at the old house, embedded in a wall.

Recalling her nostalgic ties with the now-razed house, the artist, who was born at a hospital in Delhi in 1980, said that as a newborn, she was brought straight to 33, Link Road from there.

''Five generations of family have been through it. But my immediate family, my father, mother and brother used to move around a lot, as my father had a transferable job. So, we lived in rented houses. Thus, on our passports and all our official documents, it was this house, which was listed as our permanent address, which is 33, Link Road in Lajpat Nagar,'' she reminisced.

Sumakshi, who holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) and a BFA from Maharaja Sayajiro University, Baroda (MSU, Baroda), has lived in multiple cities for education, teaching and for art projects.

''I have lived in Delhi, Bombay, Hyderabad, Madras, Kanpur, Baroda. I lived in Chicago, and in Italy and France, but wherever I lived in year after year, this (Delhi home) was the only constant. So, it always had this sense of permanence in our life,'' she said.

For the artist, the subject of her work felt a lot more personally poignant as her maternal grandparents, both of whom were born in undivided India, lost their homes after the Partition, moving as refugees to India after Independence.

''My 'nani' ji, whose father was in the railways, lived in multiple cities, like Quetta, Campbellpur, Lahore and Karachi, while my 'nana' ji, was from Abbottabad (now in Pakistan). My 'dadi' was from near Lahore, while my 'dada' was from Phagwara, India,'' she said, adding, ''my 'nana' and 'nani' got married on May 12, 1947 in Firozpur, a place near the border, months before the Independence''.

The theme of the India Pavillion at the Venice Biennale, which opened earlier this month, is 'Geographies of Distance: Remembering Home', and it explores memory and belonging in a rapidly transforming world.

''I wanted to recreate my relationship with this house, which once felt so monumental and huge, but now is like an ethereal thing, a memory or a ghost or something,'' the artist said.

''And, my most common memory is sitting in the garden, and learning to embroider and knit with my grandmother. That's why I chose thread as my medium actually. It has to do with her, and my mother,'' said Sumakshi, imbued with nostalgia.

All five participating Indian artists - Alwar Balasubramaniam (Bala), Sumakshi Singh, Ranjani Shettar, Asim Waqif, and Skarma Sonam Tashi - whose works are featured in the India Pavillion, draw inspiration from material culture traditions that span millennia to evoke an emotional connection to the concept of home.

The 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia began on May 9 and will run until November 22.

The India Pavillion has made its return to the prestigious Venice Biennale after a seven-year hiatus.