Osian's Auction Catalogue Indian Modern and Contemporary Art | March 2008

157 123 Reena Saini Kallat (b.1973) Braiding The Line S/d in English on Verso, “Reena S. Kallat 2002” Oil on Canvas, 2002 31.0 x 81.0 in (78.7 x 205.7 cm) INR 1,200,000 – 1,600,000 USD 30,000 – 40,000 ‘In ‘Braiding the Line,’ she chooses a subaltern figure, a fisherman, to weave a tricolour with his robust hands: elephants and peacocks, Gandhiji and Vinoba Bhave are held together in this net of succulent vines. The fisherman, a black-and- white figure salvaged from mediatic debris, takes on the aura of an archetype. He flags the universe as if he were hauling in Indra’s net. The most intriguing detail in this painting is a large watch on th fisherman’s wrist, counterposed with the icon of Kalki, the tenth and future avatar of Vishnu(the preserver of cosmic order and righteousness in Hindu religious thought), which occurs as an auspicious pictorial notation. This icon, rendered like a folk toy, stands for a utopian future where disorder will be replaced with order. Reena knits the narrative with the poetics of time. Three layers of temporality co-exist in this triptych: chronologicqal time symbolized by the watch, natural time reflected by the flora and fauna in the net, and mythological time by the popoular political and social icons of the past, the whole dominated by the cosmic and cyclical scheme represented by the avatar of kalki.’ – Nancy Adjania rpt. in Reena Saini Kallat Rainbow of Refuse Bodhi Art ExC 2006.