Delfina Resident 2021: Priyanka D'Souza — Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation Blog

Priyanka D'Souza is the 2021 Delfina Resident.

Drawing inspiration from Mughal miniature paintings, Priyanka imagines her practice to be much like a ‘muraqqa’ or ‘wunderkammer’, a collection of strange, marvelous and wonderful things.

I graduated in Painting from M. S. University, Baroda, in 2017, and am currently pursuing my MA in Arts and Aesthetics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. My work draws much from both the politics and aesthetics of Mughal miniature painting practices and I use fiction as a tool to subvert and redress lacunae and exaggerations in what we believe to be historical ‘truths’.

Figure 2. Gypaetus barbatus, 7 x 5”, Watercolour on Wasli, 2017

Figure 3. Capra ibex (Archive of Imagined Citizenship), 7 x 5”, Watercolour on Wasli, 2017

I am particularly fascinated by the concept of the Mughal ‘muraqqa’ or album—a term originally used for a Sufi’s patchwork garment. A muraqqa is an assemblage of curiosities like heirloom Mughal and Persian paintings, European prints, Mughal copies of European images, prized snippets of poetry from late master calligraphers, and often, collages of these combined elements—arranged in a codex book format. My art-historical interest focuses on natural history in relation to paradigms of truth and wonder in the 17th century between the Mughal court and early modern Europe and how Emperor Jahangir’s commissioned animal portraits in these muraqqas are comparable to their contemporaneous European Wunderkammers or Curiosity Cabinets.

Today, in a time when mainstream history is being retold to support nationalist agendas and the Mughals among others are being written out of history (cover image), the multiplicity of narratives (historical and otherwise) have become endangered. My use of endangered zoological specimens from Natural History Museums (fig. 2, 3) and absurd creatures in early modern scientific texts (fig. 4, 5), allows me to draw attention to the varying degrees of threat to life, narratives, histories, as well as biodiversity in the subcontinent.

Figure 4. Encyclopaedae Schkupadalia 2 (Archive of Imagined Citizenship), 10.5 x 9.5”, Etching, 2017

Figure 5. Detail from Mirror Fish (The Bahamut is Dead). Watercolour and clay on Paper. 2019

And so, on this battleground of the ‘true’ version of history and ‘fake news’, I work around miracles, monsters, and ‘mirabilia’—Latin for ‘marvels’ or the Arabic, ‘aja’ib’ (from which our current Hindi word, ‘ajeeb’ is derived). My paintings, often made from waste paper, polythene, scrap-materials, industrial materials (fig. 6), and sometimes even discarded artworks, are accompanied by texts, artist books/scrolls, found objects, and mushroom-sculptures (fig. 7). Mushroom sculptures are mycelium set on a substrate of newspapers reporting contradictory stories during a controversial political event. The mycelium hence consumes the news literally and fruits as edible Oyster mushrooms that we can, in turn, can consume so as to imply the various filters information passes through before it reaches us.

Figure 6. Mythologies and Mushrooms- Whales in Barosa; Size: 6” x 4”; Medium: Gouache on paper, plastic, MSeal, copper wire.

Figure 7. Whales in Baroda- Books, Mushrooms on newspaper substrate, and Found objects

My artist books/scrolls allow me to juxtapose my research, magic-realist fictions, and found textual material with her visuals (fig. 8), using the gestalt principle of album-making i.e. the whole is more than the sum of its parts. My academic writing is centred around monsters and the aja’ib (strange/ unbelievable), particularly in imaginings of borderlands of nation-empires (like Kashmir and Ladakh), and as applied to anomalous/disabled bodies. I thus imagine my practice to be a large muraqqa—a colourful assemblage of bits and bobs, odds and ends, endlessly fascinating historical trivia, and a whole lot of blah (fig 9).