Indian contemporary artist Ritu Dua shares her story an interview with Anjali Singh for the Asian Curator.
The earth is my school and nature is my teacher. I am an amalgamation of what all I have chosen to do and am absolutely enjoying this pure, boundless extravagance! When I am alone in nature everything feels sacred.
Contemporary artist Ritu Dua
Please tell us a little about yourself, what brought you to the world of art and how did you start?
I am self-taught, I learn and get inspired by the things around me. The earth is my school and nature is my teacher. I am an amalgamation of what all I have chosen to do and am absolutely enjoying this pure, boundless extravagance! When I am alone in nature everything feels sacred.
My styles and techniques have developed with time from simple sketches to abstract to installations and sculptures. I am an experimental artist and a sustainable art activist. My works are vibrant and thought provoking. I volunteer for underprivileged kids and they love to learn through art and creativity. Write poetry taking my art as inspiration, and vice versa. I feel art is silent poetry and poems are like art that speak to your heart.
I feel that my words elevate my artwork; they are an expression of my true positive self.
Contemporary artist Ritu Dua
I could not formally study art and design because of family circumstances and ended up doing an Hons. in English and a Master’s in economics. After finishing my education, I took up a job in Banking sector. After some years I shifted abroad with my family and had to quit my Bank job. Then after a break I started teaching. My job was fun filled, challenging and at the same time quite fulfilling. But we kept moving from one country to another and I kept switching my jobs too. Now all these years there was not even a single day that I lived untouched by art. I was constantly creating. I was creating for my own self, for my own heart. Finally, I left all other jobs and let myself be drawn by the strong pull of what I love to do… create!
“Samovar”, Solo Exhibition Between Brew and Bin, Art2Day Gallery, March 2019, Pune. A tapestry created with hundreds of recycled and treated teabags, stitched and embroidered. Each teabag here is a story of the tea estate workers and drinkers. The show was a tribute to the workers in tea plantations.
What is the primary role of an artist? How do you describe yourself in the context of challenging people’s perspectives via your work and art?
I feel the prime role of an artist is to make you conscious of the things that you actually don’t see.
Artists have the power to reach out to society and attract direct public attention. We can reach audiences more readily than plain, inaccessible, tedious results of scientific study. And, we can make them feel emotions in an inspirational non-intrusive way.
A child may not swallow a pill unless you break it apart and put it in honey. Pleasing aesthetics or altered versions of reality are like honey. They provide a medium for deeper thoughts (the medicine) to slide through the mental oesophagus. Shifting people’s perspectives on the issue of environment and sustainability is essential to create the real change we will need to ensure a liveable future. But I also recognize that these psychological shifts need to be paired with individual as well as collective actions. So, I have been exploring ways to connect my artwork with real ways for viewers to plug into these issues. I think art is also about creating a dialogue; a discussion, a diversity of meanings and voices that can change something eventually.
I sincerely hope that my work can create a tangible connection to problems that seem really big and abstract.
How do you deal with the conceptual difficulty and uncertainty of creating work?
When I work around a concept, I am confident about what I want to communicate through my work. I also allow a lot of steps to flow intuitively. In fact, I find this whole journey right from thinking process, planning for the materials and techniques, meeting the unexpectedness and the final execution, extremely exciting and invigorating. However, creating a work that uses a hundred percent of sustainable material is sometimes a big challenge. Like for example I may need some wood or metal or similar things while creating an art installation. If I buy them new, I make it sure that after the exhibition I reuse and recycle all that material.
What would you call your style? Let us talk about the evolution of your practice over the years. Tell us about your commitment to your current medium.
I am an experimentative artist. From the very beginning I would draw and paint whatever tickled my fancy without being too judgemental. I believe in the minutest of details. The question that my work tries to address is always the same however and that is trying to understand my relationship and connection to the natural world, which I still find a total mystery.
Regarding my current medium there is one thing I would say which I have been consistently creating art with, and that is a used teabag. Strongly believe that “Trash is the failure of imagination”.
I love the unpredictability of materials we throw as trash. I get easily carried away with their strange shapes, textures, colours. Feel such things always carry a story to be heard as against their state of abandoned worthlessness. I was busy in my own world of rainbow colours, painting and enjoying each sip of my ‘chai’ (tea). Suddenly the beautiful stains of tea on the teabag grabbed my attention!! I was completely at awe!! The shades of tea and the various hues which had appeared, after I had brewed it for some time fascinated me!! While I sipped my tea, the tiny little soggy teabag sat quietly on my dish staring at me for some love!
Installation View: “Little Pockets of Hope”, Kalaghoda Arts Festival, February 2018, Mumbai. A reminder to save and sow seeds for a bountiful harvest in the years to come. Each recycled and treated tea bag here safely carries real seeds inside. Also used rescued branches, dried seed- pods, twigs, leaves, flowers, and other such findings from nature.
Contemporary artist Ritu Dua on her the beginning of her tryst with teabags in art
And so, I began. Initially I failed for it is too thin and flimsy to work on but then, learning from my own mistakes I could do it! Yes, I could finally create miniature artworks. Each one of them has a different tea-stained background and each piece is a unique piece of art! The teabag would otherwise have found its place in trash. It was my curiosity that led me to my passion of creating art with a difference – art that not only pleases me and satiates my soul but also brings a smile to those who get a chance to look at it!
I feel each teabag is a story. It is a story of the tea estate workers as well as the drinker who finally consumes the tea. It gives me the scope to stimulate a sense of rhythm and melody in the heart of the viewer evoking nostalgia and memories. So, I am in love with my tea, my tea bags and undoubtedly the distinctive experience each work is characterised with.
What inspires you? Let us talk about your frameworks, references and process.
I romance the earth. I know and love her as a beloved within myself; see my reflection as her reflection in the mirror of my heart. It is my bliss.
I am a nature lover, passionate about mindful living, organic healing, earth elements, zen like home spaces, yoga, and meditation. To me, nature is precious and wondrous. It is our attitude, our intervention that causes the mayhem.
I love to explore the uniqueness of a place, its culture and traditions, the languages, ethnic components, the food, the attires, handicrafts, climate, and terrain are all magical visual pieces of the puzzle. I also find beauty in battered vintage objects, old architecture while it still stands and try to discover awesomeness in unusual places. My love for all things nature has inspired me to live a sustainable lifestyle.
Contemporary artist Ritu Dua on sustainability in art
Connecting art and sustainability requires creativity and unconventional approaches, a challenge I love. I therefore exercise practices in my daily routine life which can be counted as sustainable – like creating furniture from reclaimed wood, shipping palettes and recycled plyboards among other waste material.
My work respects and worships life and each little moment, every process in this journey is a ceremony. I completely immerse myself into the process of creation. While doing so my thought process takes my work to the rarest place, and the outcome is often surprising and carries a strong message. I intend to create thoughtful, arresting work, reliant on layers of narrative within the pieces themselves and within the history each viewer brings.
Can easily say that I draw all my inspiration and references from nature. I use found objects from nature trails, leaves, twigs, roots, seedpods, and flowers in my work. Every step of my process with used tea bags, right from sourcing to cleaning, treating, observing the existing stains to creating embroidery or simple stitches involves a particular pace and rhythm. It is time-consuming and needs a lot of concentration and focus, but at the end it turns out to be a one-of-a-kind experience that is really fulfilling.
Exhibition view: “Tea Hive”, sculpture with recycled and treated tea bags, Solo Exhibition – Between Brew and Bin” Art2dDay Gallery, March,2019, Pune. Inspired from the essence of a beehive. The tea estate workers work very hard as a community and show us that life is interdependent, quite like bees.
Let us talk about your career, or if you prefer artistic journey. What were your biggest learning and hiccups along the way?
I have been a banker and am also a qualified Post Graduate Teacher. Due to my husband’s job we have been in and out of India all these years. This made me resign from my job and I took to art as my calling.
I believe that when you step into a space where nothing is guaranteed, it is enthralling as well as challenging. In the early phase of my artistic journey everything looked uncertain. Learning to navigate through the art world without the background of a formal education in Art has been quite challenging. Art cannot be categorised as good or bad. Similarly, an artist is an artist, not a superior artist or an inferior artist. I believe a great piece of art is when it takes you on a journey and you remember it for a long time. So, whenever I was questioned about my educational background, I always say that ‘Passion is my qualification.’ It has been a remarkably interesting journey so far. I have been a part of some of the great art projects and exhibitions and look forward to many more.
Think of the biggest professional risk you’ve taken. What helped you take that risk?
Risk and uncertainty are an artist’s friend, and I try to keep my work open to all possibilities, deviations, and directions. Taking a wrong turn or unexpected direction is often more productive than getting things right straightaway and getting lost can have some real surprising results. Working back and forth between organic elements, patterns, textures, colours, recycled materials, is the process that keeps me engaged and the sense of mystery fully alive.
I have taken up this intriguing challenge of creating unique art from used teabags to add a perspective of value to this trash (otherwise destined to the bin). Giving these discarded teabags a new and extraordinary life as an artwork is a demanding yet gratifying process.
Wont name it as a painstaking endeavor but a very meditative journey. I began with a single teabag and now use hundreds of them together which is absolutely fascinating. I began with sketching and now I have done installations, created a paper sculpture and made a tapestry too.
Like many artists who work with recycled materials, who feel their work carries a serious purpose and mission, I hold a similar feeling in my heart. But at the same time, I have fallen in love with these little sweethearts! I absolutely love their feel, their feather like lightness and the soft textures! And this, I know, is more than enough to keep my “artist heart” beating.
Tell us about your artist studio, what kind of place is it?
I design my daily rituals.
A typical day in my life begins with a prayer in my heart showing gratitude to the Almighty for all the abundance he has blessed me with. I get up every morning determined to do be my creative best and that I will make the most of my day. Feel blessed to be living in abundantly beautiful surroundings, with nature all around; so my day begins with a nature trail which gives everything else that follows during the day twice its usual value.
I am in the process of bringing up my studio as we have shifted to this place quite recently. So right now, my home is my studio and these surroundings are my inspiration. It is my happy space to create, grow, write, garden, practice yoga, meditate and reconnect with what is sacred and what matters most to me. The room I work in is my absolute zen place. Natural light filters through all day long and so does air. I also have a beautiful creeper hugging and clinging to the wall that faces my table and is growing day by day. When I am working, I always play some beautiful music and light an aromatherapy lamp. This way I create an atmosphere that propels me to engage myself in meaningful conversations with my work. It is my refuge and allows me to focus and work without distractions.
Could you describe your usual work-day in the studio?
My day in the studio therefore is like an adventure where I get to choose what brings a smile on my face, what inspires me and strengthens me, what nurtures me and heals me, what is meaningful, what delights, what is true to who I am and what I am becoming. I stay rooted but I am sprouting wings.
I believe that engaging myself with creative activities everyday keeps negativities at bay.
Are you more of a studio artist or naturally collaborative by nature? How do you feel about commissions?
Working solo fosters my creativity. It gives me the freedom to take my art in any direction I want to. It is all about my own ideas, my self-expression and what I want the final piece to deliver.
When collaborating you are bringing together many different ideas and perspectives which impacts how the final piece will turn out. Here we can lose our natural trajectory, intuition, or instinctual aim. But then I believe like in life, there is a balance. As individuals, we must learn when and how to step aside and listen, when to look for others for help and guidance, and how to take it all into consideration as leaders of our own creativity. Collaboration opens the mind, opens the imagination, fosters growth. Though I have not got any chance for a collaborative work, but I would definitely like to give it a go once I get one.
I like to do those works on commission which are exciting and would challenge me to be more creative.
What was your first sale? Do you handle the commercials yourself or is it outsourced to a gallery/agent?
This question takes me back to Dubai where I started my journey with tea bags. The first piece which I created on a recycled tea bag and exhibited at Al Bastakiya during Art Dubai got sold immediately. It was such a beautiful moment for me. This sale will always be in my memories because it was my first and gave me the pleasure inexplicable. It was a pen and ink work on a single tea bag.
I handle my own commercials.
How does your audience interact and react to the work you put out into the world?
I think a sincere work always carries a wow element. It is a little extra than ordinary.
Waste I feel is just displaced abundance! I believe my work is sensual. By being sensual here I mean to respect and rejoice in the force of life, and to be present in the now and to be mindful of all that one does. By way of my works I have managed to reach people through their eyes and hearts. The not so familiar brings surprise, strikes a chord, and gives food for thought. Through my unexpected artworks I aim to show how we can shift people’s perception, how we can transform purposeless objects into meaningful creations and how we can stop ourselves from getting consumed by what we consume.
My works show that something can be achieved out of nothing. I believe that admiration for nature is inherent in all of us but tends to get subdued for most of us who live busy consumer-oriented lifestyles. Through my work I am just trying to bring the viewers closer to nature and I think I have been quite successful at that. They are pulled in to take a closer look at what is going on in my works as there is always more to it than what meets the eye. They have often told me that my work is organic, interactive and optimistic.
Fate of future generations depends upon our doings and not doings now. I am just doing my bit.
What are you working on now? What’s coming next season?
Future is bounTEAful I am sure!
As I mentioned earlier, I continuously develop my art methodology. The journey teaches me interesting techniques, and, in the process, I evolve!
So many things are going on in my studio right now. I am collecting seeds, seedpods, leaves, flowers and similar blessings from nature for my upcoming projects.
At present I am working on a canopy like installation work which will have a lot of discarded textile pieces some found objects from my nature walks and my favourite recycled teabags.
Before you go – you might like to browse our Artist Interviews. Interviews of artists and outliers on how to be an artist. Contemporary artists on the source of their creative inspiration.
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