House of Objects by Arti Kadam

Arti Kadam’s works are cathartic, for they emerge from the inner chamber of the house, literally and metaphorically. They tell stories that are seldom heard in the living room, or front yard. The inspiration for Arti’s works primarily comes from quotidian kitchen utensils, shaped and refined through generations of craftsmanship. The sculptures that she creates resembling pot and pans, vessels and spoons in wood and fiber glass evoke an intimate world replete with memories and emotions. Created by processes of scrubbing, touching and caressing, they are objects of distilled feelings and refined abstraction.
What matters most to Arti, above all is the poignant references that these objects make to the human body, to the psychological depths that they contain and hint towards. In her hands these objects become the alphabets of life, embodying meanings both at personal and collective levels. She employs them as tools to plumb into the reassessment of the self to conjure up experiences of pain, desire and dreams. One cannot miss the proximity between the forms she makes, and the processes of making them. The act of chiseling, shaping and polishing are labor- intensive and an act of healing at the same time. This constant touch and refinement slowly weave their enigma around the objects, lending them, over time, patinas of continuity, ephemerality, and longevity.
It is obvious that Arti does not seek to repudiate or subvert the femininity surrounding her works. She wants, instead, to address the anxious, difficult and lonely ways that these feelings make themselves felt. Her works are not loud statements. What makes them special is the delicate ways in which they embody the tension of observation, and the play of the surreal in the formulation of a personal, even feminine, language. What makes them relevant is the keen and perceptive way in which intimate and personal disquiets resonate with similar concerns in larger and wider worlds.

- VASUDEVAN AKKITHAM