ANOUSHA PAYNE

Anousha Payne joined us on the project in June, 2021. During her time with us, Payne created a series of works in response to the South Indian Myth (translated from Kannada), A Flowering Tree (1985). The story follows a young girl who turns into a tree so her sister can sell its flowers. Attracting the attention of the king’s son, who catches her transforming, she is forced into marriage. Her new sister-in-law makes her transform, before damaging her branches and abandoning her as a tree. Unable to completely return to her human form the girl is left without hands or feet. She becomes an almost ornamental object in the Palace, for the artist, this conjures imagery of the classical bust, although limbless she is a thing of beauty. She is only able to return to a woman after her husband takes care in fixing her broken branches and leaves. Despite its violent ending, Payne was attracted to the story’s ethos and potential ecological lessons, using the folktale as a point of departure for the work. Throughout the story the girl always transforms for others rather than herself, the artist plays on ideas of self-preservation in response to this. In Payne’s paintings, the girl performs not for others, but for herself. 

Anousha Payne’s work explores the human pursuit of spirituality in object form, as a form of cultural expression that is distinct from religious symbolism. Through the process of psychic automatism and free-association, she is interested in whether it is possible to imbue spirituality into an object, and in the material qualities of religious or spiritual objects; how the material qualities of a work impact our experience of them, and the processes by which they are made inform them. Expanding on narratives found in Indian folktales her work investigates the boundaries between personal experience, fiction and myth. Another element to the work is storytelling through simple gestures and expressions, reflecting on human interaction and communication.

The deployment of bharatanatyam hand gestures is used as a way of connecting with her cultural heritage as well as being used for their known symbolic meaning. Often deploying a reptile skin, Payne’s ceramics are intended as hybrid objects, a reminder of the fluidity and shared qualities between humans, animals, the natural world and inanimate objects, questioning material hierarchies and values. This process seeks to build an aesthetic dialogue and personal visual language as a meditative interaction.