Well-known city-based painter Atul Dodiya is back with a solo show about a child's interaction with Gandhi. All of this conveyed through 12 blackboard paintings and a cabinet installation

While artist Atul Dodiya has used Gandhi as a theme in his paintings before, this time he has used a different image of Gandhi in a unique art form to create what he calls a deeply personal work. In 1999, Dodiya had done an entire show on Gandhi titled 'An Artist Of Non-Violence'.


Atul Dodiya's Bako Exists. Imagine will be exhibited September 10 onwards

What is the exhibition about?
The exhibition is a text-based work. It comprises 12 paintings in the form of blackboards with text written on them. There is also a cabinet filled with photographs and other personal references. I chanced upon a Gujarati book by well-known author Labhshanker Thaker many years ago. Here, a boy, Bako, has a conversation with Gandhi in his dreams. The Gandhi referred to is not the regular Gandhi everyone associates with. There is no mention of the freedom struggle or non-violence. But one gets the impression of an informal Gandhi who speaks almost like a grandfather to the child.