Fiction Books 2024

Yesterday (5 Jan 2025) I had put the list of non-fiction books I had liked in 2024. Today, it is the turn of fiction books.

Over the past few years, my fiction-reading had declined and I found it difficult to finish reading books. Most often I stop reading a book around 50 pages, because it does not grab me sufficiently. Yet in 2024, I managed to finish reading 15 books, which are presented below. I have divided them into 3 main groups - mysteries, action-thrillers and general fiction.

Let me start with the general fiction books.

General Fiction Books

1. George Washingtom Black by Esi Edugyan (2018) is the story of a young black slave boy called George in early 19th century, who was known as Wash. The book traces his journey with a man called Christopher Wilde, or Titch. Wash lives at a plantation called Faith in Barbados and after the death of its owner, the plantation passes to Erasmus Wilde. New owner's brother Titch arrives in the plantation, dreaming of making a flying balloon and he takes Wash as a helper. He discovers that Wash has a real talent for making illustrations. As their friendship grows, a tragedy makes them run away in their experimental flying balloon, which crashes on a ship ... It is a strange story, a bit fable, a bit magical realism, but very readable.

2. The Strange Journey of Alice Pendelbury by Marc Levy: Marc Levy is a French author. The original title of this book was "L'Etrange Voyage de Monsieur Daldry", the book is about two persons, Ethan Daldry and Alice Pendelbury, who live in the same apartment building.

Ethan is a painter, who likes painting busy traffic crossings and Alice is a "nose", someone who invents perfumes. They go to Istanbul, in search of something they are not sure of, though Alice has nightmares which suggest hidden secrets in her past. The book is light and interesting with nice characterisations and great dialogue. Though the story has a darkness at its core, it is a a book full of hope.

It is also very European, very distinct from American and English books.

3. Travelling Light by Lynne Branard (2017): This is another book about a journey. It is the story of Al (Alissa) who goes on a road-trip to carry a box of ashes of dead-person to that guy's home town, half-way across the USA.

She meets people on the way who join her journey. There are some bits in the middle where nothing seems to happen and the book drags. It seems as if the journey has not really changed anything for her, till after the end of that journey.

The book is an easy and pleasant read, it did not grab me and there were bits where I felt a little impatient, but in the end I was glad that I read it.

4. The Sweet Remnants of Summer by Alexander McCall Smith (2022): AMS is a prolific writer of mystery books and has different series of books. I am a fan of his Isabel Dalhousie books based in Scotland. I don't like his series based in Botswana and I have yet to read any book from his Scandinavian series. This book can also be placed under the "mystery" category, however, the mystery element is a tiny part, so I have preferred to put it in the general fiction group.

In this book there are Isabel Dalhousie, her musician husband Jamie, and their 2 sons, with a lot of moral dilemmas and witty one-liners. The mysteries they need to solve are not so big  - children who bite other children, an estranged family who thinks that their son is having a relationship with another boy, and an orchestra director who wants to give promotion to his lover, without antagonising other members of his orchestra.

It is a very gentle book and I loved it because of its ambience, characterisations and witty dialogues.

5. The Wolf Run by Kirstin Ekman: Kirstin is a 91 year writer from Sweden. For me her The Wolf Run (2021, origin title "Löpa varg") was the best book I read in 2024. I had taken the book from our library because it was a part of our reading group books and so I read it in Italian translation (Essere Lupo).

It is a little book and a simple story of a seventy year old man who has been a hunter all his life and on a new year morning he sees a wolf near his camper. The book is a meditation on life and on getting old. It is also about the bond between a couple, who have spent a life together, who understand that the season of death is not far when they lose their old dog. It is poetic and touching.

As I grow older, often I find myself thinking like this book's hero Ulff, so maybe that has influenced my choice of the best book.

Mystery Books

1. Bum Deal by Paul Levine (2018) is about a defence lawyer, who used to be a boxer, and is probably going to develop dementia. The lawyer is in love with his neurologist, and is asked to be the state prosecutor for a missing-woman case.

The missing woman is Sofia, wife of a "sawbones", an orthopaedic surgeon, with "cold reptilian eyes", who likes lap-dancers and blocking the carotids of his sexual partners till they fall unconscious. Sofia's powerful father is convinced that the surgeon has killed his daughter and would do everything to send him to jail. Except that nothing is as it seems. The book has a wonderful final twist. It is very well written with a lot of witty dialogues.

2. Winter Work by Dan Fesperman: I liked this old-style spy-mystery from 2022 because of 3 reasons -

(A) its setting, location and period - the story takes place on the two sides of the Berlin wall in 1989-90, when the wall has just come down, the East German system is coming apart but not yet destroyed and Americans are trying to get info from the East German secret police regarding the Russians; 

(B) the core characters in the book are very well drawn, with depth and distinct inner worlds with unusual stories. For example, Emil Grimm the retired East German secret police colonel, who can be considered as the hero, has an interesting love triangle with his paralysed wife in terminal phase of ALS and her friend, who is also her care-giver;

(C) and the story is well written.

3. Lost Hills by Lee Goldberg (2020): It is about a young homicide detective, Eve Ronin, in California and her first case of triple murders of a mother and her 2 children - someone had killed them with a knife and then dismembered them and hidden their bodies. The guy is caught relatively early in the book but it is difficult to find the evidence about what really happened and to link him directly to the crime. The book is a race against time to find the missing bodies and some evidence. The personality of Ronin and her relationship with her work-partner, who is waiting for his retirement in a few months, as well as crisp writing are all plus points.

The final parts of the book, about the superwoman kind of detective are a bit excessive, but the book is a good thriller-mystery.

4. The Ruin by Dervla McTiernan: This was my first book by the Irish writer and I am aiming to read more of her books. She writes beautifully with very richly imagined characters.

It is a police procedural about a detective sergeant Cormac O'Reilly who has relocated to a small Irish town and is asked to uncover the story behind a young girl and her brother, victims of child abuse, he had known 20 years ago. Book's bad man is a hidden psychopath, who goes about his merry bad ways without anyone guessing about his deeds for a very long time, almost like a superman.

In spite of such an unrealistic killer-hiding in the plain sight, it is to the credit of the writer that she can still manage to make the story seem credible and interesting. It really got me and I finished it in 2 days.

5. The Heron's Cry by Ann Cleeves is a beautifully written murder mystery set in a small community where everyone is connected with everyone else, so that even between the victims and detectives, there are links. The chief detective, Matthew is gay and his husband also plays a role in the mystery-story.

Each chapter of the book is written from the point of view of different characters (but not from the point of the view of the murderer), which gives this book an interesting variation as you can see the issues from detectives' as well as from other persons' point of views. The only chapter which seemed cliched was the one in which the murderer explains the hows and whys.

Action-Thriller Books

My action-thriller books also has 5 books, including two action-thrillers by Barry Eisler. In 2022, I had loved reading Barry Eisler's The Chaos Kind, which had an international group of assassins working together to save the life of a US attorney. Eisler writes great action-thriller books and he has created an inter-connected world of books about those assassins. I read two of his books this year and I think that I am going to look for more of his books in 2025.

1. Graveyard of Memories" (2014) by Barry Eisler is about how a CIA guy in Tokyo manipulates a Japanese guy Rain to become an assassin and about Rain's love story with a beautiful paraplegic girl of Korean origin. The book has great action scenes, good pace and enough twists, but what makes it special, are the psychological dialogues the assassin-guy is having with himself as learns about the zen of being an assassin, using mindfulness and careful attention to details, as one would in a tea ceremony.  Highly recommended for people who like action-thrillers.

2. Killing Rain" (2005) by Barry Eisler, has the same hero, John Rain, at the end of the his assassin career. He starts using his skills to protect good people. It also has 2 more assassins from the Barry Eisler's assassin world - Dox, the tall and good-natured American guy, and Delilah, the Jewish girl from Paris who works for the Mossad (Israelis).

This book also has great action, nice bits about assassin psychology and brief but strong emotional parts as well. I think that Killing Rain was the earlier title of the book and it is also available as "Redemption Games". Our library has some of the Barry Eisler books, so it is very likely that I will read some more of his books in the coming years.

3. The Bourne Defiance by Brian Freeman (2023) is set in the Jason Bourne world made famous by the books of Robert Ludlum, on which many films have been made. Different authors seem to be writing books based in that world and Brian Freeman is one of them.

This action-thriller is based in the USA and it is about a senator, his assistant, a secretary of state, and a cool-headed spy-killer with two women who love him. It has nice pacing, and a lot of action. It is a good fun book for fans of Robert Ludlum.

4. Insidious by Brett Battles (2020) has an unusual action hero called Nate, who can talk to his dead-wife Liz and she tells him about women in situations of danger who need his help.

Nate also has a Thai girl friend and partner called Jar who is on autism-spectrum. They need to solve the mystery of a girl who was kidnapped as a child, had managed to run away. Many years later, she has found her kidnappers and wants revenge but her life is in danger. The book has well-drawn and unusual set of characters. It is recommended for the fans of action-thrillers.

5. Deadlock by James Byrne (2023) is an action thriller with a witty hero called Desmond Aloysius Limerick, aka, Dez, who paraphrases half his sentences with "Love" and has a whole trove of nice one-liners. For example, I liked, "The God answers all prayers, sometimes the answer is no."

This book's villains are nerdy looking techs, a philanthropy-promoting TED speaker and some instagram-influencers.

Dez is better than Tom Cruise and Dwayne Johnson combined, he can kill hundreds and destroy whole buildings, so the thrills go together nicely with popcorn munching. It is recommended for good entertainment value for fans of action-thrillers.

Conclusions

This year I also liked some Italian books but since they are not translated into English (for example, a couple of books by Ilaria Tuti), I have not included them in this list.

Last year (2024) also has been good for me for writing books. I write in Hindi and in 2024, I finished the first draft of my third book - I really like the way it has turned out. A gentle love story, I think that it will make a great film.

I am now writing something else, and intended to go back to reviewing and rewriting my third book after a gap of a couple of months. In the meantime, I am still waiting for the publication of my first book, it was accepted by a Delhi publisher in 2023 but I am not sure when it will come out.

I am hoping to read more good books in 2025. Best wishes of a happy reading 2025 to all of my readers. If you have read some good books, do tell me about them in the comments below, thanks in advance.

If you like non-fiction, you can also check the non-fiction books I had liked reading in 2024.

*****

Non-Fiction Books 2024

In 2024, I decided that every time I will read a book till the end, I will note down my comments for my blog, instead of trying to come up with a list of books at the end of the year. Thus, this time making a list of my recommendations has been easier and is comprehensive.

This post is divided into 2 parts - this first part is about non-fiction (6 books) from 2024, while the second part will be about fiction books.

1. Spring Chicken - Stay Young Forever (Or Die Trying) by Bill Gifford  (2015)

It is a 2015 book about ageing, living longer and becoming older with less health-problems. It looks at the whole world of living longer movement - from what does ageing means, what causes ageing, the impact of ageing on different body-systems including muscles and movement, heart, lungs, brain and neurons, metabolism, etc. and and what can be done to slow down this process.

The author talks to the well-known experts and researchers in each domain, as well as to people with crazy ideas who are trying to stay younger and live longer. Most such books are repetitive, they have only a few ideas, but this book takes a wide overview and hardly ever repeats itself. It was my first read in 2024 and it got me straight away. It is a well-written book.

2. Midnight's Machines - A Political History of Technology in India by Arun Mohan Sukumar (2019)

It touches on an unusual theme - the relationship between culture of a people and technology. I had never thought about the cultural attitudes about technology in India in this way before reading it, and it made me rethink about some of my earlier beliefs. In India, we have beliefs about nature, environment, divinity and our own (human) role in the larger scheme of things.

Many of these ideas are expressed in terms like Gandhism, the ideas of self-reliant communities, the beauty of small things, and the distrust of modernity and technology (and of rich industrialists). The book touches on all these and how these affected pre-independence and post-independence developments in India, the role played by Rajiv Gandhi and even greater impact of Y2K disruption in bringing a grudging acceptance of technology to India. Though youth is enthusiastic about this change but the book suggests that the older distrust has not yet disappeared, it continues to shape our decisions even now. A very interesting read.

The Indian Ideology by Perry Anderson (2012)

This book looks at 20th century's India (at the 120 years period going from the birth of Congress party till the last UPA Government). Anderson's main area of interest has been Marxism and his analysis of the recent Indian history is shorn of any romanticism about India's freedom struggle and the role played by Congress in it.

His main criticism of congress in the pre-independence period is that its ideology was not progressive and modern, but was "Hindustani" (biased towards Hinduism). After independence, his judgement is that there was a confused polity. He looks at the ideas of Gandhi and Nehru, finding much to criticise, conceding some good intentions and a lot of bad choices.

He lays the blame for the creation of Pakistan on Gandhi and congress party "because they wanted a strong central government". He also finds fault with Indian electoral system (it is not proportional representation), inclusion of Kashmir in India, crushing of the independence movements in the North-East and the treatment of Muslims in post-independent India.

I feel that in India, we are used to a fawning adulation towards figures like Gandhi and Nehru, and any attempt to look at anyone critically is seen as sacrilegious. In that sense, I found his analysis refreshing and provocative. However, I do not agree with many of his conclusions for example, that aiming for a strong central government or not allowing successions, were bad choices for India. In any case, I feel that this book should be read for an alternate point of view about contemporary India.

Who Ate the First Oyster by Cody Cassidy (2020)

Simple sounding questions like "who ate the first oyster" or "who invented fire" or "who invented clothes" can lead to a profound reflection on human evolution over the past 3 million years and understand the significance of things that we take for granted.

For example, eating oysters required people to understand the science behind the tides of oceans because the oysters can only be gathered at low tides. It required making a connection between high-low tides with phases of the moon and a keen spirit for the observation of the world.

It is a book about human evolution science and I found it very interesting, full of A-Ha moments. If you like reading the natural history and science books, try this book from 2020 - it is full of new insights.

Age of Revolutions by Fareed Zakaria (2024)

I knew Zakaria only as a TV personality and this this was his first book for me. The central theme of the book is that big and transformative changes occurring in short spans of time, are revolutions for the human societies, each of which follows a trajectory ending with an inevitable backlash of some kind. He focuses mainly on the revolutions in Europe over the past 500 years, especially about economical and social organisation of society, including the technical innovations.

I liked the first half of this book more than the second half. I felt that the last part of this book was scattered and confused. However, even in the second part, I found interesting ideas about cultural backlash to explain part of the Putin-Xi Jinping effects in Russia and China. I also agree with his view that today many countries in the world are not looking to the West to copy its ideas of organising societies, but instead, many of them are exploring their own understandings of modernity.

I also felt that the book sidesteps the whole issue of spread of Islamic orthodoxy, which is another huge phenomenon influencing geopolitics today. This orthodoxy can also be seen as a backlash to sudden modernity and changes in those countries. It seems that some of them, especially in the Arab world, seem to be finally overcoming it, while others, especially Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, seem to be lagging behind.

In conclusion, this book is an interesting read.

The Song of the Cell by Siddhartha Mukherjee (2022)

Pulitzer prize-winning Mukherjee writes big but interesting tomes about themes related to medicine. This book had come out in 2022 and I had been planning to read it for a long time.

In the medical college, I used to love physiology and had been fascinated by the microscopic "organelles" inside the cells, but at that time the understanding about these was fairly superficial. However, over the past decades, thanks to new research and technology (including genetics & molecular biology), our understanding of human anatomy and physiology have improved in ways that I could not have imagined. Thus, I was looking forward to reading Mukherjee's book on this theme.

It is great book, immensely readable, but it is for general reader. For me, it skimmed the surface, giving tantalising glimpses of the new knowledge but not really going deeper into it. For deeper learning about human physiology, I need to read a textbook. However, if you like to learn about the human body, it is an interesting book.

Conclusions

I feel that most non-fiction books do not need to be a full book, they can be much shorter. Most of them have very long initial parts where they talk at length about the context, but most of it is already well-known. When they do touch on their subject, they are often repetitive. Therefore, though I do start reading a lot of non-fiction books, I rarely finish them. Thus, I am really happy that I have 6 books in this list this time.

As the year comes to an end, I am listening to an interesting podcast by Devdutt Patnaik, which is more than 12 hours long. Recently, I had also listened to another interesting podcast with Manu Pillai. Hopefully, in 2025, I will read some books of both of them. This year (2025), I am also hoping to read some biographies, a genre that I have largely ignored so far.

Best wishes of a happy reading 2025 to all of my readers. If you have read a good non-fiction book, do tell me about it in the comments below - thanks in advance.

You can also read about my choice of fiction books that I had liked in 2024.

*****

Mutations Art Exhibition Schio 2024

Our tiny town of Schio in the north-east of Italy has an active art & culture scene. One of the annual events is the Mutations (Mutazioni) exhibition, held usually around the end of the year, held recently from 30 Nov. to 29 Dec. 2024 at Spazio Shed in the city centre.

I want to present 12 artists whose works I liked. I start with 4 sculptures and installations, and follow them by 8 paintings. Click on the pictures for a bigger view.

1. Sculpture by Paolo Ceola: It had a white jacket standing up in the air and asking "Where is the man?" Made of ceramic and oxide combination, it had a shining smooth finish.

With this sculpture, Paolo expresses his fear that we humans are losing our identity.

He defines himself as a experimenter and researcher, looking for innovation, and working with different art-languages including photography, painting, sculpture, videos and films. You can check Paolo Ceola's other works on his Instagram page.

2. The Playful Installations of Roberto Marconato: There were two installations by Roberto in the exhibition. Both had the bust of a young woman, both with headphones listening to music, one in a pink t-shirt placed over a tower of balls and books, and the other with a pink knitted cap, connected to her computer-monitor by a cord.

The installations seem to be talking about a future world, which is partially already there in our lives, where our work and free-time lives, both revolve around technology and even our human relations are mediated by it.

Roberto is a self-taught artist and he defines his art as "surrealistic", with a preference of using recycled materials in his works. You check his other works at his Instagram page.

3. The Colourful & Playful Animal Sculptures of Giorgio Nalon:  Giorgio's animals seem straight out of mythologies and fairy-tales with bright colours. There was a cut head of a zebra resting over a Rubik's cube, vaguely similar to the bronze horse-head sculpture by Nic Fiddian-Green at Mable Arch in London, also reminds me of Mario Puzo's Godfather where the horse-breeder wakes up with the bloody head of his favourite horse in his bed.

Then there was a colourful chameleon, again clutching a Rubik's cube in his front legs. Finally there was a blue frog with a crown on his head, the frog-prince, waiting for someone to kiss him. You can check his Facebook page to see his works of art.

4. The Ceramic Dress by Daria Tasca & Vania Sartori: I was intrigued by this installation created jointly by 2 women artists - a fashion designer and a ceramic-maker.

It had a cream-coloured dress in silk-twill with a front-armour similar to a bullet-vest made of ceramic, out of which shining golden plates come out to surround the neck, while the hands-gloves have blue Sardinian wool gathering in 2 ceramic cups near the feet.

Daria started as a fashion designer and has been experimenting with painting on clothe, mixed techniques with photography and painting, and frescoes on wood. 

While, Vania studied to be an architect and then started to work in her family's ceramic workshop. To see their other works, you can check the facebook page of Daria and Vania.

After the sculptures and installations, lets now move to the works of painters.

5. The Pentatych by Luciano Gasparin: Luciano had put together five canvasses to create a combined rectangle, dominated by shades of reds.

His work was titled La Vita, the life, and had a quote by Seneca, saying, "No one would give you back years, no one would give you back to you; the time of your life will pass on the path you have undertaken and would never come back or to stop passing ..."

The painting combined a few figures - a head, a photograph and a church, while the remaining spaces were filled by abstract colours. It touched me deeply and I spent a long time standing there to look at it. You check his Instagram page to look at his other works.

6. The Immense Blue Ocean of Salvatore D'Oria: Salvatore is originally from Reggio Calabria in south Italy. His initial work was with oil paintings. In the recent years, he has starting doing more work with acrylic colours, which he uses to express motion and movement.

His painting in this exhibition was titled L'Immenso, the Immensity. The blue and whites of this work expressed communications and how the modernity with rushing time takes away our individuality and identity.

7. Suspended Horizons by Paolo Pallara: Paolo had 2 canvasses in the exhibition, both titled "Suspended Horizons", one of which is presented here.

He uses acrylics, tar, oil-pastels and ash to create the dirty yellow backgrounds with a tiny black sun and dark splotches of the horizon, from which black threads reach downwards. He describes these as, "In these suspended horizons, the becoming of days becomes the space where you find refuge ..."

The two paintings make me think of our polluted towns, as the evening falls and the skies turn yellow, both ugly and beautiful, at the same time.

You can check Paolo's Instagram page to look at his other works.

8. Urban Landscape of Claudio dal Pra: Claudio's landscape was located in Chiuppano, a tiny mountain town, not very far from Schio. It was an urban landscape, located clearly at the fringes of the rural-natural and is made ethereal by shades of yellow, old medieval buildings, and a complete contrast to Paolo Pallara's canvas-world above.

In fact, Claudio's colours were lighter and brighter, his buildings seemed wrapped in the mountain mist, almost a dreamland.

You can check Claudio's Facebook page for his other works.

These two artists, Paolo Pallara & Claudio dal Pra, made me think about the aesthetic pleasures of the two completely contrasting styles, and how we can appreciate beauty in so many diverse forms.

9. The Masked Animal by Sergio Polli: Sergio had a gothic looking canvas in the exhibition, with dark colours and a portrait of someone with a hybrid animal face - the face looks like that of a horse, but it also has two big horns - perhaps it is a male deer?

Animal masks have been used by the shamans of ancient people, they represent the capacity to visit the spirit worlds and to talk to the spirits. At first glance, Sergio's work looks like that. However, he has titled it the "masked animal", thus, it is an animal with a mask, probably referring to the animal instincts of certain persons who wear masks to seem civilised?

Sergio had recycled the wood from that used for making boxes, to make his canvas for this painting. His Instagram page defines his work as "recycling for painting, painting for recycling" and likes to use his art to express things for which there are no words.

You also check Sergio's Facebook page to see his other works.

10. AI Art of Annabella Dugo: Annabella had the prints of two very striking works, one titled "Meditation" and the other, "Sin of lust". These have been made with the help of AI.

At one level, it was impossible, not to be fascinated by the two works, for their surrealistic hyperrealism and their choice of subjects & colours. At another, it raised the question about manual artistic skills.

I think that in the past, artists needed to have both, imagination and manual skills to create art. But with AI, it combines imagination with software skills, while the manual skills become unimportant. How is that going to influence our ideas about art? Annabella is a renowned and award-winning artist from Naples, so she has manual artistic skills, yet here she chose to use AI to create these works. How does that affect our views about her art?

You can check Annabella's Instagram page to look at her other works.

11. Painted Glass Works of Loria Orsato: Loria, based in Vicenza, uses glass in her works. In the two works presented in Mutations 2024, she had hand-painted glass on canvas to represent the "Family of long-necked queens".

North-east of Italy, including the famous Murano island in Venice, are known for their glass related works and workshops. Perhaps Loria is a part of this tradition. She defines herself as an art designer and colour-researcher, and she hand-paints on glass.

At the same time, over the past decade, she has been active in dance-therapy, the Dancing Hands, inspired by the works of Argentine dancer Maria Fux. I had heard of Maria Fux from my friend Pio Campo and once gone with him to see him use dance-therapy for persons with mental health problems in Goias, Brazil. I feel that this combination of artist and dance-therapy, makes for an interesting person.

You can check Loria's Facebook page and her Instagram page to see more examplesof her works.

12. The Contrasts in Paintings of Daniela Toniolo: The 12th and last artists for this post is Daniela with 2 acrylic on canvas paintings titled "Rebirth" and "Opposites".

Against a background of grey and purple, the two artworks had geometric spaces, like floating windows and glasses, which seemed to be reflecting into each other, making me feel as if I was getting lost inside a mirror room, which reminded me of the final scenes of Bruce Lee's film "Enter the Dragon".

Daniela is from Schio. About her works, she says, "It can be defined as fluid-ordered, with inexistent brush-strokes, highlighting the diluted and transparent colours, with counterpoints of bright white ..." You can check her work on Instagram.

Conclusions

I felt that this year, Mutations exhibition had fewer sculptures and installations, and fewer works with a strong visual-aesthetic impact.

Let me conclude this post with a close-up image of cubes titled "Eva's Garden" by my friend Eva Trentin from the Mutations exhibition. Eva makes beautiful works by bringing together nature and its organic imprints on different surfaces. Her works are like labyrinths, the more minutely you look at them, the more facets you can discover. You can check more of her works on her Instagram page.

*****

Art & Sculpture At AIFACS

After visiting the M.F. Husain exhibition at DAG, I was walking towards the Central Secretariat Metro station when I saw the AIFACS building at Rafi Marg crossing, and old memories came flooding back.

Let me take a look, I thought, hoping to check the building that I used to visit regularly during the 1970s, when I was studying medicine in Delhi. In those days, the first floor of AIFACS had the British library and I had some very happy memories of hours spent there, looking at and choosing the books I wanted to read.

My first impression from the outside was that the building looked a little deserted, as if few people visited it, while I remembered it as an active space with people going in and out all the time. I asked a guard near the entrance and he explained the reason - the British library is no longer located in this building, it had shifted to Kasturba Gandhi road.

There were some exhibitions going on in the AIFACS galleries and I quickly visited a few of them. Here is a brief update about this visit (the image above has a wonderful sculpture by Aatish Khobragade).

The Lama in the AIFACS Foyer

The first thing that I noticed was that the AIFACS foyer has a new statue. It seems like that of a Buddhist lama. There is no plaque near the statue about the person. I asked about it but no one seemed to be sure about who he was. One of the guards said that it was a previous Dalai Lama.

I think that it can be the statue of the 19th Kushok Bakula Rinpoche (Ngawang Lobzang Thupstan Chognor,), who was sent to Mongolia as the Indian ambassador during the 1990s, when the country had come out of Soviet influence. I had seen one of his statues in a Buddhist monastery in Ulaan Baatar, and I thought that this statue looked like him. For Mongolians and Russian Buddhist he is seen as a very important religious figure.

I hope that someone from AIFACS (or any one else for that matter) can confirm about it - please tell me in the comments below.

Shekhar Ranjan Dutta & His Mythological Art

This was a solo exhibition on the ground floor of AIFACS, presenting the mythological paintings and some sculptures by the artist Shekhar Ranjan Dutta from Cooch Bihar in West Bengal. His paintings were on huge canvasses with a predominance of yellows, browns and reds.

His works reminded me of the stories I used to read in Chandamama, a Hindi magazine, when I was a child. The mythologies of Hinduism are complex and often ambiguous, and I would have liked to ask him how he depicted his paintings which respect those complexities. However, he was busy showing around some persons (in the image below) and I was in a hurry, so it was not possible to talk to him.

Sculptures and Art in the AIFACS Basement

An international exhibition called Nakshatra, was going on in the basement of AIFACS on that day, including some artists from Poland. I did not visit the main room of this exhibition and only briefly spoke to two Indian artists who were presenting their works in that exhibition.

The first was Rekha Soni who had a couple of water-colour paintings in the exhibition (image above). The second artist was Suzain Khan from Varanasi, who had some of her photographs in the exhibition (image below).

Unfortunately, I didn't have much time to actually talk to them to learn more about their artistic journeys. I quickly went around in the central part of the basement, which was showing some sculptures. There were some sculptures there, which I liked.

Among the sculptures, there were 2 works of Surendra Kumar which I liked - Emerging Whispers (above) and Shades of Silence (below). Both these works were in plaster-of-Paris. Surendra Kumar is from New Delhi and is a multi-disciplinary artist - he also had a bansuri performance at the inauguration of Nakshatra exhibition.

I also liked the acrylic on canvas painting by Jyotsna Sharma titled Nature (image below).

However, my favourite artwork in the Nakshatra exhibition, among the ones I was able to see, was a quirky and scintillating sculpture made of aluminium mugs painted purple (the first image at the top of this post) by the Mumbai-based artist Aatish Khobragade - it seemed so full of joy.

Conclusions

I came out of AIFACS feeling a little sad because in my memories, there were hours spent in that building with friends, many of whom are no longer alive. I had little memories of the art galleries below, my memories were mainly about the British library on the first floor.

My hurried visit to the exhibitions consoled me, while I remembered Salman Rushdee's words about imaginary homelands that we carry in our hearts - the old towns, buildings and homes that continue to exist only in our memories.

*****

Insito - Inherent Art Exhibition Part 2

Insito art exhibition, involving 5 artists, four British and one Italian, was organised in Schio (VI), Italy, from 22 Nov to 22 Dec. 2024, and was curated by Monica Pirani. My first post on this exhibition looked at the works of the 4 British artists.

This second post on this exhibition, focuses on the Italian artist (Marta Martino) and on the curator, Monica Pirani. (Below, details from an installation by Marta Martino - You can click on images for a bigger view)

Insito - In Situs - Inherent

Monica explained that 'Insito' comes from the Latin, 'In Situs', or 'rooted and anchored in the context'. She saw this exhibition as a journey which inter-connects the works of different artists. For organising it, she closely followed the creative processes of the five artists, visiting them and observing them create their works.

About her work as an art-curator, she said, "Their shared approach led me to reflect on the existential core from which we draw and into which we pour our knowledge, understanding, and perceptions. I wanted it to stimulate reflections and dialogues in the persons visiting and experiencing this exhibition."

Marta Martino

Marta was the only Italian artist in this exhibition. She works with different media.

One of her works in this exhibition titled "They-Them" was an installation of 24 paintings, on which words from her poetry were projected. For her, it symbolised the creation and destruction of inter-personal relationships and journeys through different identities and personalities. The words and phrases from her poems had their own rhythm, used in a random way, sometimes they were contrasting and contradictory, intending to provoke feelings and emotions. (image below showing part of this installation).

Her second installation was in a room which turned red in the evening-darkness (however, I saw it in the morning light, so could not see this red-light effect). It was a complex installation with different components.

It included the videos of a performance held some months ago in the nearby town of Thiene, in which she was accompanied by 2 performers and a sound artist. During it, for about six hours, she had designed figures on some big canvases, while being immersed in a red light.(The red screen in the image below) In this video seemed to be looking straight at the audience, representing an eye observing us, a kind of ever-present social-media eye.

There was another group of 24 figures painted in red, that could be interpreted as representing different identifies or different emotional states, of a person or of different persons. There were also some ink designs along that wall, from her ebook, where she writes as well, similar to the work done by Anne Grabby.

She also represented the concept of movement and walk, through her walking shoes, placed inside a white net near the window in the image above.

Monica Pirani Exhibition Curator

Monica has been curating art & culture projects and art exhibitions for about ten years. Her work often focuses on inter-connections between different cultures and countries, especially with British artists. Earlier, she was collaborating with a British organisation, organising exhibitions and events in both Italy and UK. She has also worked with artists from Argentina, Japan and China and other countries.

For her, inter-connections also mean bringing together different artistic languages. She looks for new and innovative experiences, instead of repeating what has already been done. Thus, she does not puts up exhibitions paintings or sculptures, instead her exhibitions and events are about different ideas of concept art. She likes to work together with artists to create something in relation to the structures which will host the event, so that there is a dialogue between the space and the exhibits.

Before becoming an art curator, she worked in marketing, as a part of a business management unit for a company. Originally from Turin, Monica has lived for a period in UK and now lives in Thiene for the past thirty years.

In recent years, she has done some interesting work, such as a project called Transparency (in 2019 with Belinda Guerriero) in collaboration with a company from Thiene in 2019, and another, Anima Mundi in 2017, with artists from different countries, held in Villa Fabbri in Thiene. You can read more about her at her webpage.

Conclusions

For a long time, for me "art" meant paintings and sculptures. I was unable to appreciate installations, especially video and sound installations, as an art. I was also dismissive of the whole idea of concept art.

The exhibition Insito brings together different ways of artistic expression, some of which were easier to appreciate for me, while for others, I could see glimpses of what the artist wants to express. For example, I found it easier to see Anne Grebby's idea of extending herself, creating a circle and writing in it as art, compared to Kara Lyons idea of reflecting the water movement on wet-clay as a temporary sculpture.

In the end, like everything else in life, art is about feelings and a connection with something deeper inside us and also around us. Different kind of art can touch us deeply, some of us may be more open to a wider significance of art. IMO, it is important to be open to new and different artistic experiences.

*****

You can also check out the first part of this post about the works of 4 British artists (Emma Critchley, Anne Grebby, Kara Lyons & Maryanne Royale)

Contemporary Art Exhibition "Insito" (Inherent)

Schio (VI) is an Italian town with an important industrial history linked to the wool-mills. The contemporary site-specific art event "Insito" was organised at an old wool mill in Schio from 22 Nov. to 22 Dec. 2024, which was inspired from its industrial history.

Image below shows the story board of an installation by Anne Grebby from this exhibition (you can click on images for a bigger view).

Insito exhibition brought together 5 artists - 4 British (Emma Critchley, Anne Grebby, Kara Lyons & Maryanne Royale) and an Italian (Marta Martino).

The exhibition was curated by Monica Pirani, with whom I had a long and interesting conversation about the contributions of all these 5 artists and this event. For this post, I must thank her for taking the time to accompany me through the whole exhibition and explain at length the different facets of the artists' works.

I am planning to write two posts about this exhibition. This first post is about the four British artists, while the second post will focus on the Italian artist and the work of the curator.

Let me start this post with some information about the exhibition site, The Conte Wool Mills building, which provided the background to this exhibition.

The Conte Wool Mills Building

This mill building is located next to the old city centre and its main water-canal, Roggia Maestra, which passes through it. The mill first started operating around 1757. Its buildings were renovated in 1886 and its roof still carries the bell which used to mark the work-shifts of the mill workers. It was one of the first buildings in Italy to use electric light. The building is now used for holding cultural events. Insito was organised in the mezzanine floor of the old mill.

Now lets talk about the works of the 4 British artists.

Kara Lyons

Kara had two art-works in the exhibition. The first was a temporary sculpture  called Arteria created near the window underneath which the main water-canal, the Roggia Maestra, passes, which was used to power the Conte Wool mill. When the exhibition was being inaugurated, Kara looked at the water rushing below, and reflected its movements with her feet on a wet-clay surface, walking for about 2 hours, leaving her imprints on it. As the exhibition came to an end, that wet-surface slowly dried, creating fractures and breaking down into pieces.

Kara explained, "Arteria is performative sculpture, a durational installation made in situ at the Lanificio Conte. The window exposes the water below, revealing the force of its flow, serving as a testament to its essential importance in the development of the textile industry around which it was founded." 

The second work by Kara was a long rectangular artwork, 10 metres long and one-and-half metre wide, over which she walked for days, her feet wet with graphite and clay, looking at the the water passing below the factory in Manchester, which is very similar to the canal passing underneath the factory in Schio, reflecting its movements in her walk and creating a map of her foot-prints.

She had presented a similar work at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2023.

Kara Lyons & Maryanne Royale

Maryanne, a sound artist, drew inspiration from old historical ties between Schio & Manchester to develop a sound installation in collaboration with Kara Lyons. She collected recordings from Kara's interactions with wet-clay in Manchester. By changing the speed and tones of the sound recordings, she created a soundscape, which formed the background of the exhibition.

Maryanne Royale

The artist was also present in this exhibition with a video installation titled “The Tension That Holds” which was previously commissioned for an exhibition at Leeds Industrial Museum. It was made at an old abandoned industrial building in Manchester, very similar to the Conte Wool Mills building in Schio.

While making this video, she interviewed some of its old retired workers and recorded their voices.

Personally, I feel that sound-installations are a tricky area. Most of the time, we are hardly aware of the background sounds including music (unless we like a specific piece of work, when we may become aware of it). Soundscapes are also background noise-music, they can't be too intrusive. This means that we might not even notice them. I also wonder if among us, there may be some who are attuned t sounds and perhaps sound-installations make more sense to them? 

Emma Critchley

Emma Critchley is an artist who uses a combination of photography, film, sound and installation to explore the human relationship with the underwater environment. Her work Sirens was a triptych of 3 short films in which a dancer performed in front of a screen showing videos of ocean-creatures. The videos of the sea-creatures were from an American research centre and seemed to be bi-chromatic. For example, the video in the image below was in blue and white.

About this installation, Emma said, "Sirens is a triptych of short films where we witness an encounter between a dancer and three creatures of the deep sea. The music and performer's movements offer the audience a portal for connection."

Anne Grebby

Anne's work in the exhibition is titled Fluid Body and is a complex opera composed of different parts. It included an art performance lasting 3 days creating a word-map on the floor.

For this performance she first created a story-board (first image at the top above). She started by marking and creating a circular space around herself. Standing at the centre, she designed a circle exploring the limits with words written with a chalk, and the words expressed her ideas about concepts like culture, emotions, intuitions, and psychology. 

During the performance, she kept writing those words with a chalk fixed on a stick, new words over old words, again and again, creating a kind of web of knowledge and beliefs, that represent our inner worlds.

About this installation, Anne explained, "I write the words on the ground till I lose awareness of my own presence. I write towards the centre of the circle, defined by my own extended body, and then I turn and trace my path towards the outside."

In the exhibition, she also had an installation of archive photos showing 2 of her old projects and performances (image above). One was a work done in Germany where she had used red-clay to cover room surfaces, which would dry and fall down and then the next day she had to reapply it. Another, was a work realised in Oregon, USA, which ended in a fire destroying everything she had created.

Finally, she had prints of her designs and images from her ebook on a transparent paper, which were placed on the window-panes in the exhibition hall, where the water from the canal running behind, was being reflected and creating patterns.

Conclusions

Insito was composed of different multi-sensorial installations. It was an opportunity to see the works of these four very different British artists and to experience a special soundscape.

Such exhibitions, introduce you to a different idea of art - art as an immersion in different sensations and sensory experiences, helping to focus your mind in the present and now. As we increasingly spend more time in virtual cyber-worlds and AI, such art experiences can reconnect us to our deeper physical and emotional cores.

I think that these are developing forms of concept art, which are more about the inner worlds, thoughts and emotions of individual artists. Creating a connection with them and finding meanings which make sense to the audience is very subjective.

*****

Check part 2 of this post about the works of Marta Martino and the exhibition curator, Monica Pirani

M.F.Husain Exhibition, DAG, India

Recently, while in India for a brief visit, I was able to visit the amazing exhibition of Maqbool Fida Husain's artworks organised at the DAG art gallery in Delhi.

Husain saheb was associated with the socialist party of India and as a child, I had met him a few times, as my father's friend. While walking with him one evening in Connaught Place in Delhi, I had once asked my father, "Why does he walk bare-feet, can't he buy some chappals?" I don't remember if my father had answered my question.  I have already written about him earlier on this blog. I love his art.

In this post I want to share the 10 artworks of Husain saheb which I liked in the DAG exhibition. (You can click on the pictures to enlarge them)

 1. Mahatma Gandhi and Jawahar Lal Nehru: I think that like Lohia and other socialists, Husain saheb was a little critical of Pandit Nehru, the first prime minister of Independent India in 1947. The painting above shows, Mahatma Gandhi turning his back and going away, while Pandit Nehru arrives triumphant like a bridegroom on a horse. This refers to the eve of India's independence, when Gandhi ji had gone to Noakhali to try to stop the riots caused by India's partition, while Nehru gave his famous speech in India's parliament, "Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge ..."

2. Indian Flag and Mahatma Gandhi: This is another painting that shows Gandhi ji (below). It has a background of the Indian flag painted over a background of mountains and soldiers with rifles. Gandhi ji is shown sitting closer to the bottom of the central white part, partly hidden by a mountain. The blue Ashoka chakra of the flag can also be seen as a symbol of his spinning wheel (charkha).

At the same time, that blue chakra seems like a spider-web, perhaps to show that Indian republic had chosen to ignore Gandhi ji?

or perhaps, it is not Gandhi ji, but a representation of the China-India war? What do you think?

3. Durga: The third political painting among the works I have chosen, represents Indira Gandhi after the India-Pakistan war in 1971 and the formation of Bangladesh (below). Husain saheb had expressed his admiration for the firm role played by India to host millions of refugees coming from Bangladesh and the help given by Indian army in its liberation, by a series of paintings where India's PM Mrs Indira Gandhi was shown as the goddess Durga, represented by the tiger.

It is a coincidence that today (16 December) is an anniversary of the surrender of Pakistani army to India during this war. The painting also has the famous yellow-blue combination used by Husain in many of his works.

4. Mother Teresa: The fourth work that I have chosen is titled 'Mother Teresa'. Husain saheb had painted Mother Teresa many times. I like this painting, where she is shown through her blue-bordered sari while the persons she cared-for, is represented by a dying man (below).

At the same time, the painting is symbolic of India and its flag with parts in saffron and green, so that the white sari and its blue border can be seen as the white stripe and the blue chakra of the flag.

It is a diptych (two paintings joined together to compose a whole). The grey background seems to express the despair of the poor in the years following India's independence.

5. The Two Maqbools: For me, this was one of his most intriguing works in this exhibition. It was a part of a series of paintings on different religions where he had tried to represent each religion by its key messages and ideas.

There are two Husain sahebs depicted in this painting. The one on the left, has a dark shadow and something written in Urdu below it. I think that the shadow and the words express the physical persona of Husain saheb and his Muslim identity. The second figure, slightly behind and to the right, has his paintings behind him and perhaps represents the artist Husain saheb. The two figures are joined at the heart by a chakra.

The black-ink design is partly overlaid by a block of saffron-yellow square, I am not sure about its significance.

I am very curious to hear about the meaning of the words written in Urdu. If someone can read them (click on the picture to enlarge it), do write to me in the comments below.

6. Self-Portrait of the Artist: This is a more joyful self-portrait, where Husain saheb is surrounded by his favourite themes, which he had painted repeatedly during his life - Mother Teresa, the horses, Ganapati, the poor ...

I wonder why did he choose to depict himself in a military uniform with medals pinned to his chest in this painting? May be he saw himself as a soldier-artist on a quest to depict the soul of India? You can also see his bare feet in all his self-portraits.

7. Artist and the family portrait: This is another of his self-portrait as an artist where he shows himself painting the portrait of a family. Behind the family sitting on a sofa, some paintings of Husain saheb including an elephant and some horses can be seen. Is it his own family, where a child version of him is sitting on the ground in front? (Though the family looks more modern in setting and clothes).

Or perhaps, it is the family of his son and the boy with the yellow shirt is his grandson? What do you think? May be, it depicts his exile to Qatar in his final years?

 8. The autobiography: This is a pictorial autobiography of Husain saheb, which has a comic-book kind of quality (below).

On the top left, it has "A for Abdul" from Pandharpur in Maharashtra (where Husain was born), who sold and repaired oil lamps. Along the oil lamps, he has designed 2 hands raised in prayer. Perhaps Abdul was a childhood friend? or perhaps his father?

Then he has "F for Fida", the time-keeper in a textile mill in Indore. Was that an uncle or a beloved relative with whom he had stayed for some time?

"Z is for Zainab", his mother, her head covered, shown with an open book in front, denoting traditional family values of piety. Finally, he himself is there as "M for Maqbool", the painter as a young man, already bare-feet.

Apart from the horses, denoted as "H for Husain" (probably representing the importance of his art for him), the lower-half of the canvas also has the figure of his step-mother Shireen, who is shown younger, her head uncovered, sitting down relaxed with a hand-fan, that has a crescent moon on it. She seems to be the opposite of his mother's image. I don't know if the crescent moon means that she had left for Pakistan after partition?

I also wonder why he has avoided showing or his father or not specifying his father in this painting?

9. The Arrival: This painting was part of a group titled the Nudes and I chose this one to represent the wonderful use of blues and bright yellows in many of his paintings, which I love and which always make me think of Van Gogh.

This painting has 3 female figures, one front-facing and two seen from the back. The upper half of the main figure is nude and her face is partially covered by a couple of masks or moons. It was titled Arrival.

 10. Horses on a red background: The last painting of Husain saheb for this post is his favourite subject, "H for Husain and H for horses". I have seen some of his other horses-related artworks which I liked more, but in this exhibition, there were few horses. The blood-red background and the frightened-desperate expressions of the animals, make me feel a little uneasy, therefore I won't put this painting in my house.

However, I have included it in my list because it was his most loved theme.

Conclusions

I love Husain saheb's art. While preparing this post, by chance I came across a book by the socialist party leader Dr Ram Manohar Lohia for which Husain saheb had designed the book cover (below). When I saw it, I thought that it was a sign from him that he likes this post (or so I would like to believe!) I hope that you will enjoy reading it, as much as I have enjoyed putting it together.

*****

#mfhusain #maqboolfidahusain #dag #artexhibition