Sacred Square , 101 Meditations on Paper
Solo Booth presented by Anupa Mehta Arts
India Art Fair 2022, New Delhi
April 2022

Text by Deeksha Nath

Chetnaa is a New Delhi based minimal abstractionist whose work in the suite of drawings Sacred Square – 101 Meditations on paper (2021) are constructed on a singular geometric shape, a square which through the mechanical tools of addition, subtraction and substitution displays immense artistic and experimental potential.

The 101 drawings in mixed mediums are contained within a 3 x 3 inch square on a 9 x 9 inch sheet of paper. Included in this encompassing presentation, smaller series can be identified: white on white, black and white, white and gold, black and gold, thread on paper and mixed media works with archival maps. What has emerged from the chrysalis of this disciplined and meditative practice is the artists’ first sculpture Sacrosanct, a black and gold folded square crafted from mild steel. Blending seamlessly into the artist’s oeuvre representing balance and precision, Sacrosanct brings to mind Sol LeWitt and Ellsworth Kelly’s pioneering work from the 1960s which set in motion the aesthetic appreciation for the formalism and tactility of minimalist sculpture and its invitation to contemplate space and to become aware of being in a particular moment in time and place.

Chetnaa draws inspiration from the sites she inhabits but these are not domestic or intimate spaces. She has a passion for maps, their distinctive ability to spatially render histories and civilizations with limited representational resources. The distinguishing geometry of her practice grew out of watching the lines of her city, its buildings with their windows and doors, the roads with their lanes and zebra-crossings and overhead, the sky crisscrossed with wires. In the work ‘No. 95’ what looks like a schematic representation of a house is in fact an image drawn from a distillery in Scotland; it was the view that the artists’ looked out on while on residency in 2014, after winning the Glenfiddich Emerging Artist of the Year award. Unlike the works of the late artist Zarina, who used a similarly restricted palette and schematics, Chetnaa’s quest is to find harmony in the balance of positive and negative space, in growth through serial experimentation and in an exploration of the aesthetics of form.