What artist Chintan Upadhyay did in Anda Cell | Eye News,The Indian Express

The Mumbai-based artist on his prison-inspired work, the power of art and how inmates turned collaborators

After spending nearly six years in prison for the alleged murder of his estranged wife and artist Hema Upadhyay and her lawyer Haresh Bhambhani, when artist Chintan Upadhyay left Thane Central Prison on bail in September 2021, he had hundreds of artworks that needed to be transported. “It is not a cohesive body of works but my recordings, which includes sketches that could propel future works. If it wasn’t for art, I do not know what I would have done,” says Upadhyay, 49, from his Navi Mumbai home-cum-studio.

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He distinctly recalls the events of December 11, 2015, when the bodies of Hema and Bhambhani were found in the northern Mumbai suburb of Kandivali. Upadhyay was in Delhi, where he had moved in 2011. Preparations were underway for his exhibition that was to be held in February 2016 in Vadodara, where Upadhyay would have unveiled two years of work with the series titled Gandi Baat, comprising caricatures of men, women and children, and addressing subjects of aggressive male gaze, abusive gestures and moral policing, among others.

With him being arrested days after the murder, the exhibition was cancelled and the artist found himself in prison. “For the initial couple of months, I was in a cell with over 400 people. It is certainly painful and difficult being there, away from friends and family. It is a tense atmosphere and there is constant fear,” says Upadhyay.

It took some prodding from the then superintendent at the prison for the artist to pick the paintbrush again, when he was requested to make preparatory drawings for a mural that depicted prison life — the scene included inmates cooking, cleaning, working in karkhanas, playing board games, volleyball and so on. Few months later, he made his first acrylic on paper in prison — a deformed elephant with elongated legs, hatching from four eggs. “I don’t remember how the painting began but perhaps the eggs were suggestive of the name of my prison cell, the Anda Cell. The elephant is struggling to find its feet and move ahead with its brittle legs that are erupting from hatched eggs. It is trying to gather strength. The work also depicts what I felt at the time,” says Upadhyay. Exhibited as part of “Art from Behind Bars” initiative (of the NGO Dagar Pathway Trust) in Mumbai in 2017, it was purchased by filmmaker Kiran Rao for Rs 4.5 lakh. “I donated the proceeds to the Prisoners’ Welfare Fund. In some ways, the sale aroused curiosity within the prison. Previously, some people had come up to me and shared that they had seen my work. Many knew about the installation at Nariman Point (City of Dream),” he says.

https://indianexpress.com/article/express-sunday-eye/what-artist-chintan-upadhyay-did-in-anda-cell-8002269/


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