Lalitha Lajmi

Lalitha Lajmi, painter and printmaker, used traces of autobiography, imaginative narratives and psychoanalysis, moving on many levels of genre, technique and concept. Her work is a visual biography, revealing dichotomies that are both humorous and tragic, with images as recurring metaphors. The performer, often a clown, plays out expected domestic and societal roles, the mask conceals shifting undisclosed identities and the skull is a vanitas for the constancy of death. At the Biennale, a series of reprints of zinc plates from her 1960s archive executed by the students of Sir JJ School of Arts, which included Tejswini Narayan Sonawane, Shrinivas Mehetre, Nikhil Raunak and Sachin Bonde (Clark House Initiative, 2012), will be on display, referring to her role as a mentor and inspiration to the younger generation of printmakers.