Pop Art
Woodcut Print
48×60
Champa Sharath is a Bangalore-based print maker. Her work is acclaimed for the reinterpretations and depictions of religious text which is a big part of the Indian society.
Gum boots, jeans and leather jackets,
Gallant rides across the times, to
Narrate forgotten glories, to lift spirits
Narrowed by unmarked reasons we outgrew.
This painting is a part of a series by the artist that is a modern retelling of 20 chosen verses of the Hanuman Chalisa. This piece, in particular, is perhaps the most capricious of them all because it depicts the god as a modern being cruising around our world with his Royal Enfield motorbike. The painting seems to blur the line between the legends of Lord Anjaneya (another name for Hanuman – the monkey god) then and the modernism that has pierced into our culture now, and blends it to form a quirky image of the god that perfectly harmonizes with the verse she has chosen (mentioned at the bottom of the painting in Devanagari script) – “All through the four ages your magnificent glory is acclaimed far and wide. Your fame is radiantly acclaimed all over the Cosmos.”
The simplicity of the dichromatic colours really makes the minute details stand out and the addition of the famous ‘gada’ (mace which is the weapon of Lord Hanuman) hanging on the bike is the cherry on the top.
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