TINKAL KHATRI

I am an art practitioner residing in Jaipur and recently been graduated with a degree in painting yet my practice is everything beyond painting including especially printmaking and relief sculptures. Houses or buildings and birds feature very regularly, almost like a leitmotif in all my work. This is from my observations during the period of lockdown when I used to spend a good amount of time on my terrace observing the behaviour of birds and construction, body of houses.

 

I like to play around metaphors, where sometimes the houses represents where I belong and other times, symbolises entire homo-sapiens and their behaviour; birds symbolise nature (mostly) and the egg, which is to show beginnings and origin. I take care of how materials work and its inspiration is mostly from a craft practised regionally in and around Jaipur, the craft of wood-block printing. Woodblock printing is a relief printing technique that uses wood to transfer colour onto fabric or paper. The wood is carved with tools in intricate designs, the block serves as a stamp, with the final product resulting in a mirror image of the carving. The stamping is done enough times until the overall fabric is covered with the pattern. I witnessed some similarities between printing and printmaking and making my move to bridge the gap between two.