In the end, everything we do is but an act of gaining control, or letting go. It’s a constant tug between the two for artists, this writer imagines. Take for instance, Ground Control — yes, a nod to the song Space oddity by David Bowie — an upcoming exhibition of woven paintings and their drawings by late artist Kanishka Raja at Experimenter Colaba. It brings together artworks from Raja’s repertoire that he painted, before having them woven by master weaver Dipak Haldar on double-weft handlooms in Phulia, Bengal. “As a result of this, he would lose control over the woven paintings as the weavers would weave it as per his instructions, although he had a strong role in the procedure. He was interested in processes, and especially in his later works, to talk about the ideas of control,” shares gallery co-founder Prateek Raja.

Kanishka Raja with his creations