From earthy clay to human emotion, Alakananda Sengupta breathes soul into terracotta

The language of Alakananda Sengupta’s sculpture is disarmingly simple — as though it wraps us in a blanket of affection. Her mode of expression is candid. It speaks while looking straight into the eyes, striking directly at the viewer. Though she works with metal, wood and ceramics, she appears most at ease in the ancient medium of terracotta. In one sense, she has given the medium a new form: her terracotta is coloured. She applies the colours before firing, ensuring their permanence. She is perhaps the only sculptor consistently experimenting — and doing so successfully — with such use of colour in terracotta.

Alakananda’s sculptures variously capture nature; a war-ravaged world; primordial, eternal love; destruction; injustice and protest against it; the arrogance of patriarchy; the mindlessness of dirty politics; and woman. Woman as a contemporary presence, as the woman of today, and as the eternal feminine. The melancholic woman; the helpless woman exploited by sexuality; a woman’s love and resistance; and the Kali-like form of woman — tongue out in shame — inhabiting a poisoned environment and a diseased world.

An exhibition of her work from the past three years, titled Ekak Alakananda, opens on 14 February at the New South Gallery, Academy of Fine Arts, and runs until 19 February. This would be her solo exhibition after a gap of 14 years!