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GHS Girl Shines as an Artist in the USA

Article published by the Northern India Patrika (November 6, 1998)

Kavita Bali, who studied in Class 1 in 1971 in Girls High School, Allahabad, and who later left for the USA, has flowered into a painter and an amateur filmmaker too.

Recently, at San Jose, the "Shakti Group" formed by some girls of Indian origin, including Romilla Batra, Kavita Bali, Meera Desai, Permi K. Gill, Rajay Ghosh, Zarina and Swati Kapoor put up an exhibition of their works in an art gallery which was widely covered by the media. Here is an extract from the 'India Current' article on Kavita Bali, daughter of Shyama and Madan Mohan Bali, now settled in the USA. Kavita Bali continually strives for new ways to communicate the human experience through a myriad of visual arts. Drawing, watercolor, portraiture, graphic and sculptural design, photography and above all cinema -- which she uses as an emotionally potent kind of "painting on film" -- are all media through which she's found an ability to capture and express her own impressions of other's individuality. By finding means of expression to communicate thoughts, reactions and perceptions clearly and fully, she synthesizes her inner world with that around her and brings the whole to light.

A native of Allahabad, India, she came to the northeastern United States at the age of six (and by seven had won her first international art award). Kavita grew up watching Amitabh Bachchan films that were screened on Saturdays during her early teenage years. Though she retained some Hindi, sometimes the language would be as much lost on her as the white-on-white subtitles. As a result, she was soon captivated by the ability of imagery and movement to communicate and convey emotion, a structural theme throughout her body of work.

Her pieces are all very intimate, whether executed on a personal or a grand scale. In photographic portraiture, for example, she's found if she approaches someone with honesty-and a camera-with true interest and not just a desire to "capture" something and depart, it is a true reaching out to others, a quiet and personal way of communicating. In much the same way, filmmaking offers her opportunities "to cut to the heart of a culture," and themes of cultural heritage pervade much of her work. Two of the films featured in this exhibition, "Birth of a Butterfly" and "Namaste Papaji, " both present themes of overwhelm in which stability and strength are found by drawing on a powerful heritage. A broader cultural survey is represented in the exhibit's dominant construction "Passages" in which Kavita explores the symbolic personal worlds of women throughout life from contrasting Eastern and Western perspectives. As the relationship between the inner and outer worlds shifts, so do the range of available options and opportunities. The sharp delineation's Eastern panels are not necessarily to be taken as a negative statement, just as the eventual removal of boundaries and barriers on the Western panels, while ostensibly liberated, at the same time suffers the for the want of that same clear delineation between personal and societal roles. These and all of Kavita's pieces are inspired by pockets of personal and emotional reactions left to ferment. The lasting caches, which she describes as "white-hot and pure", are thhe potent ones which she uses as raw material to distill into her work.

She creates under the philosophy that there are no limits to what one can achieve, that limits are artificial. "If you can imagine an idea," she says, "you can make it happen. Getting to the point where you can imagine the idea comes through observation, analysis and interpretation. And that comes from expanding the number of ways that you can see. The only true limit is how far your perseverance will take you."

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Article published by the Northern India Patrika (November 6, 1998)