Resting in Afternoon

Madhvi Parekh, who enjoys a unique position among India’s modernists for her indigenist vocabulary, creates narratives that have been read as eclectic mixes of folk art and the modern visual language. The idyllic setting, element of fantasy and the imagined, albeit anthropomorphic figures in her works, lend them an air of magical realism, or ‘magical humanism’. Created in 1985, this large work presents one such marvellous scene—the use of space is masterful, the postures show creatures at leisure, and there is an absence of the real-world hierarchies resulting in a sense of community. All animals are equal, and in this case, some are not more equal than others.