Artist Priyanka Aelay's new art exhibition explores the forest through unique elements

What if a forest could hold a story Not just one but fragments of folklore childhood memories family and animals In artist Priyanka Aelayrsquos latest works the forest becomes just such a place Itrsquos abundant dense colourful and seemingly endlessAelayrsquos solo exhibition It Will Rain Again When We Meet is currently on view at KYNKYNY in Kala Ghoda It draws from her long engagement with flora and fauna as well as years of research into the folk stories of South IndialdquoMost of the stories that dated back always happened inside the forest or inside a cave that was put inside a forestrdquo says Aelay who has spent the last four to five years researching folk narrativesTo Pull Me Back to the Ground AgainHer paintings translate these oral traditions into visual worlds but without making the references immediately obvious ldquoUnless somebody talks to me they would not know that there is a folk story happening in the worldrdquo she saysRather than recreating folklore literally Aelay wants the landscapes to remain open to interpretation ldquoI like the work to be more universal where anybody from any part of the world can relate to itrdquoThe animals that inhabit these forests have their own stories Tigers appeared prominently in her earlier work partly influenced by her fatherrsquos research into caste mythology where the tiger appears as a vehicle for a community In recent years her attention has shifted to deer and more recently foxesThe Forever GazeThe familiar image of the fox as a cunning manipulative creature however is not the one Aelay is interested in She is looking instead at their softer side and how foxes behave around their families and partnersThere is also a personal urgency to the abundance of her landscapes Aelay grew up surrounded by trees only to watch them disappear as the city changed ldquoAs a kid I grew up in a community and it was filled with trees But as I kept growing then you know they were all cut off for the car parkingrdquoHer forests are therefore less documentary than imaginative They are places one can mentally escape into ldquoThe medium allows me to create an imaginative landscape where one is just driving like you know the density of the image probably pulls you inrdquoThat sense of infinity extends to her use of circular canvases For Aelay the circle has no hard borders much like the moon and the limitless worlds it evokes ldquoFor me the circular fits better for my work because itrsquos also something that is subject to the moonrdquo The landscape could be above the sea or below it in the sky or somewhere imaginedUltimately though these paintings are about storytelling and the way stories travel ldquoThe whole world runs on storytelling Thatrsquos how I see the worldrdquo Aelay says Like the folk tales passed down by grandparents and carried forward through generations she sees painting as another way of keeping a story aliveWHAT It will rain again when we meet mdash solo exhibition by Priyanka AelayWHERE KYNKYNY 4th Floor 20 Gool Mansion Homji Street Kala Ghoda Fort MumbaiWHEN September 9 to October 1 Monday to Saturday 11 am to 6 pm