Laila's vision of truth and beauty

Beauty is truth, truth beauty (Left) and Les Fleurs du mal

This time her theme is based on the distilled knowledge that she gleans from her reading. She uses soothing blues, greens and purples and brings in haystacks, boats with female figures and flowers harking back to Bishnu Dey and Shudhrindra Nath. The base of her mixed media comprises poems and philosophy that she has read over the past 15 years. "Other artists are influenced by poets and thinkers, but I don't think that they are involved in them to the extent that I am. The exhibition is an intellectual journey. I've tried to give the compositions a soft, lyrical effect to show my leanings towards romanticism. The works are darker than before," says the artist.

Laila works with colours and space to present the turmoil around us as well as the arcadia that we have lost. She is preoccupied with Madame Sosostris, the socio-comic clairvoyant who tells our fortunes and hyacinth, the symbol of sexuality in Wasteland. The images of evil are also taken from Les Fleurs du Mal. She presents the alienation and stagnation that was seen in the works of Eliot and Baudelaire. The mixed media work as well as the room of the installation in the exhibition tries to answer the question of what is beauty in a dialogue of the self and soul.

We see how the artist has shifted to philosophical moods. She works with such titles such as Black rain, Death, Elegy while delving on art and morality and balancing between the themes of life and death. Death brings in the dark powers of evil. "Here the moon is blue and the colour of rain is black. Even the sperm, the first flag-carrier of life is blue", Laila says. The works are weighed down by the anguished images of Sartre and Cy Twombley. Spontaneous beauty deals with Wordsworthian romance of pantheism. She brings in the snake and withered leaves as symbols of death just as she paints dhundul and kash flowers.

An installation is also included in the exhibition. This consists of dust jackets of books on poets, philosophers, social commentators and creative writers. There is then the fortune teller with a parrot that picks up cards revealing the future. Also, in the installation is a sleeping woman with the mythical Shonar kathi and Rupar kathi (wands of gold and silver) stuck to the bed on which she lies. This is inspired by Michelangelo's statue Night. There is again, a mirror, into which one can peer and examine oneself.

Laila has had eight solo exhibitions and over 20 joint exhibits at home and overseas.