Buttered Bread on a Cat’s Back : The Unlikely Logic of Falling, Floating, Becoming

At Sunaparanta Goa Centre for the Arts, a curious exhibition unfolds. Its title, Buttered Bread on a Cat’s Back, draws from a paradox in popular thought: cats always land on their feet, and slices of buttered toast always fall butter-side down. When the two are combined, they are said to hover, suspended in a loop of indecision. It is from this peculiar logic that the artists of the Sunaparanta Art Initiator Lab (SAIL) Edition Four
have drawn inspiration for their culminating exhibition.

This show marks the end of a ten-month mentorship programme in which ten Goa-based creative practitioners explored, developed, and deepened their individual practices under the guidance of art historian Lina Vincent. The journey was not defined by a rigid curriculum or fixed outcomes. Instead, it prioritized openness, dialogue, and experimentation. Artists came together from different disciplines, interests, and backgrounds to exchange knowledge, question assumptions, and reflect on their evolving roles in society. Workshops, field visits, readings, and critiques formed the backbone of the process, encouraging each participant to take their time, embrace discomfort, and move beyond what they already knew.

The exhibition that emerges from this process presents work across a range of mediums including installation, sculpture, film, drawing, photography, found objects, and text. Together, the projects form a textured and thoughtful reflection on the act of art- making today. They respond to themes of land, memory, identity, transformation, and belonging. Though highly personal, each project is also situated within the shifting contexts of Goa and India more broadly, engaging with ecological, political, and cultural questions in ways that are at once subtle and profound.

Leticia Alvares works with puzzles—both literal and conceptual—as a way of thinking through fragmentation and loss. Her pieces carry traces of memory that refuse to fully resolve, speaking instead to the ongoing process of trying to make sense of absence. There is tenderness in her refusal to complete the picture. Each piece invites the viewer to notice what is missing, what has been forgotten, and what still remains to be reassembled.

Siddhi Arsekar brings an investigative lens to the aesthetics of beauty. With a background in both painting and art history, her research-led practice examines how ideals of beauty are constructed through cosmetic rituals, cultural conditioning, and personal experiences. In her installation, everyday grooming tools are recontextualised, prompting reflection on the boundaries between care and control, transformation and performance.

Shubham Chari draws from his family’s carpentry tradition, combining it with his training in painting and sculpture to create objects that blend traditional craft with contemporary form. His work speaks to inheritance, memory, and the body’s relationship with material. Wood becomes both subject and collaborator. In his hands, it bends, splits, and takes shape in response to emotion, history, and tactile knowledge.

Rutika Dessai brings together art and ecology in her pigment-based works. Drawing from the vanishing natural landscapes of Sanguem in South Goa, she collects and processes local materials to create pieces that hold both image and place. Her practice embodies an act of preservation, as if she is trying to keep the land alive on paper. By transforming soil and natural elements into art materials, she creates an archive of the earth’s presence that is simultaneously personal and political.

Deepa George’s installation centres around the act of letter-writing. Once a journalist and communications professional, she turns her attention to the slow, intentional form of handwritten correspondence. Her work explores how letters carry emotion, reveal relationships, and transmit memory across generations. Displayed in a quiet, contemplative space, the letters call attention to intimacy and the physicality of writing, an act that resists the speed and distance of the digital world.

Geetesh Gawas presents a deeply rooted project titled The Local Bus. What began as a digital channel for documenting Goan life has evolved into a long-form, reflective archive of place and people. In his film installation, moments of transit become metaphors for continuity, adaptation, and social change. The buses he captures move through diverse terrains—literal and figurative—connecting disparate lives and histories with patience and humility.

Pritesh Naik focuses on the traditional Goan art of float-making. Through a combination of research, interviews, and hands-on work, he explores how these large community- made structures reflect collective imagination, aspiration, and resistance. His documentation of the process, along with scaled models and video footage, invites viewers to reconsider the cultural and political significance of festivals, processions, and public art.

Nehal Parker uses natural materials, ritual references, and layered drawings to explore the interdependence of humans and nature. His work is rooted in the rhythms of everyday life and the poetics of the Goan landscape. Through gentle acts of observation and assembly, he creates spaces of reflection that encourage deeper engagement with place, tradition, and ecology. His work is calm, quiet, and insistent, drawing attention to what we often overlook.

Shriya Pant works across writing, painting, and photography. Her pieces often begin with conversations—between herself and others, or within her own thoughts. She is drawn to the emotional residue of the unsaid, to moments that slip through language but leave a trace nonetheless. Her images and texts unfold slowly, leaving space for ambiguity, vulnerability, and introspection.

Venkatesh Pai approaches drawing as an active, ongoing experience. Rather than using drawing to depict something seen, he treats it as a way of thinking and becoming. His large-format works accumulate marks, gestures, thoughts, and moods. They feel like weather patterns on paper. He does not aim to resolve his images, but to let them expand and evolve, suggesting that certainty is neither necessary nor desired. Collectively, these ten artists form a vibrant, multi-disciplinary cohort. Each of their practices stands independently while also reflecting shared values cultivated during their time together. What emerges from the exhibition is a sense of mutual influence—of artists learning not only from their mentors, but from each other, and from the landscapes they inhabit. Their works speak across boundaries, creating new vocabularies for care, resistance, and transformation.

Alongside the SAIL showcase, the opening of Buttered Bread on a Cat’s Back also featured ongoing work by recipients of the VM Salgaocar Fellowship and Emerging Artist Grants 2023. These grants support research-led practices that explore intersections of culture, society, and environment in Goa. Fellows were invited to share their current investigations, offering a glimpse into projects still in development. These included documentary studies, material experiments, archival research, and community-engaged initiatives.

What is striking about the Fellows’ presentations is their commitment to process over product. Instead of displaying finished works, they offer insights into their thinking, methodologies, and questions. Together, the SAIL and Fellowship works construct an expanded field of artistic engagement. The exhibition resists easy definitions. It is neither a group show in the conventional sense, nor a thematic display. Rather, it is a gathering of practices that honour complexity. Each project reveals its own logic, yet all are united by a shared willingness to dwell in uncertainty, to embrace contradiction, and
to treat art as a site of inquiry.

The curatorial vision supports this approach. The layout avoids didactic explanations. Labels are minimal. Visitors are encouraged to move slowly, return often, and let meanings emerge over time. The title itself becomes an anchor and a riddle. Buttered Bread on a Cat’s Back suggests a state of suspended tension—a refusal of either-or logic. It implies that resolution is less important than possibility, that falling and floating are not opposites, but alternate states of becoming. This spirit of openness defines the SAIL mentorship model as well. Lina Vincent’s approach foregrounds listening, reflection, and generosity. Through the programme, artists are not told what to do. They are given space to explore what they might do next. The process is guided by trust, shaped by feedback, and enriched through exposure to multiple perspectives. This methodology allows for real growth, artistically, intellectually, and personally.

Since its inception, SAIL has supported more than thirty emerging practitioners. Its impact is visible in the artworks on display, also in the networks of exchange and care that form around it. The fourth edition continues this legacy, offering a powerful reminder that mentorship is a two-way street. Just as mentees evolve through their experiences, mentors too are transformed by what they witness. Buttered Bread on a Cat’s Back is on view until 15 July 2025. It invites viewers to enter a space where meaning is constantly negotiated. Where making art is less about answers and more about attention. Where the familiar is made strange, and the strange becomes familiar. And where, suspended between falling and flight, artists find new ways to imagine the world.