With an introduction by the esteemed Shri Gulammohammed Sheikh, Curator Siddhi Shailendra will present an exhibition at Akar Prakar, LTC Bikaner House and The Stainless Gallery by over the course of July and August.
“To stand before a sculpture by Nagji Patel is to encounter a distilled quietude, a stillness, in which the form, balance, and texture are held in perfect tension.” “The exhibition, ‘Still, They Speak’, attempts to trace the arc of a career that exemplifies a grounded and disciplined approach to an artistic practice, even with his monumental oeuvre.”
~ Siddhi Shailendra, Curator
As artists, we’re caught between a rock and a hard place in today’s digital landscape. The challenge is to capture the diminishing attention spans of potential consumers of our art, to make more “content” and faster, turn every single hobby into a “productive side-hustle,” and keep up with the demands of social media, ensuring the most polished result. Ironically, sculpture, like all art, simmers at its own pace and needs the craftsman to be physically involved with the material with which they are working. It is this meditative slowness and physicality of sculpting in mind with which Siddhi Shailendra has curated an exhibition containing the vast sculptural work of the late Nagji Patel.
Nagji Patel, born in Gujarat in 1937, was a remnant of the era when India had found itself on uncertain ground during and after independence. Patel shed rather than built his sculptures, using both polished materials and rough materials such as sandstone, wood, marble and granite, like the historical sculptures of Mahabalipuram and Badami. “For Patel, this opposition is not a hindrance but a source of meaning. The chisel and the hammer are not merely tools but instruments of negotiation, through which the sculptor listens and responds to the latent possibilities of the block.” “In this sense, the title of the exhibition, Still, They Speak, is not merely literal but also emblematic of Patel’s practice, baring, elemental and meditative,” writes Shailendra.
Patel’s sculpture and sketches contains this affinity for nature, agriculture, living forms and his childhood years. Patel’s sculptural practice is one of “unmaking” rather than “making.” It is the very foundation of the work which is most present, where nothing that needs any changing is changed. “This sense of introspection became a hallmark of Patel’s sculpture. His forms do not shout; they whisper. Their power lies in their restraint. They echo the traditions of temple sculpture and folk carving, but they also converse with modernist masters such as Constantin Brâncuși and his mentor Sankho Chaudhuri; artists who, like Patel, sought to distill the essence of form without abandoning its sensual and spiritual charge.”
Nagji Patel’s sculptures are the result of a “prolonged engagement and continuous research” of the material. “We see not only the finished object but the durational labour that produces it—the dust, the rhythm, the waiting. In an age increasingly dominated by digital mediation and physical alienation, Patel’s practice is a reminder of the potency of slowness, of repetition, of staying with the material.”
“Still, They Speak is therefore not just a tribute to Nagji Patel’s extraordinary contribution to Indian art. It is also an invitation to return to the physical, the contemplative, and the deeply human act of making. Patel’s sculptures do not speak in grand narratives or ideologies. They speak in weight, in touch and the simplicity of its form. Thus offering something rare: a space for presence and silence.”
~Siddhi Shailendra
Nagji Patel
Still, They Speak
LTC, Bikaner House
- 11th July – 21st July 2025
Akar Prakar
- 11th July – 11th August 2025
The Stainless Gallery
- 26th July – 11th August 2025
Citizen of The World. A musician, artist and writer. Social media manager at Abir Pothi
