Rupture from Rapture emerges from lived experience shaped by chronic illness, delayed diagnosis, and prolonged encounters with medical neglect. Rooted in Sejal Patil’s experience of endometriosis, the exhibition unfolds across painting, charcoal drawing, and installation, positioning the body as both subject and site. Pain is approached not as spectacle, but as accumulated knowledge—endured, internalised, and gradually transformed through artistic process.
 |
| Artist: Sejal Patil |
At the centre of the exhibition is the medicalised body and the systemic dismissal of women’s pain. Years of misdiagnosis, invasive procedures, and emotional invalidation inform a visual language marked by fragmentation, internal blockage, and repetition. Rather than depicting clinical events directly, the works absorb their psychological and physical aftermath. The body appears disrupted and overwhelmed, resisting clinical objectification and insisting on embodiment as lived reality rather than abstract system.
Diptych Paintings: Inflammation, Closure, and Vulnerability
The diptych paintings form a central body of work within the exhibition. Developed during periods of physical immobility and prolonged confinement, these works emerge from a deeply vulnerable state. Bedridden and isolated, the artist turned inward, using painting as a means of self-closure and survival. Form plays a critical role in these works. The recurring central shape draws upon the vaginal form, not as explicit representation but as an embodied reference to pain, inflammation, and endurance. The figured body, shown in a squatting posture, conveys states of physical distress, vulnerability, and numbness. Presented as a diptych, the body is distributed across two planes, suggesting division and rupture, and resisting containment within a single image. Vulnerability is not concealed or softened; it is integral to the work’s visual and emotional structure.
Charcoal Drawings: Confusion and Internal States
The charcoal drawings operate as a parallel, more immediate register. Executed intuitively, these works emerge from states of confusion, numbness, and internal chaos. Scribbled marks evolve into bodily forms, echoing sensations of inflammation and internal pressure associated with endometriosis.
Here, the body is not externalised but mapped internally. Lines overlap, compress, and entangle, reflecting moments of mental overwhelm and physical immobility. The drawings function as visual journals, capturing fleeting psychological states rather than resolved compositions. Their rawness resists refinement, preserving the instability of lived experience.
Stitched Works: Repair, Resistance, and Material Memory
Thread and fabric introduce a materially distinct yet conceptually linked body of work. These stitched surfaces bring the language of repair, care, and persistence into the exhibition. Stitching operates both as action and metaphor—binding, holding, and mending without erasing damage. The act of stitching becomes a slow, deliberate counterpoint to the urgency of drawing and painting. Fabric, often associated with domestic labour and femininity, carries bodily memory. Threads trace wounds rather than conceal them, acknowledging pain while asserting endurance. These works reflect an attempt to hold the body together when it feels internally ruptured.
Process as Survival Across all media, process remains central. The works are not outcomes of conceptual planning but emerge from necessity. Painting, drawing, and stitching become therapeutic acts—ways of coping, enduring, and reclaiming agency within a body marked by pain. In this context, vulnerability is not weakness but a mode of truth.
Rupture from Rapture holds intensity alongside fragility. It does not offer resolution or recovery narratives. Instead, it makes space for witnessing—allowing pain, care, and resilience to coexist without hierarchy.
Review By Mukur Biswas
