‘Deformation is more appealing than formation sometimes’

“While forming something, many things go through deformation. Sometimes, this deformation is more appealing than the act of formation. My work deals with the process of formation and deformation of lines,” Manisha Jiani says.
Jiani also says, “We mostly think that we need a lot to express ourselves in a better way. Sometimes, this act makes things more complex. Although a simple, strong element with its full strength can also be a better option for expressing our thoughts and feelings.”
Due to her illness, she used to get irritated by her surroundings and this thought led her to draw a hard line on her sketchbook to calm herself.
As she turned over the page after drawing the line, she found the impression of that line and found it quite amazing that the line was actually not there, but still she could feel its existence.
Then she drew the line with an empty ball point pen on wasli (four layered sheet) because she was thinking that wasli is a hard sheet and it could easily bear the pressure of the lines she wanted to draw.
“I made three to four compositions of lines in this manner. As I was forming the hard lines, one of my waslis was damaged and the straight lines lost their form. Miniature painting is a very delicate work. From the making of wasli to the style of rendering, everything is supposed to be very finely done,” she explains.
This kind of wasli is never acceptable in miniature painting. “Even in our routine life, we mostly reject the deformed objects and prefer things in the perfect form, but this deformation had more beauty than the composition of fine lines I had made earlier,” she adds.
After that, she continued with these formed and deformed lines. She used the needle (a printmaking tool) to get the scratched effect of lines.
In her work, she concentrates on visual appeal to support her idea of beauty of deformations. She also focuses on the existence of line in life. She believes that everything, somehow, follows lines.
In her compositions, she uses different formats like script, falling drops of rain, style of rendering in miniature painting or cityscape, which follow the lines and are also linked with her life.