Published online | 04 Sepember, 2018

Minam Apang used to describe herself primarily as a painter; it was much later that she even thought of the word ‘artist’. However, from automatic drawings to installations, she seems to have gone through the whole gamut. While her fluid renderings on paper/cloth are a metamorphosis of her imagination into the visual language of a painting, she believes that stories can be told through any medium, be it writing, music or visual representation.

Her interest in art began at a young age, with the understanding of perspective and the realization that with drawings, she could make things up as easily as they could be broken down. With a keen eye, a desire to play with reality as it exists and perceived had planted the seeds for further exploration.

And thus, began the journey of years of experimentation with processes and mediums, forms and structures. Apart from several platforms in India, she has been part of international platforms like the Asia Pacific Triennial, Brisbane and ‘The Ungovernables’ Triennial in New York. But she does not believe that she is quite there yet- “I feel like I still have a lot of groundwork to do…some people are faster; some people are slower”.

Her visual vocabulary is no more dependent on myths and legends. Her paintings now evoke the viewer to seek new stories in them, creating their own phantasmagoria. About using myths and legends as her subject, she explains that this is a subject that everyone can connect with at any point. They are archetypal and open-ended.

However, Minam does not want to pigeonhole herself as an artist who works exclusively with myths and legends. She has now started looking at other topics, themes and mediums to tell her stories. Of late, her creative search has found a new hook- Goan music. For the past two years, she has been going back to her foundation in music. “There is storytelling in that too”- her curiosity, however, has just scratched the surface and she realizes that it might take longer than she had expected to do something with it.

Read more here.