French artist’s works of lyrical abstraction on show in Auroville

French artist Marie-Claire Barsotti is presenting her creations anchored in the words of Auroville founder The Mother and shaped by her own intuitions and sense of colour and form at an expo at the Centre d’Art in the universal township.

“The Dream”, “Madonna of Light” and “Garden of Eden” are some of her works that reflect her outlook on art as “a living alchemical process, through which a transformation takes place in the creator and its creation simultaneously”.

According to a note from Centre d’Art, once upon returning from a trip, Marie-Claire had found her thirteen volumes of Mother’s Agenda devoured by termites to an extent that they were no longer readable. She first thought of burning them or throwing them away, but couldn’t bring herself to do it.

The red-covered volumes, read and reread, annotated in her own hand, had accompanied her throughout her life and had brought her here, to Auroville.

She would turn the feeling of utter disappointment into a moment of introspection; was this, she wondered, a cue to merge what the sacred books revealed unto herself, no longer considering them as external entities?

At that point, Marie-Claire, used the destruction wrought by the insects as an opportunity to rebuild. She sensed that the time had undoubtedly come to let go of the certainties of the past and venture down unknown paths; to show resilience, to surrender.

For nearly two years, she created, with Mother’s words and her intuition, her own colours and shapes, poetic and shimmering collages like butterflies emerging from their chrysalis. At the next stage, the matrices were born, representing a synthesis of the path travelled, an integration of the infinite realities of the world. These matrices are layered grids of interpretation, each corresponding to a different frequency, from the most troubled to the purest—a beckoning to rise above division and experience within ourselves a transcendental unity.

The expo is on till December 17 (Tuesday through Friday from 2 pm to 5.30 pm and an additional morning slot of 10 am to 12.30 pm on Saturday).