It’s curtains for Bharati Kapadia – and we don’t mean it’s the end of the road for her. In fact, Staging the Sets, previewed at The Guild in Mumbai recently – marks the beginning of a new stage in this senior artist’s journey. These theatrical compositions involve stitching, painting, layering and re-layering fabric, an exercise that has become almost an obsession. The result is sometimes delicate and airy, but more often brooding and impenetrable. Memory, identity and evolution of the self are the dominant concerns interwoven into her canvases and highlighted through the intervention of light, which transforms them, much like the inner light of realisation transforms the self. This new series is an enhanced experience of those same themes and yet dramatically different. Where she would gently scrape away paper to reveal its translucent and tender core, she now builds up the layers with bits of fabric and surface treatments – stitching them together and breathing life into them with paint and handprints. Larger in scale and created from material that is more opaque, these works have a tangible presence. The artist aptly describes them as characters in the theatre of life, but they work well as stage sets too. You can easily visualise playing your role in life against such backdrops – composed as they are of the anguish, hopes and fears that are a universal human experience. Supported by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, these tactile works can be seen in her solo show at the Sigmund Freud University, Vienna, from May 7-28.