Well! I ve often seen a cat without a grin, thought Alice, but a grin without a cat!
Its the most curious thing I ever saw in all my life!

Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

When facts meet fiction, animals converse with humans, the outside and the inside exchange places, and a strange universe is conjured into existence.
Playful, daring and witty, the recent works of Sharmi bring to the fore a new facet in her dealings with the world.

There are times when young artists, through sheer tenacity and a deep sense of commitment, arrive at a style that would make all their previous works seem experimental. Sharmi Chaudhury has effortlessly and precisely accomplished the leap from the exploratory to a mastery over her medium with this body of works comprising water colours on silk and paper, and painted ceramic platters. Her penchant for storytelling continues unabated, but the mode has metamorphosed dramatically. What earlier used to be an elaborate tableau of puppet-like figures set against a theatrical backdrop seems to have acquired a life of their own. Releasing themselves from being characters in a play with prescribed roles, the figures now appear to assert their new found identity which is as much based on masquerade as on empirical observation. They move in a fictitious world where mirrors don’t speak the truth, and where animals and humans live in strange but happy camaraderie...