Beauty that needs no visitors
The most visually lush painting in the series is also its quietest act of protest. Once Upon a Reef renders an underwater world in extraordinary detail and colour — coral formations in deep green and pink, translucent jellyfish, darting fish, purple sea fans swaying in unseen currents. It is breathtaking in the way only the deep ocean can be.
Look closely, and you’ll find two tiny man-made objects tucked into the scene: a No Entry sign, and an SOS signal. Ironic reminders, Namita says, that we have no business here — that dominance is not ours to establish in places where reverence is in order.
“Here’s to all the seabeds that no humans will ever lay their eyes, greed, or trash on. May they stay that way.”
It is the series’ most hopeful painting — a world intact, still luminous, still alive. And perhaps its most urgent appeal: that some things be left alone. That wonder, for once, be allowed to simply exist.
Namita’s series will be exhibited at the United Nations in New York in June and July 2022. For Namita — a self-taught artist who once wondered whether paint on canvas could matter at all — the answer, it turns out, has been yes. Quietly, stubbornly, beautifully, yes.
