You are me, I am you — Sravanthi Juluri shows us how

In the green room backstage, artist

Sravanthi Juluri

looks ready to storm the stage. “I haven’t slept in three days!” she beams, as she gears up for her first performance show, Tvamevaham. “I wouldn’t say this show is a big departure from working on a canvas; it’s in fact part of the same journey. When an artist is painting, he/she is completely engrossed in rise and fall of emotions and energies. Forms and strokes dance on the canvas. That is performance, all art is performance,” she says.
Sravanthi’s evolution from her first solo art show in 2012 of well-defined ideas and canvases into the “formless” abstract that she does now, has been nothing short of a performance in itself. But confessedly, that journey came with its share of questions: “Over the three years, I have faced a lot of questions about abstract art. People ask me questions like ‘What does this even mean?’ or say things like, ‘Even my three-year-old can do this’. So through this show I want answer those questions to help people understand how I see the world — as pure energy,” she shares, before stepping on to the stage, where a full-house awaits her.
Goosebumps raise right from the delivery of the opening lines. She begins: “I welcome you into my world. I’ll let you walk into my mind... I dare to expose myself. Perhaps it would have been easy to pour my thoughts by writing a piece. But, I chose to do that on my canvas... I see no shapes... I see no forms.... you and me rising and falling, heaving energies, waiting to be embraced. You are me. I am you.”
And by uttering those words, it seemed like she had achieved ‘Tvamevaham’ and set the tone of non-duality between artist and the audience. Then began the dance of

navarasas

. As the artist went on a soul searching journey through the nine

bhavas

(emotions), her alter-ego, portrayed by dancer Lanka Vaishnavi, helped her along the way. With each emotion addressed, the alter ego helped Sravanthi shed a part of her — portrayed symbolically by shedding pieces of cloth attached to her.
By the end of the 30-minute rivetting performance, the audience too seemed to have gone through all of the nine bhavas. And what began with an intention of an artist answering all the questions, both from the outside world and within, ended up having a cathartic effect on the audience too — leaving behind the true essence of Tvamevaham: ‘You are me. I am you’ and we are all just energies ebbing and flowing on the canvas of life.