An INTRODUCTION By Linda Mary Montano : for Dimple B Shah

 

 

An INTRODUCTION By Linda Mary Montano : for  Dimple B  Shah

As a fellow Performance Artist, I strongly recommend that a book be published of the deeply transformative work of Dimple B Shah. I met her in Sweden at a performance gathering we both participated in and was inspired by the breadth, scope, symbolism, vision, and strength of her powerful offering to this European audience. Why do I feel a book of her work would be valuable? Shah is from Bangalore India of Jain parents in a land of earthquakes, floods, and riots. But it is also a land of deeply enchanting and thoughtful spiritual visions which Dimple has absorbed by association, by prayer, and by her very intense Jain beliefs which she practices with her mother who has luckily become her collaborator in some of her powerful performances.

A book would allow viewers to experience an incredibly rich and UNIQUE re-seeing of Dimple's rituals which she grounds in alchemical and shamanic pasts having begun research in those studies some 20 years ago, after a short time of "impulsive" forays into early performative public impulses.

How can we not be excited and eager to see her work in a book which will allow us to witness how Dimple B Shah translates into her own reinterpretation, Hindu Rangoli which are geometric patterns created outside the front door of homes in the morning; how she translates issues of women artists being public in India; how she translates the deep intensities of being born with Jain parentage; how she can keep her desire so strong that she has traveled all over the world, sharing her beautiful and passionate need and ways to heal not only herself but also ALL others.

According to a soon-to-be-published interview in Nicolas Dumit Estevez's INTERIOR BEAUTY SALON, Shah posits that in the future she intuits she might not need to perform because we ALL will have attained a very high consciousness which "resonates with the energy of care and healing." For Shah, this will become "ART NIRVANA."

As a performance artist, I resonate with her vision and applaud your willingness to print a 200-page or more if you wish, book devoted to images and texts about her HEALING/VALUABLE ART.

Linda Mary Montano,  Performance Artist, 2021