"Vivid pictures of country life shortly emerge on humble pieces of cloth in the form of kantha design (hand stitched and embroidered quilt made out of old saris). These kanthas again derive their source material from paintings and drawings of a few children at Nolorghat and its adjoining areas in South 24 Parganas. From the kanthas again Abutaher, a traditional carpet weaver weaves a pictorial surface which is uniquely exotic. These kanthas from children's drawings, paintings and carpet from these  is an experimentation to show how creativity could be made to flow harmoniously among groups of people." — Excerpt from 'From Child-Art to Stitched Painting - A Creative Journey' by Adip Dutta.

Dutta’s works are bereft of human representation, while Mukherjee’s are immersed in them, yet signs of human presence are palpable in Dutta’s works as if he attempts to capture the shadow of human action and pauses at a moment, just after a person leaves a space. Human relationship and bonds between people were central to Mukherjee’s vision that manifests in several ways in her work.

The influence of folk art and traditional practices is fundamental in the viewing of the exhibition and so is the understanding of how Dutta and Mukherjee deploy their practices to question the politics around the movement of folk and tribal art forms to decorative, skill-based practices and to elevated ‘fine’ art. They reflect the journeys these forms make as they permeate the boundaries of each other and impact the viewing of the whole as one. In a nod to Mukherjee’s dexterous handling of bronze, usually depicting scenes from daily life, Dutta’s large bronze tree trunk occupies an anchoring space in the exhibition, linking his sculptural practice to the intricate field of vision in his large paintings on paper that abundantly and profusely refer to the sculpturality of what he sees around him. Mukherjee’s bronze on the other hand depicts the scene of a kantha embroiderer giving life to form through her skill on textile, all sculpted through the extremely difficult but completely indigenous lost wax process.

''My drawings were earlier black and white. But the tactility of surface, as seen in her (Mukherjee's) dokra work and stitched paintings, remained in my system. I would use ink not as blobs but as dots and fine lines” — Adip Dutta.

Dutta’s repetitive mark-making within his drawing and Mukherjee’s kantha stitches—flexible, moving, curvilinear lines—where small lines, dots, dashes and points are used as common devices to form the narrative. When Dutta started using colour after many years into his drawing practice, one could see connections in terms of the palette with the kantha.

Dutta’s time spent with Mukherjee in his teenage years and as a young artist in Mukherjee’s studio, had an undeniable influence in way of representation, in way of seeing the world around him and the transposition of his vision to his practice. The conversation between the two artists at the exhibition, physically confronts the viewer with a punctured display mechanism that allows for their practices to be seen together and through the lens of each other instead of approaching them in singularity. 

A mother and child sculpture bookends the exhibition holding forth a relationship and a conversation securely nestled between a cocooned space, the artists carved out for themselves, ensconced within each other’s practice.

Dutta explores possibilities in re-looking at objects, by which he attempts to find alternate value and meaning. The spatial, material and formal elements is a crucial fulcrum of his process.

"There is indeed a movement between presenting the whole as fragmentary and finding a place for the bits and pieces to become a fractured whole." — Excerpt from Inside the Darkling Ground by Annapurna Garimella, art historian.

Dutta and Mukherjee’s works in Nestled, builds a riveting scaffolding, of a beautiful and possibly subconscious entwinement in their ways of seeing the world.