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Benoit Mandelbrot, a French mathematician, had coined the term, fractal, in 1975. Natural objects that are close to fractals to some extent are clouds, mountain ranges, lightning bolts, coastlines and snow flakes. Anita Gopal uses the idea of fractal to cut out scraps of paper with a pair of baby scissors and create forms that are delicate and nebulous: wisps of smoke, cloud formations or the buoyant scarves that inevitably waft across Chinese and Tibetan paintings (Fractals, Studio 21, till today). However, if one takes a closer look at them, patterns emerge. One notices that the same design has been replicated over and over again, as in many natural forms, but in reduced dimensions. Gopal has also been trained in fashion designing, and this is quite apparent from the paper she uses to produce her collages.
She is constantly referencing trinkets, baubles and luxury textiles in the bits and pieces of paper that float across the face of her works. They are definitely fractured images, but there is no mistaking the sense of harmony in the design. Occasional sparks of humour make her ‘fractals’ even more engaging. Unused as we are to such forms of artistic expression, some of Gopal’s fragile forms may be written off as bijouterie. But even naysayers would admit that tremendous skill and innovativeness were involved in creating them.