WRITE-UP
My works began with my initial experiences within my social circle, which were majorly those of
human suffering; not just poverty but also physical pain. I try to portray in my work the anguish
caused from hunger, that of stomach and that of desire. As my work progressed, I moved beyond
the corporeal experiences to the ones caused by the faculties of mind.
The present series of work is thus based on the daily mundane living layered with the ambitions,
achieved, some yet to achieve. Every character, object in my works is still, as seems our body to
eyes, with number of processes going on inside it. Our mind is still, it does not panic outwardly, but
we have a squall of thoughts, uncertainties circling inside. The works thus have sequences from
homes with completely churned up bodies at the sides. They seldom are visible, but are
omnipresent. We all have the same experience; we all want to be at peace but are not.
In this series, I have used many objects from my past, used clothes, pots, blurred images of
deceased, these are my diary pages. Objects to me seem like the molten emotions that we
accumulate, and thus find very hard to give up. The blue portrays peace, but I have used it to portray
and unending horizon, making the silence eerie rather than peaceful. In (Diary Pages 8) the ‘roti’ for
me is the hunger/ basic requirement for living and moon the unachievable desire. For some the ‘roti’
itself is desire, while for some the moon is at hand but does not give satisfaction. The clock that ticks
with a single hand, literally a hand attempts to showcase this dilemma; the hand keeps rotating over
the roti, there is no end when we have won over our desire.
The narrative pattern with sequences in the same environment helps me to show the multiple,
sometimes sequential events. In the work (Diary Pages 5), the family sleeps while the water drips
from the ceiling, and in the following sequence the family itself is inside the barrel. I wish here to
showcase the duality of experiences, where the physical experience of water dripping may give the
psychic experience of submerging, like corporal feeling of dreams (as sometimes we experience the
actual wetness in form of floods or drowning in our dream).
The (Diary Pages 9) bottled works are the further expression of the previous mentioned thought,
with objects submerged in blue, here representing the peace, that one may feel when sitting around
a water body. As we sit for longer, we start reminiscing and images derive out of it.
Although my works are diary pages they cannot be understood merely as biographical descriptions.
They are sequences from my life, but yet are universal as felt by all. The works are more disturbing
because it is the violence in our mind, present everywhere. More significantly it may happen to
anyone, it is not a specified tragedy, it is something that could happen to all, rather is happening
within.