Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Breaking the Silence

It’s been a long silence. Definitely haven’t felt the need of words. Or rather the silence helped me realise the non-stop chatter of the mind…..and boy does it chatter. “Words”, are they the respite from this marathon mind chatter? Yes, have been thinking a lot lately about how words complicate more than they resolve. I think I like silence better. Music, yes! Apart from that, silence.
The current body of work has sprung from the verbal silence and constant mind chatter. I observe a lot more in this mode. Mostly myself, to the stimuli around me. I worked with a lot of images shot lately. These images on their own did not become a work of expression, but somehow shooting them exclusively and then bringing them together in a single canvas, they actually starting narrating a story. The story of the eternal query “who am I”, where do I feature in all this. Universal question and oft asked you may say. However the handling is personal. I am questioning in this body of work my own identity, my own crisis, my own stand. Stand in what you ask. The basic stand in who am I? What is my racial identity? What is my national identity? What is my standpoint if at all there is any? Why is there a need to have a standpoint? Why are we victims of hierarchy?  Am I religious or am I spiritual?
As an artist I react to the circumstances I am dwelling in, the socio-political environment as a global citizen. However the greater question is, should we not react as “human” instead of an identity given to us if not at birth, then at a later stage. These questions difficult to answer, yet I believe that the creative mind is more responsible for being the voice of the time they are living in. The onus is on us to bring the focus on what should be asked and what should be reacted against.
Artists who show in every art fair, start introspecting about where they are headed with their art and what happens after the next fair, need to start looking into their own thought process. As creative minds we need to take that long and hard look in the mirror ourselves, before we start seeing the shadows of others in it. I know I’m looking and I’m not liking everything I am see but it’s getting more and more entertaining. It’s like this Technicolor movie, that’s just getting to that suspense scene. So go grab your popcorn will meet you again with more juicy scenes after the India Art Festival. ;)