Boris

This work I did for our group show in the cookhouse gallery. It is an experiment to explore the possibilities of archiving the information related to the problems facing by 3 traditional job sectors and its relation to the environmental problems facing in my state. The fishing, coir making, and farming industries. Also, I am exploring how data itself can act as a material for art-making.

For this, I interviewed a farmer, fisherman, and 2 coir makers from Kerala and recorded their vocal statement, where they are describing the crisis they are going through. And also, I printed out screenshots related to this issue from the internet. I displayed the printouts and played the voice recordings at the same time. I overlapped all 3 voices together and mixed it with the voice of recent natural disasters occurred in Kerala.

I also used some cement debris on the floor to ignite the thought of some disaster. along with this I used 3 books partially covered in cement forming a brick. I used 3 books one by Karl Marx, Chomsky and Hegel respectively. I did this to give a hint or a path for the spectator to get into the work.

This is the work which I have displayed for the suitcase show here in Chelsea college of arts. This is again an opacity photo collage. This work I named Dictator.

Here I have collected more than 100 portraits of dictators in history and I superimposed one over the other with different opacity to create an image for the Dictator.

In this experiment, the resulted image has an abstract nature but has some suggestions of portrait. Details are very much absent and it’s impossible to recognize any one of them. This image is an abstract portrait of the dictators in recent history.

The following images are screenshots of one of my WhatsApp group I made with some of my friends to create a critical discussion regarding my art practice.

This work, I call it an opacity photo collage is a collection of poor images that I collected from the internet, superimposed one over the other with different opacity thus to create a layered image that has some kind of abstract nature.

By poor image I mean the images which are freely available low-resolution images that are freely available on the internet. Every such images have some kind of political, historical, ideological background. It exists with some loaded information. These images are evidence of some past time.

History is always dynamic it’s never static. There’s always a place for uncertainty in it. It is always past. It can be rewritten, can be erased or we can even make a new one. It always depends on the power plays. Poor images have a potentiality to strengthen any claims. Is there a possibility to have an image which is neutral and whole?

This work was my experiment to bring most of the events happened during the Calcutta riot of 1946 into one single frame. An attempt to freeze the whole in a single frame. So I started collecting the available images and overlapped one over the other with different opacity. the image thus created have an abstract nature. But still, it’s not neutral. It is politically charged, it contain all the information. Some are more visible and some are moved to the deep layers. The image demands some attention to reveal its details. But here the artist is in power, with his decision he is allowing certain events to just vanish and certain events into focus.