“Songs of Sabotage"; New Museum Triennale, New Museum
13th February to 27th May 2018.
Inkjet prints, Canvas, Watercolour, Charcoal, Fiberglass, Ink, Handmade paper, Graphite, Pinback badges, Reflective tape, Stickers, Gouache, Cotton fabric, Matchbox
Dimensions variable
Irreal surfaces engender a steadfast account of the inequitable spaces around me. While the idea of "unity" has been molded into a canon that ricochets and echoes in its own ivory chambers, it also vanquishes spatial limits and resonates with "the excess of resistance in the face of excess of oppression." This excess emerges from the recognition of the subject's representational impossibility—one that is a synthesis of form and flux.
This work identifies plural cusps from the politically turbulent past ten years, placed alongside a set of recent works, in an attempt to locate the contemporary presence of those historical discourses. Amid the contradictions and consequences of such historic references, I create an irreal landscape. I also find that other landscape that defies spatial limits—a landscape of resistance defined by collective consciousness. This consistent element breathes life into both the tribal land grab movements in Bastar and Odisha and the Native American land movement against the Dakota pipeline.
This narrative of my ideas is not an end in itself but rather a morbid beginning for a new, ever-present outlook. The space I work in is thus an irreal entity of contrast and diversity—a world within, paralyzed and blunted by its very notion, where the idea of diversity incorporates a multi-layered foliage.
Gary Carrion-Murayari (Kraus Family Curator at the New Museum), Alex Gartenfeld Srinivas (founding Deputy Director and Chief Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami), Francesca Altamura (Curatorial Assistant), Aditya Mopidevi (Writer and Curator), Kamal Mitra (Scholar), Avik Devdas (Artist) and Vadehra Art Gallery, Delhi.