On Language

The Insidious Tether

2022

Fabric marker on my mother-in-law’s sari, rocks

This work contains excerpts from the “Manu Smriti” or “Laws of Manu”, an ancient text that codified and justified misogyny, casteism, and patriarchy in Hindu life. Despite being a strong intelligent woman, I saw my mother-in-law struggle with internalized misogyny which I believe is a residual effect of this text. A garment like a sari is loaded with cultural history and personal memory. The act of writing on a garment such as this speaks to how some histories are woven into us and require unraveling. Through this work, I investigate the origins of not only her struggle but countless others. 

Excavation

2014, Media: screen prints on ledger paper, hand cut, suspended on music wire, cast shadows

Articulating the liminal nature of how it feels to exist between two cultures is an ongoing process of discovery. I use letters from the English and Telugu alphabet, combine them in a screen print and hand cut around them, "excavating" the space in-between. Hung delicately suspended on wire, they cast shadows on the wall, swaying and moving with the slightest breeze. 

Practice of Letters (Aksharabhyasam)

2014, The Practice of Letters involves the collection and animation of the phrase

“Tongue of the hand” written in different languages. The viewer is invited to

trace the projection on a bed of rice.  The choice to include rice is inspired by a childhood ritual of writing letters on rice during holidays and early learning ceremonies. This work reverses the act of writing into drawing and the digital into the tactile with the use of animation, projection and participation. By engaging with the work, the viewer is asked to return to the moment when we first learn coding in language and reconnect with rote repetition, which is so much part of learning how to read and write. The strangeness that we feel with the act of tracing an unfamiliar script, could possibly ask us to question our relationship with the digital and our distance from the tactile. The act of tracing the projected writing requires watchfulness and a relinquishment of our urge to take charge of what the line does. The coding does not mean anything to us and the content is opaque and strange. All we can do is go through the motions and hope to connect with the meaning. 

Written meditations

2012, Media: Collage, graphite, ball point pen

My dad had a very disciplined written mediation practice. He filled a neatly hand written page of chants everyday. These works are inspired by his discipline and focuses on repetition, abstraction and line.

The first two images are titled Chant I and Chant II- collage on panel, 2012

the next two images are titled Parallels I and Parallels II- collage on paper, 2014

Conversations- a video montage is a collection of responses to my father’s written meditation practice. 2023

Scribed Series

2015, engraved palm leaves and intaglio prints on paper

As an artist living between two cultures, I find myself constantly translating. In recent work, I am exploring different aspects of language- script as form, legibility and illegibility. I ask the question- is communication possible beyond and outside of our conventional understanding of language? What is the potential of breaking down the coding of text and making it non referential-beyond specificity and context? How do we connect with different cultures and communities while retaining our individual languages and cultures? What is lost in translation?

The Scribed series is made by engraving on palm leaf scrolls (an ancient book form in South Asia) and then using this as a printing plate to obtain a mirror image on paper. The urge to inscribe and then to replicate defines the history of literary production and dissemination across the world for many centuries. Books are proofs of our existence in this world at a certain point in time and they mirror our inner selves. This work postures the artist as scribe and draws parallels between drawing and writing, making line a universal mode of expression. Lines and patterns replace words and images and create a language of their own. The rhythm of mark making, the graceful or staccato line, the pattern inherent in repetition and the texture of the substrate, all work together, forming a distinctive expression in each work.