Cartography of a Disaster, 2020
'Cartography of a Disaster' mines the sublime in ruins. It seeks to outline hope in the wreckage of the present time by looking beyond the contours of loss and sense of alienation in the given unforgiving context. The work, through its expansive display and a spontaneous process of arriving at multiple visual solutions, initiates an immersive experience. It does so to stimulate in the audience a response to the emotions that sprang out of the conditions the pandemic has enforced on humanity at large.
The work, which consists of a series embarked on the first few months of the beginning of sis-month-long government-imposed lockdown in march 2020, incorporates a broad range of concepts, emotions and elements. Its primary inspiration came from Rumi's utterance that 'the wound is where the light gets in'.
To map the general state of human existence in the time of what seems like a continuous plague, Cartography of a Disaster takes its point of departure from the most intimate medical information – the X-ray plates.
Consisting of a series of backlit X-ray sheets, the works turn the plates into light boxes to make visible what the wounds, or the wears and tears of everyday life, allows as we as sentient beings try to take stock of the changed realities.
The construction and process:
The newly developed series addressing the pandemic uses X-ray plates, drawing and scratches developed through unconventional tools such as pins and light boxes.
