‘I find myself looking at my hands on the table. They bear the marks of having eyes focused on them for a very long time.’ 

Haruki Murakami | The Wind Up Bird Chronicle 

I explore ideas of ‘Mobility’ through my art by dwelling over the enigma of time. We speak of time like we speak of physical elements, like water. A uni-directional stream, which one can put their hand in, play with, but never twice is it the same water – it is ephemeral. It flows. But the flow of time is more visceral than physical. 

People age, memories fade – we acknowledge the flux of time through relative changes. Immanuel Kant said, “time and space are forms that the mind projects upon the external things-in-themselves.” The concept of time helps us understand and coordinate everything we sense externally. 

Broaching the perception of time internally, we understand that by virtue of temporal direction, we have a memory of the past but no memory of the future. Only an increase in entropy of the present moment, enough to surpass that of a point in the future, would enable us to have a certain memory of it.  

Everything we experience wilts into the past. Our perception of time, not that by the clock, but inwardly, causes a chronological angst. We are constantly living in a moment that is impregnated with memories of what has gone-by and with thoughts of what is yet to come. A perpetually fluctuating entropy. 

We are always either running late or losing our patience waiting; we want to hasten things or slow them down. Even the most basic of activities like walking, requires a great deal of coordination among various muscle functions—the idea of time is ingrained in our systems to the extent that even though we invariably reference it in language, we don’t usually think about the workings of the phenomenon at large. 

The title of my project, ‘The View from Nowhen’,is a reference to a philosophy surrounding time which proposes that the past and the future are just as real as the present. It speaks about observing the space-time dimensional block from a point outside of the grid of existence, giving you a vantage point of neutrality. This aspect of the philosophy has always guided  me to perceive everything I came across in its entirety and with objectivity.  

The project looks at different aspects of time, how we understand it in the physical world, and its emotional and psychological implications. It grapples with theories and speculates suppositions.  

The works, as much as they convey my processes and thoughts, also intend to foment thoughts in the viewers’ minds. Thoughts that perpetuate the dormant internal crises that otherwise goes unacknowledged in the everyday.

Past, Present, Future Me, Evolving 

This work delves into the idea of looking at oneself through temporality. It brings together ideas of understanding the past as a familiar memory, the future as an obscure apparition, and the present as a volatile moment which is an amalgamation of both. The work explores these ideas using images that are lucid, pixelated and collaged respectively. 

Here, I reflect on the passage of time by looking at markers on my body that connect me to my provenance. Through this work, thus, I attempt to encapsulate the essence of being, having been, and what will be. Even though they are printed on flat surfaces, the images interact with one another and reveal layers of time and identity captured in our physical forms.  

A big forehead like my father’s, 

curly hair like him too. 

Crooked sets of teeth that 

don’t sit correctly on one another. 

A mole on the neck in the same place as my mother. 

Wrinkly dark elbows like her too. 

Knees like that of my old grandmother. 

I am more them than i am myself. 

In the clefts of impressions of where I come from and  

the blurry assumptions of what awaits, 

lie my realities,  

untouched, unknown.

Remnants of Time 

“Is this what death is? 

A slow diminishing of the self, 

with respect to the ever expanding universe?” 

The universe is expanding at a rate unfathomable to us. All entities, including you, are diminishing with respect to it. What remains of us once we diminish to the point of nothingness? 

These prints observe the physical changes caused by the change in form of an ice cube over recurrently increasing stipulated periods of time, on a sheet of paper coated with a photosensitive chemical (a printing technique called cyanotyping). 

The marks left behind are a record and reminder of the passage of time, 

A token of the slow diminishing of the self with reference to the universe.

Untitled I 

A linear movement in the stream of time, helps us put things around us in order and make sense of them. However, what if one was to assume a suspension of this idea, a point in space where all things, all that you’ve known and all that is yet to happen, happens all at once? No today, no tomorrow, no past. A muddle of thoughts, a chaos of possibilities. This interactive piece arbitrarily opens up to different collaged realities. Realities that lie all together, and yet must be untangled one by one. 

The work invites the audience to open up parts of the origami structure and feel a reality of muddled possibilities.