The Dupatta

My artwork emerges from my daily written entries, captured in acrylic paint, turmeric and vermillion, and manifested through a trajectory that’s permanent. Past notions fuse with the present as the presentation style is contemporary, but the materials remain traditional. Excerpts from my journal appear on a traditional veil of a dupatta that moulds old with new. My words here appear as mere patterns when viewed from afar. Up close, these words are still not legible…obscured perhaps to maintain the intimacy of my thoughts with myself, even as I open out to the world. Yes, it’s ambiguous, but that’s exactly how I felt every time I stood next to my grandma as she performed her rituals. Motifs and text fromher life and mine get woven into my tapestries, the layers in between signaling an interval. A week may have passed, maybe that’s why what was written on day one is now just a hazy memory pushed to the back of my subconscious. Or maybe, it’s just some ancient text buried beneath new-age writing. Whatever it may be, all of it is very personal, and yet it is not. For I want it to reach out to you my audience so that you can reflect on it too, and change and grow like me. With me, if that’s okay with you.