বাসা (Nest)
2:53 Single Channel Video
An authentic home is a place that physically holds memories. When one moves several times, they have to negotiate the challenge of packing up memories to bring them along. This is particularly difficult for young people whose memories tend to be built over time on an assemblage of familial stories, old objects, photographs etc. Both under twelve years old, Ishaan had lived in eight homes and Jiya, in six.
In বাসা (Nest), through the tactility of drawing, painting and intimate conversation we literally and metaphorically stitched our collective memories of the various physical spaces we have lived in
Exhibitions:
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Shelter 2020. A new MAV commissions program responding to the challenges we face as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Shelter is supported by Australia Council for the Arts and Creative Victoria.
TRANSIENT TEMPLES
Performative Installation
An acknowledgement of country that is now mine too. I have not snatched it. I have not stolen it. I have not invaded it. I have respectfully, ceremoniously and agreeably made it mine. But in the process have I still colonized it?
Exhibitions:
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Dancing Between Two Worlds, Banks of the Werribee River, Nov 2019
I MET A TRAVELLER FROM A FOREIGN LAND
Performative Installation
2 sets of test performative installations conducted in Venice during the artists residency as part of Venetian Blinds.
Venetian Blind was an art project featuring 23 Australian and New Zealand artists. Developed by Public Art Commission at Deakin University and curated by Cameron Bishop and David Cross, this hybrid exhibition/public art event saw six projects commissioned (one per month) over the duration of the European Cultural Centre’s Personal Structures exhibition from 8 May until 24 November 2019, in conjuction with the 58th Venice Biennale.
An art relay with Jane Bartier, Dr. Rea Dennis and Dr. Misha Myers we were Team VB3. Our provocation was Coloured Stones. We had one month to make site-based interventions based on Venice’s unique history and folklore.
Exhibitions:
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ECC, Palazzo Bembo, Venice, 2019
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Deakin Gallery, Melbourne, 2020
TIME TRAVEL
Neon Signage
The notion of place is a common denominator; it creates the circumstantial need for the establishment of an authentic identity, constitutive of the ‘cultural other’. However, is space constant? Questioning of the shared subjectivity in relation to space and identity has prompted this work. I play with the dates on which I have moved home, and country, in the last thirty-five years, their respective sky-maps and the strong astrological significance of the movement of stars amongst the Bengali and Aboriginal peoples. Joining the dots magically draws a home, a time travelled authentic home which is a necessity but an impossibility of the future.
Exhibitions:
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Home and Away, The Academy of Fine Arts, Kolkata, Jan 2019
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Nillumbik Art Prize, Nillumbik Shire, Monstalvat, 2019
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Home and Away, The Project Space, Geelong, Jan 2020
INFLATE
Aluminum Framing, Velvet Fabric, Cotton Rope, Single Channel Audio
Inflate reflects on the augmented notions the colonisers possessed of themselves, their vain frivolities and their bitter realities...
Exhibitions:
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Home and Away, The Academy of Fine Arts, Kolkata, Jan 2019
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Wyndham Art Prize, Wyndham Art Gallery, 2019
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Home and Away, The Project Space, Geelong, Jan 2020
SETTLE
Slumped glass bowl, Spliced solid braid nylon rope, Metal links, Red sand, Rice flour
Set on the sacred lands of the Wadawurrung people of the Kulin Nation, as the red soil trickles its way onto the heart of the Alpona, I negotiate my way through the complicacies of my Home and Away...
Exhibitions:
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Testing Place, The Project Space, Geelong, Nov 2018
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Home and Away, The Academy of Fine Arts, Kolkata, Jan 2019
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Home and Away, The Project Space, Geelong, Jan 2020
PLACE PATTERNS (22+6+8=35)
04:00, Single Channel Video
Employing a giant mirror pod Anindita has explored the notion of ‘Home’ amongst the diverse communities of Wyndham through recorded interviews with residents.
Do they consider Wyndham to be their home, a second home, or just a place where they currently live? Is home another place they long for, a memory?
Concerned with how people navigate and reconcile divergent versions of what home means and how it feels the video reflects myriad ideas, visions and dreams evoked by ‘Home’.
SARHAD
Collaborative exhibition, City of Melbourne Grant
Sarhad is a collaborative, contemporary art enquiry of two immigrant artists living in a diaspora where ‘The Border’ as they have known it, abruptly vanishes. It is activated by their personal desire to disentangle the complex relationship between India and Pakistan, inherited from the colonial era and unapologetically abused by socio-political agendas.
The border has existed for 70 years. Whether, they like it or not they have lived with it. The motivation of this inquiry has however been the change of context and the introduction of the third space – the diaspora. The encounter in this ‘neutral’ space makes them wonder…
This exhibition culminates from a 15 months’ journey of conversations and creating work together where Wardah and Anindita have experienced an unexplained acquaintanceship through shared histories.
PYRE
03:06, Single Channel Video
The process of repetitively placing over nine thousand matchsticks on a hand-drawn lotus made me embrace a meditative state of personal reflection. The structure when set alight cathartically released the disquietude surrounding my identity and search for home
Exhibitions:
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Wyndham Art Prize, Wyndham Art Gallery, 2018
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Site of Passage, Customs House, Sydney, April 2018
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Home and Away, The Academy of Fine Arts, Kolkata, Jan 2019
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Everything that exists in the Current, Due West Festival, Footscray, Nov 2019
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Home and Away, The Project Space, Geelong, Jan 2020
FADE
02:53, Single Channel Video
Raising awareness of the ‘cultural other’ is a continual, meditative process. The voice can’t be raised just once, or else it fades…
Exhibitions:
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Wyndham Art Prize, Wyndham Art Gallery, 2017
(Winner of People’s Choice Award)
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CHINDIA, Gaffa Gallery, Sydney, February 2018
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Home and Away, The Academy of Fine Arts, Kolkata, Jan 2019
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Home and Away, The Project Space, Geelong, Jan 2020
SHAAD
Stage Collaboration
‘The Colour of Desire’ will explore the female voice of sexual desire in South Asian poetry through music, dance and spoken word. A taboo or euphemised subject for the last century, female sexual desire is nevertheless woven into the very heart and soul of South Asian poetics since 300 BCE, and it is a voice that is complex, multi-faceted, and incredibly modern in its recognition of female sexual agency.
This collboration with Shyama Shashidharan was an experimental juxtaposition of visual arts and performance arts while pushing the vedic ritual of the Shaad.
Exhibitions:
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The Colour of Desire, Clayton
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Women's Day Celebrations, Wyndham
BODHU BORON
02:53, Single Channel Video
I welcome you to witness, through participation in a ritual, my veiled and fragile inner self – raw with emotions and somewhat naïve. Tormented by a sense of loss yet (compensated or satisfied) by the sense of being ‘the one.’ Bodhu Boron is a ritual conducted to welcome a new bride to her in-law’s house I experienced this ten years ago in Bhatpara in Bengal as a new bride. I allow my nostalgia for what I left behind guide me through a contemporised ritual that is so close to my heart, in an environment that is so different.
Exhibitions:
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Hatched 2017, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts
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Identikit, Sally Walker Project Space, Deakin Univesity, August 2016
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Welcome, Race, Wyndham City Council, August 2016
KALIKA
03:23, Single Channel Video
She was only four, innocent, bereft of worldly desires, calm, contented and joyful. They decided that she fitted into the schema of the Goddess.
She is thirty-four, spirited, mature, compassionate and a fighter. I decided that she fitted into the schema of the Goddess.
Exhibitions:
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Hatched 2017, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts
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Sakrid, Wyndham Gallery, September 2016
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Identikit, Sally Walker Project Space, Deakin Univesity, August 2016