It is said that the shape of our culture is very much defined by art that shapes up in that particular era; that the art and culture are very much the alter egos of one another. It reflects the thought of masses and elites, their concepts of divine & material, of purity & pollution and about their socio-political- economic values. Wassily Kandinsky, the famous Russian artist stated - “Every work of art is the child of its age and, in many cases, the mother of our emotions. It follows that each period of culture produces an art of own which can never be repeated.” This phrase truly summarizes the true spirit of my work.

 

Over the past few years, my research has focused on creating works, which heartily appreciate and appropriate the new media, but at the same time, are wary of its longevity and unenthusiastic of the disconnect that this amorphous medium entails. My works thus attempt to critique the facelessness and loss of tactile experiences in the virtual world, and have evolved as an investigation of art & technology, and review the rift between the real and the virtual. While exploiting the power of copy, appropriation, distortion and corruption, my works question the definition of “authenticity” and “original” in the contemporary society, hence critiquing the ‘Google’ culture, that is now largely experienced through the plastic pixels of the computer monitor. Employing rhetorical, paradoxical & satirical ways, I critique the role of historians, curators, collectors and museums in shaping history & culture and contemporary practices in which we perceive and experience our own heritage.

 

Works from the exhibition Masterworks: Googlepaedic Narrations and the Dysfunction of Damage, while continue my above mentioned research, they will also address my own personal displacement from my native environment and cultural roots, and will be virtual interpretation of my memories of ancient murals that I experienced during my travels to remote villages and temples in India. These works, in turn, question our experiences and memories from the past, both personal and cultural in the absence of the physical object- in a world that is becoming increasingly global, but is often mediated through the computer screen.

 

These works are created with a new technique to create fresco like images on wood by integrating traditional methods once used by Italian artists and the new digital methods of printing. The technique currently remains largely unknown and is not well researched. My works I believe are significant as they embrace digital practices not only as tools to achieve a visual end, but also as a conceptual premise for the images that I create. My works rhetorically raise concerns regarding methods of digital archiving of cultural and historical artifacts and act as a cultural commentary, challenging the presumed stability of digital information, and our practices of storing, preserving and experiencing history and culture.