Through diverse mediums, I journey to the same realm: a state of tension that implies the verge of instability, or transformation. By solidifying the ephemeral, my work explores the mystical feminine spirit that lurks between harshness and fragility. My interest in contradiction comes from growing up split between India and the United States:
Beginning in Bangalore
to
Wisconsin’s severe chill that freezes even the pace of life to stagnation…
to
California, and dreamin' while caught in traffic between its barren draughted mountains…
back to
Bangalore, and urban sprawl encroaching on my memory of its green…
to
Mumbai’s perspiring hustle, and escaping it in my grandparents' apartment by the national park…
And more recently,
Philadelphia, London, New York…
My mind, body, and womanhood have been recontextualized by changing surroundings every few years. Now more constantly than ever.
By observing the brutal and romantic; taking place inside me and around. I design to explore identity born at the nodal point between antonyms.
“I find I am constantly being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of myself and present this as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or denying the other parts of self. But this is a destructive and fragmenting way to live, My fullest concentration of energy is available to me only when I integrate all the parts of who I am, openly, allowing power from particular sources of my living to flow back and forth freely through all my different selves, without the restrictions of externally imposed definition. Only then can I bring myself and my energies as a whole to the service of those struggles which I embrace as part of my living.”
- Audre Lorde