Char Dham Walk (Garhwal) and Fushimi Inari Walk

Abstract

The tactile present offers clues for imagining past and future inhabitations of space. Two figures dance on either side of the canvas in the delicate postures of disentanglement and constancy. The line is held in air as it is drawn from front to back; its passage through the canvas marks both space and time, and its taut presence is a reminder of all that transpired to make it so. Space is constructed as the needle materialises, traces arcs in air, and returns to the site adjacent to its prior disappearance. Here, the grid is not of itself but exists rather as a site for contemplation and action. The works themselves are lived spaces and act as the residue of inhabitation; each puncture of the canvas signals an associated spatial and bodily act that took place in a certain time and space. Subtle shifts permeate the repetitious gesture, and the inhabitation of space expands with the memory of the line stretching, sinking and folding. The line loops backwards and forwards through time, differentiating the apparent homogeny of our spatial inhabitation. Each movement of the needle marks a re-visiting, re-thinking, and re-working as that which has already been contemplated is contemplated again.