Some months ago, I spoke to the video artist Tahireh Lal about her solo show at Galleryske, Bengaluru. The review I wrote appears in this quarter's issue of Art India. They do not have an online link to that piece, see below for a slightly different version.
The Hourglass. Glass, metal, motor, wood, sand. 48” x 36”. 2013. Image courtesy: Galleryske
MOVING AROUND
Deepa Bhasthi traces how Tahireh Lal addresses the idea and experience of being a traveller.
Home is not always a physical
space; it is, for someone who moves often, a set of feelings that is constantly
processual and changing. It is a sense of this transience that is instantly
apparent in Tahireh Lal's solo Metaphysical
Gravity at Galleryske, Bangalore, which was on show from the 11th
of October to the 22nd of November. Lal, who describes herself as a
video artist with a material and time-based practice, brings together moving
images and kinetic sculptures to contemplate the idea of not having any fixed
address.
In the audio loop Bird: B3:d B3:rd Lal gets
friends to articulate the word 'Bird' in the accent and in the manner they
would employ in their native countries. By showing how a common word sometimes
becomes unrecognizable, the artist explores the subtle changes we make in
ourselves in a distant land if we have to make ourselves understood.
The rest of the show has work featuring
sand from the beaches on Toronto Island; she found the sand here to be
curiously tri-coloured - white, red and black from the iron particles. In Abundance Protected, a triptych, she
separates the red and black in the sand to create auspicious rangoli or kollam
patterns, the act of drawing she is culturally familiar with. The accompanying
video of her drawing a pattern on the sand – red upon white – and
the wall works seek to invoke protection for the homes on the Island which are
under threat from municipal authorities.
Advice from a resident to "throw
a magnet into the sand" to pick out the black particles led to Lal’s
interest in magnets. The power of a magnet is also a reference to the recurring
pull of home. The Hourglass, a
meditative reflection on the passing nature of time, uses magnets to hold on to
parts of the sand in permanent suspension, calling attention to the constant
conflict while measuring time in unfamiliar places. As the hourglass moves in a
circular cycle, it throws poetic shadows on the wall. Time seems to acquire a
new shape in relation to that which is routine and familiar. The leitmotif of
home continues in Sandcastles in the Air,
where magnets, periodically activated, attract the iron particles in the sand
to trigger sandcastles along a vertical axis. The work is installed in a
horizontal niche in a wall. The shapes and sizes of these sandcastles are never
constant, just like, for those leading peripatetic lives, having homes in different
places are acts of constant building and un-building.
Sifting/Shifting, a
dual channel video loop, addresses constant mobility and how even when there is
a moving ahead, there are some things that persist in staying on. One channel
focuses on the multi-coloured sand and the act of motion while the adjacent video
starts as a clean slate and quickly fills up with red sand grains. The work
dwells on how the new, over time, becomes a site of the known and the familiar.
No comments:
Post a Comment