Performing the onion…
These days, I am not able to stay for a considerable amount of time with anything in particular. Even sticking to a pattern is becoming very difficult. The reason can be varicoloured.
At times, I want to respond to the time and space spontaneously while investigating lines and mark-making. The visual-spatial in everyday settings such as, the scene outside visible through the square tiled window film at the dentist’s clinic or the pattern of lines and distribution of Black and Off-White on the bedsheet and the cushion covers in the drawing room have a great bearing on what I draw (or want to draw). There are numerous such moments or instances.
Another strong pull is the everyday news read or viewed, the socio-political scenario around, the implicit obedience and the unquestioning subservience expected in every walk of life. Finding or locating my voice amidst all this, to be able to hold on to that no matter how feeble it is, puts me at loggerheads with so many things both outside and inside. Responsibly amplifying this voice through my making/doing without falling for the tropes of shallow righteousness looks like an uphill task.
As I am reflecting, the everyday has started performing the onion. One after the other a layer is being revealed. A yet another facet of everyday is the self – me, a forty-two-year-old woman living with my mother, a seventy-eight-year-old woman, in the NCR. The everyday interactions between the two of us, the ways in which we negotiate with our immediate environment being a middle-income group citizen, our individual and collective aspirations, desires and frustrations are together a hideous mix.
Now that the flow of thoughts is quite fluid, I feel I can devour pages after pages of my diary contemplating distinct ‘every-days’ (not sure how much space it means on the site). I am aware that none of these are water tight compartments. Rather, they generously inform each other. However, presently the formations lack any formal or visual similitude. Conceptually too, they are a vast expanse. Any attempt to fathom their inter-connections seems impossible at least at the moment. Not that it has to be like that; at no point in my doing/making, I feel the need for creating similar looking things. To me it has always been an engagement over time. But it also means a vigorous pull and push between the disparate things. Topped with the vagaries of the pandemic, new normal and work from home, it is becoming impossible at the moment.