Leaving the Terrestrial: Its Own Kind of Archive
Solo Exhibition, Dr.Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum, Special Project Space
Installation view
An archive of invented botanical and maritime specimens.
Thread and Wire
Room dimensions: 21ft X 31ft X 22 ft
Photo courtesy:Dheeraj Thakur
Installation view
An archive of invented botanical and maritime specimens.
Thread and Wire
Room dimensions: 21ft X 31ft X 22 ft
Photo courtesy:Dheeraj Thakur
Installation view
An archive of invented botanical and maritime specimens.
Thread and Wire
Room dimensions: 21ft X 31ft X 22 ft
Photo courtesy:Dheeraj Thakur
Untitled:( Black Coral)
Thread and Wire
18ft X 9ft
Detail:( Black Coral)
Thread and Wire
18ft X 9ft
Photo courtesy:Dheeraj Thakur
Untitled:( Black Coral)
Thread and Wire
18ft X 9ft
Water lettuce, Sea Algae
Thread
16″ X 19″ each
Photo courtesy:Dheeraj Thakur
Red Coral
Thread and Wire
frame size: 60″ X 42″
Photo courtesy:Dheeraj Thakur
Detail: Red Coral
Thread and Wire
Blue Coral
Thread and Wire
frame size: 54″ X 52″
Photo courtesy:Dheeraj Thakur
Detail: Blue Coral
Thread and Wire
frame size: 54″ X 52″
Photo courtesy:Dheeraj Thakur
Installation view
An archive of invented botanical and maritime specimens.
Thread and Wire
Room dimensions: 21ft X 31ft X 22 ft
Photo courtesy:Dheeraj Thakur
Table top details of “specimens”
Thread
individual specimen dimensions between 1″ and 26″
Table top details of “specimens”
Thread
individual specimen dimensions between 1″ and 26″
Photos courtesy:Dheeraj Thakur
Table top details of “specimens”
Thread
individual specimen dimensions between 1″ and 26″
Photo courtesy:Dheeraj Thakur
Table top details of “specimens”
Thread
individual specimen dimensions between 1″ and 26″
Photo courtesy:Dheeraj Thakur
Vitrine Display
Glass, Thread, Wire
Photo courtesy:Dheeraj Thakur
Vitrine 1: Lace Plant and Sweet Williams
Glass, Thread, Wire
20″ X 15″
Photo courtesy:Dheeraj Thakur
Vitrine 2: Ferns
Glass, Thread, Wire
27 “X 12”
Photo courtesy:Dheeraj Thakur
Vitrine 4: Water lettuce
Glass, Thread, Wire
14″ X 10″
Photo courtesy:Dheeraj Thakur
Vitrine Display
Glass, Thread, Wire
Photo courtesy:Dheeraj Thakur
Vitrine 3: water algae
Glass, Fabric, Thread,
Wire
40″ X 7″
Photo courtesy:Dheeraj Thakur
Detail: Vitrine Display
Glass, Fabric, Thread,
Wire
Photo courtesy:Dheeraj Thakur
Installation view: In the Garden
Stop-motion animation, projection, suspended plants, screens
Installation view: In the Garden
Stop-motion animation, projection, suspended plants, screens
Installation view: In the Garden
Stop-motion animation, projection, suspended plants, screens
Studio process
painting the suspended Poppy plants
‘Leaving the Terrestrial: Its own Kind of Archive’ is set up as a mock- natural history museum style exhibit, which displays invented and re-configured botanical and maritime specimens created with thread and wire. This repository of ethereal armatures references memory, nature, science and fantasy as lace-like fragments levitate without a ground to attach themselves to, fragile woven-skeletons of pressed flowers, leaves and seeds float in glass vitrines, seemingly embroidered on air and unaffected by gravity.
This archive of a created past of invented creatures, leads to a second installation “In the Garden”: an homage to the experience of two particularly lush, illuminated gardens which now outlive their creators – the artist’s mother and a Swiss hermit living in the Himalayas. The story is of the gardens as a portal into a dimension of light, magic and possibility. Viewers are invited to walk through luminous hand- drawn and embroidered stop motion animations projected on transparent scrolls of fabric and suspended flowers which host the imagery of a growing, dying and resurrecting garden among flickering fireflies and hummingbirds.