Specters of Belonging

Part Of "Rhizome: Tracing Ecologies" at CSMVS (formerly Prince of Wales) museum, Mumbai

Entrance to the Indian Sculpture Gallery, CSMVS museum.

Entrance to the Indian Sculpture Gallery, CSMVS museum.

Entrance to the Indian Sculpture Gallery, CSMVS museum.

Details

details

Process

Research: Gupta Friezes

Research for elements of columns and frieze

Entrance to the Indian Sculpture Gallery, CSMVS museum.

Details

Details

1.  Chola dynasty column. Thread, wire and Steel frame. 92” x 21”.

2. Fragments from Gupta temple architecture. Thread and steel frame. 96.5” x 28”.

 

Architectural thread drawings reconstruct ethereal traces of the lost environments of these displaced sculptures from the Chola (12th century) and Gupta (6th century) dynasties.

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SPECTERS OF BELONGING

text by Snehal Tambulwadikar Khedkar

Museums hold together our histories. Fragments of art and culture are brought together, acquired or donated and contextualised in this tertiary space. The architecture and context are conjectural to individual objects and even more alien when grouped together. The existence of their original spatiality lurks around like a subtle memory, which Sumakshi weaves together in her works. Sumakshi sees these lost spaces in her mind, and gathers their traces in her architectural thread drawings.

Indian aesthetics talks about inter-connectivity of all art forms, which culminates in temples of all religions. Sculptures are an integral part of architecture, and have rhythm and balance of dance and continuity and repetition of musical compositions. Sumakshi finding of the subconscious traces of architectural forms in museum sculptures seems natural as these are uprooted from their aesthetical ecosystem. With delicate dexterity Sumakshi weaves the lost environment of these sculptures, placing the columns, doorways with every detail. These works seem like the skeletal fossils of flowers or leaves we preserve in diary pages, long forgotten associations which are beautiful and painful, having eternal existence yet lost in time.