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

 

Vitrines

Studio process

 

Vitrines

Studio process

Studio process

Studio process

 

painting the suspended Poppy plants

Studio process

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‘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.