Rita Datta
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Published 27.02.21, 08:01 AM
It’s an arresting installation, like a scene right out of a new-wave film of the 1970s, rife with unstated menace. From a
faux mud wall facade, made with jute, plaster, sticks and newspaper, hangs the frame of a hurricane lantern that looks charred. On shelves are arranged the skeletal remains of a few more blackened objects: pots and pans, locks, kerosene lamp holders, baskets. Elsewhere, on another
faux mud surface, more things are lined up: kettle, kerosene container, a mug, a clock, and so forth, intricately webbed with tentacles of frozen soot.
These everyday household objects immediately evoke village life with its fragile precariousness. It seems as though they were burnt by a ravenous fire and then retrieved from the cinders, perhaps in an attempt to redeem the daily routine torn by some violent disruption. Retrieving blackened shells suggests a kind of gesture: to preserve belongings not for their utility but to perpetuate their metaphoric significance as testament and memorial. Because, of course, the disruption, the violence aren’t over. They simmer in the stubborn riff of spooky shadows that cling like cobwebs to the surface behind and dance with the light to anchor Time and tragedy in collective memory.