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Rita Datta | | 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 disrupti