Things are vanishing before us - Premjish Achari

We live in a time when the digital and the physical are converging together in an unprecedented manner. The proliferation of screens and humanity’s addiction to it has flattened our sense of perception; it has irrevocably altered our visual experience.

( Premjish Achari )

 In our society, screens have become magical tools used by ‘augurers and haruspices’ or those who read omens in the stars, flights of birds and the entrails of animals, uncovering guilt and foreseeing the future. Through screens, we navigate the netherworld of imaginations. They have become our magic mirrors; it appears that we have formed a Faustian pact with the digital world. Software and digitised data are replacing the traditional physical dimensions of objects. We increasingly prefer Bitcoins and digitised banking rather than paper currency, digital images to printed photographs, e-books to paper books; we even seem to spend more money on our online personas. 

( Black Molasses by Aman Khanna)

Digitisation of objects, information, and emotions has irrevocably altered existing ways of knowing, doing and being. Will digital versions of objects such as artworks, photos, clothes, etc., render them obsolete? Will objects eventually shed corporeal form and become flat and virtual in the digital world? Will we define ourselves increasingly through what we consume and create in the digital space? Will our digital avatars overtake our physical selves? 

 The proposed exhibition attempts to analyse and perhaps even salvage the role of objects in our life, by paying particular attention to their ability to evoke the past through nostalgia and memory. Objects remind us of who we are, we often use them to demonstrate our identity. There is little difference between us and what we define as ours. The proliferation of software and digitised data are replacing the traditional physical dimensions of objects. In this passage of rites towards the virtual objects when things are vanishing before us I invite artists to contemplate on the function of objects, do they see this as a revolutionary paradigm shift, or do they prefer the old ways of possessing physical objects and its production more relevant in the preservation of memory and evocation of nostalgia. 

This exhibition is a key to unlock your memories. After entering this labyrinth laden with a series of objects to trigger your memories you will be able to reflect on how people interact with objects, how objects often symbolise something more than their intrinsic nature. 

-  by  Premjish Achari

Featuring:

Aman Khanna | Arti Vijay Kadam | Atul Bhalla | Chandan Gomes | Chinmoyi Patel | Dayanita Singh | Mansoor Ali| Muktinath Mondal| Nikita Maheshwary| Prajeesh A.D.| Riya Chatterjee| Roshan Chhabria| Sharmila Samant| Sumedh Rajendran| Umesh P K| Varunika Saraf| Waswo X Waswo