Photographs

Mustang –forbidden kingdom –  The salt route

Pinhole camera / Digital Print on paper, 2015

The Indian subcontinent’s large salt market received salt from the deserts of Rann in Gujarat as also the Tibetan salt lakes via Mustang, the ‘Forbidden kingdom’. Mustang was an independent kingdom long ago but is now a part of Nepal. The Chinese couldn’t take it and the tourist today has to pay $500 to enter it. The Dalai Lama calls Mustang the last bastion of living Tibetan Buddhism. There is more Tibet here than in today’s Tibet. The relative isolation of the region has preserved its culture. In fact you can walk for miles here and not meet any one along the desolate landscape.

The Bride Thief – urf Barbie

2012-13

Landscapes “Within – Without” 

Kashmir, Kabul, Lahore, Nepal, Bhutan, Burma, Bangladesh, Srilanka.

The conflict within ones mind, border within ones mind, landscapes within ones mind …. Landscape without borders, landscape without the security zone, landscape without line of control….Security within a circle zone, the thought of generalization and making of forced ghettos, leading to a claustrophobia of thoughts in  real space. 

 Surrounded by the colonial hangover, within a complexity of zonal borders, the feeling of a loss of identity is immediate. The artist encloses herself with a wall of hangovers, all the conflicts and all the unsecured zonal borders to make it the most secured zone; to be able feel the self built claustrophobic space within the mind.

 A beautiful landscape captured between the conflict of structure and security zone, inside a safe zone theory. So either it is a remote bordered landscape or the mega cities security zones, you actually are trapped inside a shower curtain and become a water proofed element, who’s identity is always been questioned.

Please dont piss nor spit here / Rejected Gods

Digital print

These works are based on what I have been recording on the street in the past 20years.  It doesn’t take time for an ideology to convert into religion,

The thought of rejected god is very common in a country like ours. It is exactly like Factory Rejects from any multi national company. If a cloth has one damage they rejected and it goes to a 2nd’s market. Even in an idol or images of a god has a defect – it gets rejected – as we are lving in a god fearing world. the defected idols cant be thrown or demolished so it is rejected and put away on the street or park, but has been thrown out of home in the name of mis-happenings or unlucky or inauspicious. The power of Faith and believe there itself proves to be superficial.