The phrase “It’s Personal!” carries certain connotations of intimacy and individuality and garners a level of conscious sensitivity from the reader.

This exhibition is a visual experimentation and representation of the abstract idea of the “personal”. 

With an intricate tapestry of artistic mediums, vulnerabilities and identities, the artists in this exhibition present themselves and their intricacies through visual and sonic mediums. With little to no space for interpretation, the works on display are a personal archive and experimentation of self within their contexts and geographies presented as an invitation into the artists’ intimate spaces.

Within the exhibition space, the audience encounters individual practices of artists Arhant Shrestha, Debasish Mukherjee, Kaldi Moss, Manir Mrittik, Naghmeh Abbasi, Siavash Yazdanmehr and Zoya Siddiqui.

Arhant Shrestha

I grew up in a city that I was not allowed to see.

I enjoyed my childhood within the walls of my family compound, catching glimpses of the city through the windows of our car. It beckoned, beyond the jumble of concrete houses on the convoluted paths through which I was chauffeured from one sheltered space to another. A fantasy world grew in my mind, a city constructed by my own reality, but beyond the confines of my tangible environment.

The imaginary world always sits between existing space and memories of the past. The Kathmandu I began seeing once I started partying in my teenage years was different from the one I’d imagined as a child. It was, at once more sumptuously splendid and more corroded with fear than I could have ever imagined. The sharpness was disorienting, at odds with the misty half-images of the city of my childhood.

The city is layered, and pulling back the curtain on one scene reveals another drama ready to unfold, with mysteries to uncover and mysteries to leave alone.

Debasish Mukherjee

Memories of home lie not just with the places, but the people and objects that are woven into those experiences that seem distant now. But photographs are a medium that creates a liminal space, making it possible for us to revisit every detail of our memory. In the work “The Inner Courtyard”, he weaves the stark red embroidery on the monochromatic images from his personal camera roll of his mother, objects with memories of his father, the intimate corners of his homes, and all the places he has called home.

Kaldi Moss

The sound wave and its absorptions, reflections, refractions and shadows produce a sonic image of the listener's surroundings. We hear not just the sound but also the room, the resonant frequency of the room, the time it takes for sound to be absorbed, it's echo and reverb, distances and disturbances - connecting the physical space to the psychoacoustic experience of the room. 

‘Disturbing the State’ is a sound installation that invites the audience to focus on listening. 
This work would not be possible without the technical help of Shailesh BR.

Manir Mrittik

Initially trained as a painter, Manir Mrittik’s photographic works are a subversion of the idea of idealised imagery. In the series ‘Alternative Masterpieces’, Mrittik draws from iconic masterpieces in the West like the Mona Lisa or The Scream.  The ‘personal’ takes a literal form in this series as the artist superimposes himself on the compositions. The deconstruction of the works by weaving and shredding further dilutes the concept of “masterpieces” as he presents the self through the medium of universal art history.

Naghmeh Abbasi & Siavash Yazdanmehr

Narrated by a fictional character who finds rescue in a park from the demonstration that ran into violence by the militia, this essay-film ‘A Flat Surface, Higher than the Ground’ encapsulates a micro image of today’s socio-political dynamics of Iran through the conceptual visualisation of different spaces of the City Park, the oldest park in Tehran, Iran. Having city parks as a heterotopic site that disrupts the continuity and normality of common everyday places, this film juxtaposes the past with the present and the present with the future. Documentary footage gathered through fieldwork, staged scenes, archival footage, text and sound are weaved together to overlap meanings and relationships in a way that challenges and subverts our experience of the prevailing social context.

Zoya Siddiqui

An empty living room, a TV playing, remnants of a meal consumed recently, absent inhabitants, and an intimate family conversation. The film ‘At a Distance of But Two Bow-Lengths, Or Even Nearer’ is a single-channel video installation by artist Zoya Siddiqui where the artist tries to discuss the significance of religious pilgrimage within the Muslim belief system. The difference in beliefs between generations is subtly highlighted over a simple phone conversation between the three.

Exploring the longing and imaginaries for a utopic world, within Islamic or South Asian communities that she either identifies with or works within close proximity, Siddiqui’s practice is based on research, interviews and experiments. 

Curated by Siddhi Shailendra