STUDIO MERAKI COLLECTIVE
I AM
A benevolent mother, unbiased, loving and nurturing her children.
The unconditional mother nature, who owns her imperfections, provides and protects everyone she shelters.
A teacher who guides us towards the truth, imparting knowledge and wisdom.
An empowered warrior who owns her battle scars, exercises her power to freedom and destroys the demons present within the society.
I am a Goddess, I am consciousness.
A home, nests one’s thoughts, security, emotions, & aspirations, constrained only by individual’s means & local limitations. So often than not, we either cross the constraints or over play them. In both cases, we announce – “This is it”.
Where & how we dwell, tells volumes about our past & how we want to shape our future. UAE, where majority is an expat population, is the testimony of myriad of expat abodes, be it their transient home or a near permanent shelter.
I have known that just like me, folks who move from place to place learn to use their creativity to create stability. Despite the external chaos of starting from scratch we learn to seek adventure, curiosity and develop the ability to reinvent ourselves time and again. This personal space of nesting is almost ritualistic, built twig by twig, a sacred space for the body, soul, and spirit to call home.
The installation ‘This is it’…is my effort to explore the subject of call through the eyes of an Expat, such as many others and myself for instance. We are on the move looking for stability at many levels from a place. Being several years away from our homeland deciphering the meaning of home, which might be something more than a physical shelter and provides roots, identity, security, a sense of belonging and a place of emotional well-being.
Indian beliefs and superstitions are passed down from generation to generation. These faiths have sprung with an objective to protect from evil spirits, but some were based on scientific reasoning. It is universally witnessed that people of every caste, creed or community are superstitious. It is an integral part of human society. Though the Indian society is fast progressing, people are still superstitious and have a strong faith in these local beliefs.
Black kohl dot symbolic for evil eye in India whilst the blue evil eye symbolic to ward of every evil in the Middle Eastern culture. Scarab as a totem of good luck in Egypt whilst the belief that Horse shoe brings goof luck among Native Americans. Shubh- labh symbolizes prosperity in India vis a vis Chinese Coins in Chinese Culture symbolic of wealth and progress. Idol worship of lord Ganesha in India symbolic for happy new beginning, similarly, the laughing Buddha among South East Asians. Cross symbol in Christianity and Om symbol in Hinduism.
No matter which part of the world we tour, we find the natives nurturing certain beliefs and superstitions and India are no exception in this case. While some of them are quite hilarious, few others are really interesting, as many aspects of life are linked to them. Few beliefs even find their way into the Indian religious texts and scriptures.
Collaborating Artists: Nivedita Saha and Bela Bhatt
The lullaby has long reflected the complexities and nuances of mothering love and feminine introspection. The moon always brings a Lullaby on my lips…it brings hope, hope of tunes I always wanted to hum looking at the sleeping faces of my loved ones that glow with health and trust. The lullabies sung in most cultures around the world actually connect us with nature. While the moon rocks the ocean, the African carries the baby on the back to market, the Puerto Rican rocks the hamaca, the child in the United States rocks the teddy bear, the Indian sings a lowrie, the Chinese sings Yao lan chiú swinging the baby’s basket, the Native American rocks a birch bark cradle. Closing our eyes we all go on a musical raft to find hope, peace and angels that caress us with love.
This tradition goes way beyond just a melody for babies. The work elaborates the idea that lullabies are not just for children. They create attachments between people of all ages. It is one that connects us with our capacity of resolving our need with comfort, calming us in crises and gaining clarity in conflicts. In trying times we all need to go back to the child within us, nurture others and ourselves. We need to give ourselves permission to rest and progressively handle matters causing turbulence with care.
The project is a hand quilted sound and light installation with a soundscape of traditional lullabies from different cultures and dialects.
As I stared at the old wooden box that rested on my desk, I seemed to drift into nostalgia. A smile filled my face remniscing old memories that were stored in the box as photographs. Every picture made a special connection capturing moments that have enriched my life over the years.
The project is an installation that weaves together a collection of personal memories, sewed piece by piece in layers of moments laced together, woven in fine thread delicately embellished with priceless treasures.
The puppet/doll is a self-portrait that brings surprise like the ‘Jack in the box’, where I find my self transformed by meaningful memories, colorful and amused.
I strive for consistent growth within self and realize that there are pressing questions to which I seek answers. I need to determine and resolve thoughts and feelings that arise from nihilism, struggle and turmoil. By being conscious internally I can reflect my thoughts on positive action externally. This state I have been exploring is a phenomenon, which has no definite form, but I can call this some sort of inner sculpting or a process of realizing my capacity as an agent of change. The work is an emerged collage of images, various influences and spontaneous little sparks of illumination within self that shape into a torch like illuminated form. Like ancient cave paintings with a language of their own, glowing in the dark spaces of my mind. These are images that embody buried beliefs, relationships between the power of transformation in nature and human as a life form. Some are personal reflections of ‘mutations’ within self and questions centered around my motifs in this life, about the power of my agency, making connections between justice, secret wisdom and new knowledge.
This participative intervention intends to trigger a phenomenological approach to self-consciousness. I am not just interested in philosophical questions about the undeniable knowledge of phenomenological understandings but I am also experimenting with ways of working through practical phenomenology.
This process of self-discovery through stillness is a necessary way of conditioning myself for how I wish to work in the world. It helps me to get in touch with what goes on within me, observing my thoughts, actions and also the actions of others and how their energy interrelates with mine. It keeps me more focused in the present moment.
“Things outlast us, they know more about us than we know about them: they carry the experience they have had with us inside them and are—in fact—the book of our history opened before us.” – W.G Sebal
Phenomenology of ‘Animism’, is known as the emotional need to find meanings in inanimate objects. When we encounter the past through objects, it urges us to rediscover our ancestors & their habitat. We felt a strong urge to get back our agency, our power of knowing what might have been and why it seemed important for us to make these connections.
An amalgamation of objects can be witnessed in museums, which are mostly in enclosed spaces. However, unlike a typically guarded museum, this participatory intervention offers an exploration into an open space for people to feel and experience each object. My experience in large museums like Pitt rivers and Ashmolean is that the visitor is overwhelmed by all the research details of hundreds of objects, staring at them from enclosed glass boxes. Although they aesthetically present historical and scientific facts, an explorer cannot feel and draw experiences.
The work is an open concept of museum, a carefully curated space on the finely mowed lawn with ten objects. Each object carries a question so as to kindle the audience’s perception and their explorative approach thus offering them a phenomenological experience of meaningful discovery and dialogue.
This participative intervention is an attempt to offer deep insights about the field of cultural interaction between various archetypes, how they are all related and their significance in this world.
Collaborating Artists: Nivedita Saha and Lulwa Alfarie
How is belonging expressed? What does it mean to belong? What about the sense of not belonging? Discover belongings lost and found in this exhibition of photographs, paintings, interactive installations and real-life stories.
*W.I.N Collective – FAB 2015, Bath, United Kingdom
The story is about speaking trees, whispering wind; meditative silence, singing birds, hidden messages and seamless patterns in nature lived through walks. It is a self-explorative journey of cognitive insights and inspiration. Daily long distance reflective walking and finding a point of view through a viewfinder, opens up portals into deeper clarity and altered state of consciousness, away from the enigma of the mundane spectacles of unchanging life. It is the empirical emergence of flow, a sensate physical want that uncovers a deeper understanding of well-being and connectedness.
My walks are documented through a series of visual narratives that encourage ways of ‘seeing while sensing’ accompanied with a written commentary on immediate encounters. It is the re-entering into spaces with new eyes in a redolent atmosphere that encourages tuning in and a sense of inter-being (Thich Nhat Hanh ). I fathom that a lot of what I otherwise presume ordinary suddenly becomes extra-ordinary through this frame and it is this view of the world that is more enlivening. The perception of being a miniscule part of this infinite biosphere as a human is gratifying. I feel thankful towards everything that encompasses and engages me every moment like an elixir, which is immortal compared to us temporal mortal beings. Trees never end, but we do and somehow they know how to renew themselves through their seeds. This parabolic truth allows me to ‘be’, live in the moment, slows me down, embrace imperfections and gain clarity amidst an enchanting yet busy landscape. This acceptance of ‘Wabi-Sabi’ allows my thoughts to emerge gradually based on personal innate phenomenological experiences.
What’s your story?