"The picture means itself.
The sentence means itself.
The two can never meet."
- J.Miller
ThinKiNg
aBouT...
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Scroll for pictures and sentences...
InStAlLatioNs
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SpaceTime Cone’ plays homage to the globe by presenting the two connected eternities of time and constellations in the night sky. The navy cone is covered in the constellations as seen from London in summer, typed accurately with gold ink. The smaller, transparent cone of time takes its shape from a light cone in special and general relativity. All time filtering from future to past.
Two cones. A web of intertwined time and a web of starts. Two eternities
Marble, metal, paper, tracing paper. 27x25cm
‘"Everything solid melts with the air"’ is a visual poem of fading identity and the roots which it's birthed from. Each piece is held by metal in between tracing paper which reads:
" Everything solid melts with the air, identity fades under sunbeams into dried up soil
Dust, pollen, mold., settles on the surface
Of what is blanketed by earth
Ah! That porous solidity
Like an island in the glazed look of the dying
Even the roots of lemon trees
Melt and hide beneath the surface."
wood, metal, paper, tracing paper. 71x43 cm
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RecoGnisEd WorK
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Tate Collective Billboards shortlist
A piece inspired by Sheba Chhachhi's portrait of writer and publisher Urvashi Butalia as a part of the Seven lives and a dream series, is naturally suited to a technique born from writing. In our fight got gender equality we have used language as our tool. The typewriters include sections from monumental open letters written by women ( Leyla Guven, Indira Jaising, Vasudha Dhagamwar) while the Tv plays homage to the protests of the 192 Mathura rape case. Our women, and other words throughout the piece, are omitted with a '?' and '-' as they are still taboo, misunderstood and underrepresented.
Six typewriters, a protest and 'The dream' of continuing to use language andits power to change the world.
Paper 47x36 cm
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A Typewritten note: discovering and remembering the city through conversation.
I heard once that we are all alone with ourselves in the city, wondering through it and conversing with our thoughts. It’s true, there is no way to fully express with words. It has fascinated me how we discover and experience new places and people. It has also fascinated me that so many ways of expression are fading; collecting dust in corners of temporality.
I first discovered the typewriter when looking for secrets and mysteries in my grandparents flat. They called me ‘a something searcher’ (which my aunt coined from a Pippi Longstockings chapter) because I’d peak in every draw and jacket pocket looking for that mystery I’d never find. Later, I found out they sold my grandfathers typewriter because he never used it; he wrote everything by hand which is why his fingers were stuck in a pen holding position after his retirement. Maybe that’s when I began my search for one, after realising the only one I’d ever want is lost in some high-rise apartment in Sofia.
My blue Swedish typewriter sits on my desk and is the only thing I use on it. There is just something about the sound of permanence with every letter. The font inked with nostalgia and time. I imagine how many sentences have been pressed with frustration, love, eagerness and melancholy before I write this one- how much more physicality was needed to express a simple thought. Apart from writing, I only recently discovered what is now another way to use it- Typewriter art.
The idea for these specific typewritten drawings came with the nostalgia not for the places I visited but for the conversations locked within them. I wasn’t alone in the city, I was navigated by what are now fading voices and pockets of real conversation. It’s such a common feeling- we have all spoken with one another when abroad. However, its not just that. It’s the idea of remembering only the words spoken- not the street corner, cathedral, museum or lakeside. A kind of “Before Sunset” feeling of the unity of shared glances, spoken and unspoken words and the streets. I remember exactly what was whispered when looking up at the Berliner Dom, but the craftsmanship and detail of the Cathedral only made an imprint after searching for something to represent that conversation with. I remember exactly what we laughed about and what I didn’t say when my eyes drifted from the yellow streets of Florence to the makeshift tour guide. But if you show me pictures of that day, I remember only the words before or after they were taken- I can’t recall the detail of Duomo. The 7 Rila lakes? I see our thoughts handwritten in the water; I see the words float in in black ink over the surface.
I though that using a typewriter to make fragments of the city is a good way to show that the memory is made of characters and symbols bound to language. Made not with a pencil but with something that is only used to write and communicate with. It is a different way of visualising. The act of moving the page around and relentlessly filling the room with echoes of a dash, full stop or capital M gives it more life- even if simple looking and oddly shaped. I feel the mark of permanence with every metallic impact. My paper fingers also stained.
It is a kind of art that is lost. Fading like the ink it’s typed with. Never really born to be dead; never really seen to be missed. With the temporality of the typewriter, the little notes and drawings remain on yellow, crumbling pages of the past. On the letters our grandparents wrote to each other and paper we dismiss as old-fashioned and unsustainable. A whole method of conversation is forgotten only to be briefly acknowledged as “vintage” in a second-hand shop. Maybe we should all become ‘something searchers’. Maybe we should search for more words in the city. For more ways to express them. Whether in conversation with ourselves, or the person we type with a proud and bold full stop, it is in remembrance that we discover.
We remember what will be forgotten.
We remember in conversation.
We remember the city.
