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We extract history from the residues of the ruins we are now witness to and of what has survived centuries in our built environment. These inform us but are also precursors to violence and constant rewriting. Artists often excavate and appropriate their form and materiality to comment on contemporaneity. LN Tallur uses the lotus base or lalitasana cast using the same techniques used in Chola Bronzes to create the mirage of weightlessness and levitation out of something very heavy. Having studied Museology he is interested in the techniques of sculpture that changes our perspective as views which he succeeds in doing so ‘In Thin Air’. Chandrashekhar Koteshwar depicts Indus valley lovers in jovial embrace in terracotta but in ‘Nap at Museum’ he shows a foot step on a Buddhist figure representing the counter-revolution against Buddhism and its philosophies. Antonio Puri encounters ‘Varna’ in a colour coded spiral presenting the cascade of discrimination whilst Nandan Ghiya deconstructs the Indian joint family by metaphoring trauma with glitch. Tanya Goel paints frescoes on Nehruvian concrete debris to reflect on changing political fortunes. But Khageshwar Rout extracts forms from nature mirroring the veins of a leaf in a hope of an utopia sometimes called a ‘Renaissance’ but mostly drawn from uninformed histories of lore.
