By Heart, Porcelain, Cobalt Oxide, Narration of ‘Where the mind the without fear’ by Rabindranath Tagore and ‘Looking down at the books’ by Kushala Vora in the artists voice, 4 ft x 7 ft x 7 ft, 2024
Installation and performance at the Indian Ceramics Triennale 2024
To break the conditionings associated with my own education, I revisits a poem ‘Where the mind is without fear’ written by Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore in anticipation of freedom, 46 years before the independence of India. Chiseled at the entrance of my high school, I would see the poem everyday while living a personal reality that was far from it. I wrote a poem in response, questioning our ways and asking us to imagine another future, pointing again to Tagore’s dream. By heart is created from the accumulated gesture of writing and imprinting both Tagore’s and my poem onto porcelain. While the original poems says, “Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high, where is knowledge is free and the world is not broken down into fragments by narrow domestic walls”, my poem reflected, “ Looking down at the books, red marks all over; another 2/10 it was; bring out your hands the tallest one in the room said; one strike and then other.
The installation is accompanied by a participatory performance where the audience becomes an orchestra, reading parts of Tagore’s poem. Within the repetition of sentences from the audience such as “Where the mind is without fear”, “Where the world is led forward by thee”, “Where the world is not broken up…”, I narrate part of a collective Indian story of discipline, hierarchy, punishment and fear. The performance ends with the reinforcing of the dream by Tagore towards true freedom. I resite, “Deweeding the grass with the village, unearthing worms and tilling new life in the land, chipping away those layers; one sunset after another… remaking a forest. By actively bringing into my conscious memory the visual markers and residues of colonial power, I seeks to unmake sets of micro-habits.