reena Saini kallat
Reena Saini Kallat’s (b. 1973, Delhi, India) practice spanning drawing, photography, sculpture and video engages diverse materials, imbued with conceptual underpinnings. She is interested in the role that memory plays, in not only what we choose to remember but how we think of the past. Using the motif of the rubberstamp both as object and imprint, signifying the bureaucratic apparatus, Kallat has worked with officially recorded or registered names of people, objects, and monuments that are lost or have disappeared without a trace, only to get listed as anonymous and forgotten statistics. In her works made with electrical cables, wires usually serving as conduits of contact that transmit ideas and information, become painstakingly woven entanglements that morph into barbed wires like barriers. Her ongoing series using salt as a medium explores the tenuous yet intrinsic relationship between the body and the oceans, highlighting the fragility and unpredictability of existence.
Aperture
(en)counters 2015 | Spaces In Transition
A video piece in which we see birds flying around a line of electrical cables. As they settle down, they begin to form shapes of letters. Time is suspended momentarily as the letters become discernable. As we read "Happiness is not a station you arrive at but a manner of travelling", a sharp sound disturbs the birds. They soon depart leaving the phrase disintegrated in tiny fragments, probing the viewer to reflect upon the true meaning of our lives and our constant quest for happiness.
Synapse
This video is shot at an optometrist's clinic with 14 people getting their vision tested, reading out alphabets from eye charts placed in front of them. The text they are reading in fragmented form is the Preamble of the Constitution of India. The work opens up an inquiry into our own understanding of the ideals of freedom, liberty, justice and how we exercise these fundamental rights in our own lives.