What world is this? It is familiar and unfamiliar, nostalgic and contemporary. We are transported to 18th Century Northern India, and yet we encounter the rough shrubbery and wild kelp forests of the Western Cape of South Africa. The characters are suspended in geometry, held within a restrained palette and rendered so delicately that they seem locked in layers of history. And yet, these characters are unmistakably from our world, today. Here we meet ourselves, our tormentors, our imagined admirers, our ancestral elders, our guardians, our unwanted surveyors.
In this world, contradictions dwell together harmoniously, as they do in dreams. It is a world that reveals the enduring human quest for creation and meaning: Thanka symbolism, ancient devotions to the natural world drawn from Himalayan traditions. It is also a world that reveals human compulsions toward destruction: the moonlit Neela Gumbad, here today and gone tomorrow; the collapsing mass of AI infrastructure and discarded warheads that threatens to litter a sacred monastery. These contesting impulses are held together through pattern, harmony and detail, producing a world that reconstitutes the messiness of yesterday with the potential of tomorrow.
Text by Sophia Olivia Sanan
Solo exhibition by Sujay Sanan
