NOTEBOOKS
My notebooks are site-specific artworks that I carry with me. They bring together many references, textures, experiences, and stories. A dense temporal object, each book records over a year of time. There is a double-sided nature to drawing in a book, and both the back and front of a page have equal importance in its structure.
Sometimes, I layer so much ink that the page becomes sodden and the moisture eats away at the paper to create holes, forming windows throughout the book. This process has informed my making and has made me think of material as porous and durational in nature.
My notebooks are site-specific artworks that I carry with me. They bring together many references, textures, experiences, and stories. A dense temporal object, each book records over a year of time. There is a double-sided nature to drawing in a book, and both the back and front of a page have equal importance in its structure.
Sometimes, I layer so much ink that the page becomes sodden and the moisture eats away at the paper to create holes, forming windows throughout the book. This process has informed my making and has made me think of material as porous and durational in nature.
Shifters
The Shifters aka the Cut Outs are shapes performing different gestures in space. They reference a body caught in a state of movement and are informed by my research into post-colonial theory and the creation of an identity as a subject and an other. They are out of context, slightly alien and not fully formed; bodies in stasis and without ground.
Formally, they exist in a place between painting, sculpture and drawing, and teeter between near recognition as abstract bodies and performing different gestures. The cut outs set out to intentionally destabilize a simplistic and patronizing cultural stereotyping of the subjects they allude to.
PARACHUTES
Parachutes are functional objects, only fully visible in the sky where they open up completely. I have been interested in this visibility and openness when the parachute is no longer in its pack or strewn on the ground. Attaching large parachutes to the Shifters adds a second narrative layer. Together, they interact with the history of the site as well as its structure, defining an uncertain existence. Safe Landings was the first iteration of the parachute in Muscat in 2010, in conversation with the shifters. In the following years, I took the parachute to many different locations in Oman.
It became a metaphor for an external drive; dropped somewhere in order for it to be considered by the place it landed in. This visual and architectural apparatus reconsiders the terms “displacement” and “embodiment” and what it means for a work of art to encapsulate both these states of being.
Parachutes are functional objects, only fully visible in the sky where they open up completely. I have been interested in this visibility and openness when the parachute is no longer in its pack or strewn on the ground. Attaching large parachutes to the Shifters adds a second narrative layer. Together, they interact with the history of the site as well as its structure, defining an uncertain existence. Safe Landings was the first iteration of the parachute in Muscat in 2010, in conversation with the shifters. In the following years, I took the parachute to many different locations in Oman.
It became a metaphor for an external drive; dropped somewhere in order for it to be considered by the place it landed in. This visual and architectural apparatus reconsiders the terms “displacement” and “embodiment” and what it means for a work of art to encapsulate both these states of being.
WORKS ON PAPER
WORKS ON WOOD
landing in dust (2023), Oil and gesso on photo transfer on birch plywood, 182.9 x 121.9 cm.
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ASSEMBLAGES
There's a black splash coming (2021), Oil on photo transfer on paper, canvas, wood and glass, 150 x 190 cm. Brittle like bisquit (2022), Oil on Dye-sub print on polyester and birch plywood, 248.9 x 166.9 cm. Engulfed with White (2006), Oil and acrylic on plexiglass and plywood, 236.2 x 81.28 cm. The dangler (2008), Acrylic on aluminum, 300 x 200 cm. Safely Standing (2015), Concrete, mortar and glass. At Ghetto Biennale, Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
Copyright 2024 Radhika Khimji. All rights reserved.