మరచిపో | marachipŌ | (un)learn, 2023
Unilateral speaker (audio loop 00:58), custom designed vinyl, chalkboard paint, white chalk, chalkboard vinyl
This work is inspired by my grandmother's daily practice of writing the word Sree Rāma in Telugu—a ritual practice that remains part of her routine even as she lives with dementia. The text in this work is composed of a moment in her practice when she repeatedly writes the word rāma to read rāmarāmarāma mara sree maramarchipo across vertical lines drawn on the page, thus breaking structure. మరచిపో (marachipŌ) in Telugu translates to 'forget' in English. These handwritten words by my grandmother were digitally reprinted and painted over with chalk board paint that acts as a surface for chalk drawings on wooden panels.
Drawings on wooden panels are composed from depictions of Vishnu and historical paintings of reclining women such as: the Grande Odalisque by Ingres, Reclining Nair Lady by Ravi Varma, and Édouard Manet's Olympia. One composite drawing made from these gendered images is repeated in this work to emphasize different forms of “seeing or looking”. For instance, the concept of Darshan, “to see and to be seen” ¹ is conferred upon the sacred while “the other” is “looked at” ². In the former, the sacred is perceived through an act of exchanging vision, here the image has the agency of seeing a viewer; in the latter, a viewer assumes an active control to objectify “the other”.
In this work, a viewer sees and is seen by the image whose ephemeral outlines seem to be coming apart. When a viewer steps in to listen they perform their agency by undoing drawn patterns on the floor. The concept for this work begins with the word మరచిపో, penned by my grandmother, to emphasize the importance of (un)learning as a practice of devotion in order to open up to the divine multitude.
Wooden panels act as a sound chamber where viewers are invited to step in and listen. In the spirit of breaking down a recognizable structure, the audio is composed of spoken words overlaid upon an audio track of mantras read in reverse. Viewers step onto chalk drawings when they walk in to listen. Repetition of images and audio in this work replicate my grandmother's daily practice.
Eck, Diana L. Darshan: Seeing the Divine Image in India. 3rd ed., Columbia University Press, 1998.
Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." Screen, vol. 16, no. 3, Autumn 1975, pp. 6–18.