Overview
We exist in a fine web of relationships , between family, friends, lovers, within community and between nations. Such networks support us, keep us aloft, providing an anchor and steadying line during upheaval.
Sometimes these very strictures can be binding and suffocating, constraining our growth against our will, enforcing duties and obligations, and behavior conforms. The tenets of these relationships are shaped by tradition, culture, religion, politics and the times.
Tying the knot whilst signifying a bond also invariably speaks of an entanglement.
And then there is nothing that ties us down more than our own thoughts that come from a sense of identity or role.
This exhibition brings together 7 artists who delve into the complexity of the state of Bind/Bound. Across generations and backgrounds the artists consider how their own worldview is shaped in response to a diversity of contexts. There are multiple perspectives at play, demonstrating diverse viewpoints and responses that exist when gazing across similar issues. Each bearing witness to their experiences of how fragile the ties that bind us really are.
The exhibition investigates a more specific visuality of the oppressiveness of the culture and social diktats on us and exposes the position of vulnerability that haunts us in relationships of dominance/subservience.







Works
Achia Anzi, Untitled, Sound and lightbox, Variable, 2021
9.5 x 12.9 inchesHannah Zalis Anzi, Gürtel, Eighteen silk threads handmade, 2021
1.5 x 127.9 inchesSumakshi Singh, Calender, Thread drawing, 2021
27 x 19 inchesShanthi Swaroopini, Untitled, Watercolour on paper, 2021
12.5 x 9 inchesShanthi Swaroopini, Untiled, Watercolour on paper, 2021
8 x 4.5 inchesShanthi Swaroopini, Untitled, Watercolour on paper, 2021
8 x 6.5 inchesShanthi Swaroopini, Untitled, Watercolour on paper, 2021
12.5 x 9 inchesShanthi Swaroopini, Untitled, Watercolour on paper, 2021
12.5 x 9 inchesShanthi Swaroopini, Untitled, Watercolour on paper, 2021
12.5 x 9 inchesShanthi Swaroopini, Untitled, Watercolour on paper, 2021
12.5 x 9 inchesShanthi Swaroopini, Untitled, Watercolour on paper, 2021
12.5 x 9 inchesShanthi Swaroopini, Untitled, Watercolour on paper, 2021
12.5 x 9 inchesShanthi Swaroopini, Untitled, Watercolour on paper, 2021
12.5 x 9 inchesShanthi Swaroopini, Untitled, Watercolour on paper, 2021
12.5 x 9 inches
Notes
Curatorial Note
Bind/Bound’ comes from the learnings of a personal journey. It is also in a sense a natural sequel to ‘Bakhiya’, an exhibition that I curated in 2019.
Time wears and frays the fabric down, thread by thread, strand by strand in the winds of ageing till one clearly sees the circle of emotion that surrounds and protects us like a halo of our own thoughts, ideas and expectations that bind us to what we have become.
The striving to understand need, love, illusion and anger leads to the subsequent desire to break free of these strictures in order to see the stripped-down truth of our self-created identity.
The lotus blossoms in muddy waters are a beautiful metaphor for worldly ties, that hurt beyond bearing in order to glean in the kinder light of understanding, empathy and acceptance that will eventually set us free.