At the facade we could see him no more..
Unpublished Essay, 2017Originally developed as a talk for the HWP Open Studios at Ashkal Alwan, and later expanded into an essay in the context of the exhibition Hangar for the Passerby, curated by Akansha Rastogi, KNMA, Delhi.
The essay forms an addendum to the video A Gathering at the Carnival Shop. It looks at the operations of haunting and the labyrinthine nature of time in works of the artist K.Ramanujam (1941-1973), who lived at the Cholamandal Artists' Village in the city of Madras, India. The creeping interventions of nature, landscape and other indifferent material forces come together to reveal a strange genealogy of ruins and decay.
