In the Self of Mind

Prussian Blue: A Serendipitous Colour that Altered the Trajectory of Art

Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Noida, India

September 19 – December 20, 2023

Curated by Dr. Arshiya Lokhandwala

This survey exhibition brought together 19 contemporary artists Anita Dube, Anju Dodiya, Alke Reeh, Astha Butail, Atul Dodiya, Desmond Lazaro, Mithu Sen, N S Harsha, Sheba Chhachhi, Shilpa Gupta, Subodh Gupta, Parul Gupta, Prajakta Potnis, Ranbir Kaleka, Sumakshi Singh, Shambhavi, Thukral & Tagra Vivan Sundaram, Waqas Khan invited to respond to the cultural, historical, and emotional resonance of Prussian Blue—a synthetic pigment accidentally invented in Berlin in the early 1700s, which went on to revolutionize art due to its affordability and stability. The exhibition explored themes of colour as emotion, biography, science, and resistance—connecting the deep melancholic and spiritual associations of Prussian Blue with contemporary socio-political contexts

My interest in ancient methods of archiving, oral traditions, and texts such as the Rigveda connects my work to ethnography, spirituality, and sociology. In this work In the Self of Mind made for the exhibition Prussian Blue, I examine the relationship between the mind and the Self. For me the mind is a complex system of myriad thoughts, imaginings, processes which I explore as an abstraction through 189 hexagonal frames on the ceiling that allude as an open book in continuation with my earlier body of work “A Story Within a Story” “ a sapphire firmament of abstract thought escaped in a formless vacancy”. Each of the 189 frames have been threaded with a thread like a book. Here I have used seven tints of the Prussian Blue to make a sort of library using one of the memory codes called the Jata or braiding system from sixteen different memory patterns of the Indian Rig Veda.

On a subliminal level In the Self of Mind shares a story of the Mind and its instruments (hexagonal frames) to the Self ( the mirror) which brings Man to a Silence and a Soul connection. This work shows the mind’s reflection Into the being of Self: the opposite not being true. Of all the 189 frames three frames have been painted white. The different shades share the story of various ups and downs in one’s thought processes which leads to various levels of identification of the consciousness of Self.