This work's title is inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke's poem "Portrait of My Father as a Young Man." It features a series of drawings created with soft pastels and a double-channel video installation.
The drawings explore 18th-century European portraits from the Enlightenment era, highlighting how they reflect the development of modern subjectivity. These portraits from the age of enlightenment serve not only as likenesses of their subjects but also play a crucial role in shaping identity, class, and power dynamics. They achieve this through the use of specific dress and textiles, gestures and posture, objects and tools, and techniques involving light and illumination. Additionally, the distinctive style of the backgrounds, characterised by flat colours, effectively emphasises the subject. However, these flat, dull, or slightly textured backgrounds also symbolise a void, suggesting a disconnection between the subjects and their context or environment. Created during the peak of modern civilisation, these portraits illustrate the person's subjectivity by portraying them in discord with their background.
These drawings study the backgrounds of the portraits painted by notable artists of the Enlightenment era, including Francisco Goya (1746–1828), Anton Graff (1736–1813), Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825), and others. By removing the figures from these portraits, the artwork redirects focus to the empty backgrounds, highlighting how individuals perceived themselves and their place in the world during the height of modernity. In essence, the absence of the subjects in the portraits, on the one hand, limits the representation of individual identity of the Enlightenment age and, on the other hand, reveals a hidden aspect that underscores the emergence of a common subjectivity.
Soft Pastel on paper, 28x18 inches, 2025
Soft Pastel on paper, 28x18 inches, 2025
Soft Pastel on paper, 28x18 inches, 2025
Soft Pastel on paper, 28x18 inches, 2025
Soft Pastel on paper, 28x18 inches, 2025
Soft Pastel on paper, 28x18 inches, 2025
Display as a part of the show "On Absence" Curated by Achia Anzi and Oorja Garg at The Anya and Andrew Shiva Art Gallery at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York, 2025, (Along with the artwork by Mohit Shelare)
The double-channel video installation engages with the painting "Architectural Veduta," created by the Renaissance artist Francesco di Giorgio Martini around 1490. This painting, characterised by its centralised single-point perspective, embodies the ideal of spatial and urban planning that emerged during the Renaissance, reflecting the principles of humanism. German art historian Erwin Panofsky argues that the development of perspective during this period is not merely an attempt to achieve the naturalistic depiction of the world. Instead, it serves as a symbolic reframing of reality in a specific cultural convention, which presumes a subject aware of their own individualistic viewpoint in recognising a single point of spatial infinity. In other words, the advent of naturalism in art during this period constitutes the emergence of a shift in episteme that constructs a new worldview seen from an individual's viewpoint.
Building on Panofsky's concept of Renaissance perspective, this work critically comments on the construction of an implicit/ presumed subject within the development of a mathematically measured reality. It achieves this by showcasing a slow panning movement in and out of a painting.
The installation features two videos, each two hours long, positioned face-to-face. One video displays a pan moving inward toward the extreme center of the painting, followed by a reverse pan moving outward. Simultaneously, the other video shows a pan moving outward from the extreme center of the painting, which is also followed by a reverse pan moving inward. By continuously reversing their roles in panning toward and away from the center of the painting simultaneously, the two videos indirectly highlight the absence of the subject that is typically presumed in the spatial planning of the Western Renaissance.
First video’s initial point
Second video’s initial point
Display at "To-gather at the South Asian Playground" by first draft at Mool, Delhi, 2025 (Along with the artwork by Srinivas Harivanam)
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