//Joules per blue - 2023

'Jouls per blue' is a photo installation that consists of a series of 26 images. This work was conceived in a glass factory in Vadodara, Gujarat, and it was displayed in a pop-up exhibition organised by the art collective First Draft in Delhi in April 2023.

The workers of the glass factory use a frame made of cobalt-tinted blue glass to see clearly into the hot ovens and machinery while the material is being processed. I placed the same glass in front of the camera as a lens to capture the factory and its workers in heat and labour.

This installation explores the relationship between heat and labour.The translucency of the cobalt glass serves to both delimit the reality of the workers as it obscures the image and, at the same time, expose a hidden reality that is otherwise kept hidden in the context of the capitalist system. As joules are a unit of measurement for heat, this attempt tries to measure the labour of the workers in a qualitative aspect, i.e., heat through the tints of blue.