collaborating
with Multiple Visiting Intimacies
Why is my reality an abysmal representation of my ideals? Does mundanity manage to steer my magnificence under hiding? Or, is my magnificence an illusion I have concocted to survive the everydayness of me? Why do my individual and collective experiences of me dilute in my associations?
These are my private macro investigations. My works are ‘thoughtscapes’ that begin at the combined peripheries of reason and absurdness. Steered by ‘What If?’ and ‘Why Not?’, I enquire into relevance, conformity, logic, knowing, meaning . . . I dereference the thought and flow to the rhythm of its integrity. Meaning restricts. Knowing is a paraphernalia, I refuse to maintain. I am now merely a swarm of journeys outside of meaning, in the realms of doubt and curiosity, where new knowing drizzles over me, washing away residues of accumulated knowing.
I am self-taught – human, artist, writer. The materials and techniques in my work are instinctive. Matter like thought, changes form, retains memories. Memories duet with me to communicate through my work. Sometimes, there is an instant synch, at others, we brew in disconnectedness until they let me in or I drill a hole and sneak in. If I am going to be used as an instrument for an expression, let’s get the best seats to the show.
Living and creating in evolving discomfort takes some getting used to, like does not pinning hope on conclusions. A cruise over emotions, and thoughts, simultaneously examining them, can be exciting and frustrating at the same time. It is interesting to see how lives and matter course when decontextualised/recontextualised.
I dig the isolated and combined quarries of internal dialogue and conflict of my assets to build my work and myself (go figure!). Patterns, styles, languages, media, matter, my being . . . confluence in my work – everything that walks in my door gives a tacit consent to becoming a trigger, catalyst, or the show itself. Navigating the intimacies within me, I inadvertently collaborate with multiple visiting intimacies.
Despite being creatively active from childhood, my expression of me through perceived art began when my conditioned associations with all possible identity markers like gender, age, sexuality, religion, nation, qualification, class, ability, culture, convictions . . . failed me and the vortex of insignificance sucked me in. Recomposing myself from a ‘zero’ opened me to an uncharted me. My work and I are a fermentation of experiences from my voyages within and without.
Nothing is the way it happened, everything is the way it happened, between the happening, is a point you will call your own, whatever you experience there through my work, will be all yours and part ours.
To that which will be ours!
Kunjan Mendake,
Banjaran – Mafakkur – Wild Fire.
