Reena Saini Kallat Indian, b. 1973
Measurement From Evaporating Oceans, 2013
FRP, Metal and Salt
Variation of 3
Variation of 3
Radius of wrist: height 15 x 18 inches width (since it's not completely round) |
Diameter of hand: 18 (height of the hand with fingers and thumb) x 24 inches width |
Depth of hand: length from the wall projecting outwards 39.5 inches |
Length of compass: 74 inches |
Width between 2 compass points: 30 inches |
Diameter of salt stencil: 60 inches
Diameter of hand: 18 (height of the hand with fingers and thumb) x 24 inches width |
Depth of hand: length from the wall projecting outwards 39.5 inches |
Length of compass: 74 inches |
Width between 2 compass points: 30 inches |
Diameter of salt stencil: 60 inches
Copyright The Artist
Further images
Salt, an elemental ingredient of sustenance and of life itself is linked intimately with its capacity to preserve. In ‘Measurement from Evaporating Oceans’ it is at once a shorthand for...
Salt, an elemental ingredient of sustenance and of life itself is linked intimately with its capacity to preserve. In ‘Measurement from Evaporating Oceans’ it is at once a shorthand for the domestic, the political and the social facets of humanity. The concentric rings of numerical figures, ostensibly announcing the dates of independence wars fought in various corners of the world, is perhaps a supplication to the circularity of time, of the infinite grooves of temporality. The history of humanity marked by irrevocable pledges of friendship and the irreversible effects of war, with the salinity of the sweat of the brow of those who fought for freedom and the many pleasures of life, as fleeting as the meal that fosters us, is only a moment in this epic cycle. It is fitting, perhaps, that this history, fragile and susceptible to forgetting, be rendered through the frailty of salt. And yet, this apparent vulnerability of history and the medium in question itself can be misleading. Notwithstanding the constant threat of obliteration both bear the dense thicket of their significations, remain beyond the scope of erasure. The colossal human hand and instrument that looms over the salt scatterings underlines this intangible depth and the futility of human effort to quantify its proportion. Despite our systematic endeavor to enumerate time and codify our history through the mechanisms of chronology, through clocks and dates, beginnings and endings, the unyielding proportion of the history of civilization still remains beyond quantification.
Exhibitions
2015 ‘Hyphenated Lives’ Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai | 2015 ‘Porous Passages’, Nature Morte, New Delhi |
2014 Anatomy of forking paths, Art Houz, ChennaiSign up to receive the latest news about exhibitions and artists
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