Elusive Recesses: Dhruvi Acharya | In-Touch Edition V

These ink and watercolor works were made while in isolation during the global coronavirus pandemic. If the fear of the virus was not enough, almost on a daily basis we were confronted with news of political upheavals, unrest and protests in countries across the world, crimes against minorities and against women, and worldwide environmental disasters including wildfires, cyclones, heat waves, floods and melting polar ice, brought on by our collective actions. These events have hardly allowed us to breathe before the next one occurs. And all this is compounded with sickness and even death among our dear families and friends.

2020 has truly been unprecedented in how it unfolded.

In these strange times I have found myself mulling over these overwhelming global events. With our massive human population and our propensity for selfishness, greed and our inertia for change, I worry about the kind of world we have created and will leave behind for future generations. I have been thinking about the root cause of our collective misery, the inequalities and environmental disasters that plague our world and affect all living things.

While spending time in my studio, I found myself painting about thoughts and thinking, realizing that all actions begin as thoughts, and the one thing we can do for our own peace of mind and eventually for the world in general, is pay attention to our own thoughts, try to replace the clutter with clarity, try to find solutions for our problems. This body of work is about the difficulty in taking breaks from the constant chatter in our heads, and the elusive recesses of our minds, the working of which are often mysterious to even ourselves.

- Dhruvi Acharya, 2020