27018993 Dorje Ghising
Statement
I remember being taught about how our nervous system reacts to an external stimulus. When we touch a hot surface, the information gets sent from our finger to our brain where if it reaches a certain threshold, it gets sent to our spine. The spine then activates our arm muscles to jerk our hand away from the heat. For me this was a simple enough explanation to evoke thoughts about how the surrounding takes part in my body’s existence. Overtime it led to queries about where my body begins and ends within the physical realm. Which is why my artistic practice revolves around cultivating phenomenological experiences of living and coexistence. Through the medium of photography, painting and installation, I intend to create experiences that are not constrained by conventional ideas but attune to a more sentient and subjective understanding of ourselves and what’s around us.
Initially, I painted topological gradients of colour on wooden blocks salvaged from my studio; they are Indicative of my eastern upbringing in a place with diversity in people, culture, and geography. The gradients depict the overlapping socio-cultural similarities and layers of repetitive motifs that our differences shared. This “layer-focused” diaspora of eastern thinking in a western surrounding result in a non-conforming experience and it’s these experiences that I study and share within my artistic journey.
A decisive change was a shift towards painting during the autumn term. I decided to pursue a cryptic almost neo-symbolist style of hiding meaning within my paintings. Staying true to my layer-focused technique, I developed three paintings which narrate three different statements on living. Similar to works from Abbas Zahedi where he intertwines elements of code-switching as an approach to explore diaspora, I altered the characteristics of my paintings to convey relatively contrasting sentimentality and perspectives that I find myself switching between. They all work as a tryptic for those who notice these subtle similarities but are very different in composition to one another.
During a fieldwork session with Kate Allen, I was introduced to an exhibition of “The Commons” at the Museum of English Rural Life. The commons acknowledged emotional, political, and historic attempts on how we share air, water, and land; among ourselves and our ecosystem. Upon noticing a strong incline towards misuse of these commons under an intent of domination, I felt the urge to shower this concept with the idea of love. Transgressing the differences in perception, love is a feeling we all can relate to but it is also a tool in attaining peaceful co-existence. It is an expansion of our concern towards ourselves and what’s around us therefore, I believe it has the power to share perspectives. Concentrating on this property of love, “A Bosie mends the heart”, 2022, was created. This tall, primordial, anthropomorphic, alien like structure was my attempt to create a lure surrounding this outlandish body of love in the middle of my studio space.
Whilst working on “A Bosie mends the heart”, 2022, I was able to study the site and I wanted to play with its architectural boundaries. “Phenomenology of Perception”, 1945 by Merleau Ponty unpacks an understanding of many non-western Anthropocene that complements my artistic practice. The artists steering the light and space movement from 1960s like Robert Irwin and Helen Pashgian to contemporary practitioners like Olafur Eliasson reinterpreting art as a study of the consciousness and the contours of our perception also inspired me to create “EK ARKA”, 2022. Playing with light and space, the two physical world properties that shape our perceptions, I am highlighting a phenomenon within this site-specific installation. One that involves us and others; a shared understanding in different perspectives. Developing on the concept prior “EK ARKA” and “Love as the practice of freedom” by Bell Hooks where she defines how the ethics of love ripples true liberation among individuals and communities, I have created this installation as a bridge that interweaves our diverse perspectives. The installation doesn’t mirror an archetype of a bridge but it engages in transporting the viewer from one point to another, just like a bridge. From a familial space to a domain with pronounced limitations towards conventional biases. From an overwhelm to a simplified form of space, light and perception. A respite in the complex world we share, “EK ARKA” translates to one another in Nepalese but it signifies comradery and empathy towards others by understanding the one.