Everyday Matters

[Music]

i’m going to share my ideas on every day

how often do we take a pause to think

about every day

does it even matter to think or talk

about

something which is ordinarily happening

in our day-to-day life

i think there is something that holds us

together

that something pushes us to perform our

daily tasks

and i as an artist try to get a hold on

that something

through art my fondness for everyday

has raised a concern for its

construction

majorly derived from my experiences and

journey as an art student

and a practitioner living in the

outskirts of the city

left me with no other choice but to

travel for

four to five hours a day and that landed

me into

utilizing my traveling time to life

sketch people

reciprocating my tendency to observe

minutely

leading to close encounters with people

who i met over and again for coming

years

people who were religiously following

the same routine each day

boarding the same bus at the same time

racing to sit on a windowside seat

or at least getting a hold of that pole

or finding

a comfortable spot some were

passing their time by looking out from

the window

and others were traveling to pass their

time

it was like a lot of different

narratives were unfolding at once

influencing each other in one or the

other way

leading to compositions like this

here the aversions and anxiety

of day-to-day travel in public transport

are expressed through my own

observations and experiences

in this composition and the subsequent

compositions the female form

continued to be sinking into herself

within desperate urge to maintain

the physical space the much needed

physical space in a public transport

continuing in successive compositions

for

next to three years but soon soon i

realized that my everyday also continued

to be in such a routine boarding the

same bus

at the same time meeting the same set of

people each day

standing between the seats in an order

to save myself from any sort of physical

touch

putting on my headphones and sketch

until until i started to question

the mechanism of my routine practices

diving deeper into the workability of

day-to-day life

and it started to raise many more

questions inside me

questions like what are the possible

factors

or elements that derive the emotional

right in our daily commute

what is seemingly the relationship

between the mental

and the bodily transition what do people

in this transition why do we perform

prohibited activities in public spaces

and how does a body manages to navigate

itself

even in a situation of utter chaos

my canvas became a workstation

for exploring the possible answers to

all these questions

and the daily sketches were like a raw

material

into the subsequent process for

understanding human behavior

in local spaces with an effort to

unravel

the hidden dialogue between stranger

bodies

i was now looking at objects and

elements

of day-to-day life that usually went

unnoticed

or were ignored and that somewhere

led to new explorations

for example led holdings

in market space or sign and symbols that

we have

these are some of the explorations that

were leading to my visual representation

into the form of paintings and

photographic collages

yes very ordinary ordinary like

the ordinary experience of a common

person but what

is ordinary how does an ordinary

constructs

i think being ordinary is a notion

that depicts our everyday and every day

itself

varies my everyday might be different

from yours every day

and yours might be different from your

family

or your siblings or your friends and so

does that continue

and we all have this segregation

now formulating all these contemplations

my ideas moved from self-expression

to a realization of a vast culture

a culture that we subconsciously follow

just like in automata but what i found

really

interesting in that is our daily

performativity

functions distinctly in distinct spaces

always segregating the private and the

public

now these observations were moving from

being just observation to investigation

into spaces and their inhibited objects

with a very subjective approach

and that expanded my area of exploration

from human experiences to many four

layers of spaces

and objects

now it stands beyond their physical

value

holding something much deeper more

metaphorical

like this composition

but is it possible to seek aesthetic

pleasure or aesthetic

value in something which is very common

which is banal which is normal yes

why not

i think we all have this in-built

tendency

this inbuilt sensitivity that we are

born with

to have an eye towards aesthetics

it is very much visible from the way we

perform our daily task however

the order or the manner is the way

we decorate the interiors in our homes

or how do we manage to click those

absolutely delicious meals

all this is very evident that

we desperately seek aesthetic pleasure

in our everyday life one of such object

that found space in my recent project

mind the gap

are coedomats domains are the

very common uh household object that we

all are aware of but core door mats are

like a long lost material

this ongoing project is an assimilation

of paintings

drawings link mechanism and these maths

as you can see in this picture these

maths are engraved with some text

taken from the excerpt practices of

everyday life written and written by the

social scientist and writer michelle di

shatte

with your attention to bring your focus

towards the

idea of actually being present the

viewers are invited to walk freely on

these maps

feel the texture read the text and

have a relation with the visuals that

are displayed on the walls

this is somewhere also an

effort to realize the value that arts of

doing hold

like arts of doing like walking talking

cleaning cooking thinking dwelling

everything

we as humans stand to be indulged in us

of doing

more frequently but we are

so indulged into it that we hardly

notice it our situation is somewhere

similar

to the led holding in a market space

which is always like unnoticed

until or unless it is captured

our eyes by being some glitch by

creating some glitch

in my thought current situation of

lockdown is also like being a glitch

into our set routine

bringing our focus more towards the arts

of doing

with an intention to raise your concern

towards the

everyday i want to leave you all

with this thought of actually being

present

observant and sensitive enough to value

the notion of

every day because something which was

something which was ignored if we are

able to see and identify it

that really matters our perception

matters

and hence every day matters thank you